strlen question

182x

Hey guys I am using the following code in order to ensure that a user does not exceed the limit of 2000 characters when processing a form. I also have some javascript which informs the user how many characters they have left and the php code is just a fail safe incase javascript is not enabled. However when using the code below if I have 2001 charaters it is still accepted it goes to around 2300 before it works I was just wondering why this is the case? Thanks

if(strlen($_POST['text']) > 2000)

{
//error
}

else{
//ok
}

paulnaj

Hi,

If you haven't already tried, echo $_POST['text'] to the browser and then check the source for unexpected characters. It could be some kind of encoding issue.
P.

bradgrafelman

Without some sample data that you're using, it's hard to say.

Any chance you can show us an example of the HTML form and attach some example data in a .txt file?

182x

the html form simply has 3 text fields and a text area its the text area that is being tested for its length. Just to test it I entered the string as follows until the 2000 characters were reached.

Example text:

test test test test
test test test test

bradgrafelman

Can you give us a link to the form, or include it in your post? Is it possible that your JavaScript function isn't counting linebreaks as characters, even though they are?

182x

Hi thanks for your reply, I don't have it now but I will be able to post it later. Does this sound like a serious underlying problem or is it more likley just what the strlen is counting as characters?

bradgrafelman

182x wrote:
is it more likley just what the strlen is counting as characters?

[man]strlen/man counts characters as characters, plain and simple. This string:

Hi
!

on my computer has 5 characters; "hi" = 2, CRLF (or "\r\n" in most programming languages) since I'm on Windows = 2, and "!" = 1. If you typed the same string in on Unix or Mac, it'd be 4 characters, since Unix and Mac use \n and \r respectively.

182x

When I tested the code earlier with the javascript turned off it was still taking about 2300 before the error catch worked. Will post the form later when I get back to my other machine, this seems to be a weird problem though.

bradgrafelman

shrug Here's a quick test:

<?php
if(isset($_POST['test']))
	if(strlen($_POST['test']) > 2000)
		echo 'The string you entered (' . strlen($_POST['test']) . ' characters) was too long.<hr>';
	else
		echo 'The string you entered was not more than 2000 characters.';
?><form action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] ?>" method="POST">
String: <textarea name="test" rows="20" cols="50"></textarea><br>
<input type="submit" value="Submit"></form>

Attached to this post are two text files: good.txt contains exactly 2000 characters, while bad.txt contains 2001.

182x

Thanks I will test that later when I am on my php machine. However I think I may be on to something now as when I placed the contents of the text file into MS word it was listed as less than 2000 so it MSword must count characters differently and the same could be said for the javascript.

bradgrafelman

Word doesn't seem to count linebreaks at all, so yeah... we'd definitely want to take a look at your JavaScript code when you get the chance.