Fundamental Question

dutc0015

Quick question. I've recently changed hosting services and ran into a bit of a problem. When I pass variables through the URL as follows like this:

http://www.website.com/home.php?var=2

I find that they are not passing correctly. For instance,


<?php

$var;

?>

doesn't print anything at all. Any ideas?

bretticus

dutc0015 wrote:
<?php
$var;
?>
doesn't print anything at all. Any ideas?

Yep, that will never print anything ever. Perhaps you meant

<?=$var?>

...??

Where the "=" is shorthand for "echo " or "print ".

One more thing, if your new hosting company cares anything about php security, they will have turned register_globals off in the PHP config. What this means is that even...

<?=$var?>

...still won't work as the var variable comes from GET method. Instead try...

<?php
echo $_GET['var'];?>

NogDog

This is why it's always best to write your code under the assumption that register_globals and short_tags are both turned off.

This will always work (assuming there's no logic bug or such):

<?php echo $_GET['var']; ?>

This may or may not work, depending on your configuration:

<?= $var ?>

Since you can never really predict when you might move code to a different server, or have the current server settings be changed, or decide to re-use code on a project on another server; you can save yourself a lot of grief by not using the short-cuts that may save you a minute of typing now for hours of debugging headaches later.