Form section being run twice

d401tq

Hi all,

I am new to php, but not new to programming, just so you know how slowly to talk. I have recently inherited a website and learnt php to completely do it over.

Onto the problem.

The premise of the page is a form for submitting sports results. Firstly we check if they have submitted results (IF statement), if so, it processes them - at the moment I'm just inputting the result for the two teams into MySQL and also increasing the number of games played by two team members by 1. Secondly, if they haven't submitted results but have submitted the two teams (ELSEIF) then we give them the form to submit details for individual team members and the score. Thirdly, if they haven't chosen teams, they get a different form to do so.

The issue I am having is that the part after the IF statement is being run twice. I.e. the number of games played is being increased by two. I have checked that it is the code given below at fault and not the function being used. The game result is given using an INSERT MySQL query in the 'addres' function. The game result is not being duplicated, which is I assume due to it being overwritten (the entire IF loop is being run twice). The individual result is given using an UPDATE MySQL query in the 'addsinglesgames' function. A 'counter' variable within the IF section shows only 1 count, yet any action, e.g. doing something with the mysql database, is run twice.

I have given a link to the whole code, rather than pasting the whole lot and making a mess, or pasting not enough. It can be found at www.dur.ac.uk/pool.league/div1input.phps. The actual page is of course .....div1input.php although you will not be able to see the full functionality as to submit results one needs a password. If this needs to change to solve the problem I may resort to doing so. The code for the included functions is at www.dur.ac.uk/pool.league/database.phps.

If anyone can solve this problem I will be extremely grateful, as it is about the last thing that needs doing on the site, and is becoming very frustrating!

Thankyou in advance.

NogDog

I've looked through the code a bit, and if it makes you feel any better, I don't see any obvious reason for the problem you've described. All I can suggest is to try adding some debug output for now to the function addsinglesgames() function to see if it's getting called twice:

addsinglesgames($Home, $Away, $Password)
{
    // DEBUG:
    echo "<pre>";
    debug_print_backtrace();
    echo "</pre>\n";
    // END DEBUG

$query1 = "UPDATE players SET singlesplayed = singlesplayed+1 WHERE (name = '$Home' || name='$Away')";
query_DB($query1, $Password);
}

d401tq

Thank you for your reply. I added the debug code into the function like you said. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to recognise the debug function being called:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: debug_print_backtrace() in /home/hudson/misc/dtr8cp/public_html/database.php on line 92

Any ideas why it's doing it? :S

NogDog

It's a PHP5 function. If you are on PHP4, the best solution is to upgrade now (after next month there will not even be any more security patches for it). Otherwise, try:

echo "<pre>".print_r(debug_backtrace())."</pre>\n";

d401tq

Thanks for the reply. I have looked into the php version issue - according to my hosts all files with .php extension are run using php4, and those with .php5 extension, with php5 - useful to know! Anyway, for now I have put the php4 debug code in, and this is what it output:

Array ( [0] => Array ( [file] => /home/hudson/misc/dtr8cp/public_html/div1input.php [line] => 78 [function] => addsinglesgames [args] => Array ( [0] => Matt Perks [1] => Adam West [2] => password ) ) )

If I change the function to increase gamesplayed by 3, it increases by 6 etc.

NogDog

A slight change to make it format the debug output more nicely:

echo "<pre>".print_r(debug_backtrace()[color=red], 1[/color])."</pre>\n";

Anyway, if you only got that output once, then that would seem to indicate that you only called that function once, so that does not seem to be the issue. Therefore, if that function is definitely working as desired (which you seemed to indicate it is), then the only other option I can think of is that some other function is also incrementing those values? Or perhaps you could create a separate little test script that just loads and then calls that function using the same arguments listed in the above debug output to make 100% sure it's not somehow the problem, though I can't really see how it could be unless there is something going on on the database side I haven't thought of.

d401tq

After the change:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [file] => /home/hudson/misc/dtr8cp/public_html/div1input.php
            [line] => 78
            [function] => addsinglesgames
            [args] => Array
                (
                    [0] => Matt Perks
                    [1] => Adam West
                    [2] =>*******
                )

    )

)

Yes, it has me befuddled too. I have tried entering the MySQL query straight into the database, and it performs as expected. I will try creating a simple php file that just runs that function to see if there is an issue. Could it be a case whereby the function is called twice, along with the actual page, so that the debug only shows one instance of the function? I dunno whether that makes sense or is feasible - it's just something I thought of.

d401tq

After creating a very simple test page to run the function, and being completely confused by the fact that it still didn't work, I have managed to work out the source of the error - I was using a function (written by the previous website admin) that ran database queries. The function is in the database.phps file, and as can be seen it runs the query, then also 'returns' the query as well, thus running it twice. Deleting the last two lines in the function solves the problem.

Thanks for the help.

NogDog

Glad you were able to track it down.