It appears it work... but mysteriously it vanishes!!!

[sophos707]

Greetings!

I've been working on some really great PHP coding projects, but just recently got stuck. I've at this point for about five hours... so I need help. :rolleyes: I probably should've asked sooner. hahahahaa

I'm submitting a ratings form for an article. The basic concept is this...
On articles.php they read the article (which is pulled from a server-side include). Then they can choose from a menu-list box which rating they would like to give the article... the form should submit this and edit a record:
(<value they select> + <old value>) / <number of votes>

The problem is that everything looks like it is working. The list shows the proper options, it forwards to the proper pages, etc etc. But nothing in the DB gets updated. I would love your help.

Here is the articles.php section in question:

  

if ((isset($_POST["MM_update"])) && ($_POST["MM_update"] == "rateitForm")) {
  $updateSQL = sprintf("UPDATE Articles SET Article_RATING=%s WHERE Article_ID=%s",
                       GetSQLValueString($_POST['select'], "int"),
                       GetSQLValueString($_POST['select'], "int"));

  mysql_select_db($database_connectmm1, $connectmm1);
  $Result1 = mysql_query($updateSQL, $connectmm1) or die(mysql_error());

  $updateGoTo = "rated.php";
  if (isset($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'])) {
    $updateGoTo .= (strpos($updateGoTo, '?')) ? "&" : "?";
    $updateGoTo .= $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'];
  }
  header(sprintf("Location: %s", $updateGoTo));
}

And here is the server-side include containing the article and form. Just the section in question:

 

<form id="rateitForm" name="rateitForm" method="POST" action="<?php echo $editFormAction; ?>">
  <p>
    <select name="select">
      <option value="(1+$row_displayarticlerecordset['Article_RATING'])/(($row_displayarticlerecordset['Article_NumbOfRatings']+1)+1)">Bad</option>
      <option value="(2+$row_displayarticlerecordset['Article_RATING'])/(($row_displayarticlerecordset['Article_NumbOfRatings']+1)+1)">Below Average</option>
      <option value="(3+$row_displayarticlerecordset['Article_RATING'])/(($row_displayarticlerecordset['Article_NumbOfRatings']+1)+1)">Average</option>
      <option value="(4+$row_displayarticlerecordset['Article_RATING'])/(($row_displayarticlerecordset['Article_NumbOfRatings']+1)+1)">Above Average</option>
      <option value="(5+$row_displayarticlerecordset['Article_RATING'])/(($row_displayarticlerecordset['Article_NumbOfRatings']+1)+1)">Great</option>
    </select>
</p>
  <p>
    <input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Rate It!" />
</p>
  <input type="hidden" name="MM_update" value="rateitForm">
</form> 

Any help is appreciated! I'm most commonly known for making really stupid mistakes, so point 'em out! 🙂

[mjax]

Does the WHERE part of the query actually return one (or more) records? Please check by outputting the UPDATE query and using the WHERE part in a SELECT statement to see if it returns rows.

[Piranha]

You use the same value for the rating and the article_id. So the rating is probably not updating it correct. You should probably pass on the article_id as a hidden value.

Another problem is how you pass on the rating. If I understand it correctly in your database you have a table called Articles, and that table includes everything in an article. When you open the page to rate an article it will get into that table and get the current rating and number of previous ratings, and then do some math of it. Then when the user click submit the value from the webpage will be set into the database. What happens if someone rates it between those two times? The math should be done in the SQL statement instead to avoid that problem.

And one last thing. You probably want to add one to Article_NumbOfRatings in Articles.

[sophos707]

Thanks for the help! 🙂

Now it actually makes changes in the DB... unfortunately the only change it makes is setting the rating to zero every time.

Any ideas why it's doing that?

[sophos707]

Any ideas?