[RESOLVED] Passing multiple variables between pages

James_G

Hi All

I'm looking to pass a number of variables from one page to another (to allow a contact to be added to a given group)

I've come up with a couple of ideas but am not sure of the best way - at present I use

<a href='addtogroup.php?cmd=add&id=$cid'>

to pass the contacts ID to a page which will then allow a user to select which group to put them in. I also want to pass the contacts forename / surname, so users know which contact they'll be putting into the group. I've tried adding

<a href='addtogroup.php?cmd=add&id=$cid&forename=$cforename'>

but this doesn't seem to work - I assume there is some in built limit on this?

I've also considered opening another mysql connection on the addtogroup.php page, but this seems like a bit of a waste of bandwidth, as i've already got the details on the current page.

I know passing the information as an array would be an option, but my PHP skills aren't quite there (yet).

Any ideas on a newbie friendly way of achieving this? Any help will be, as always, greatfully received.

Stryker250

Not sure if I am reading this incorrectly or not, but it seems as though you are not echoing the values of your variables but rather printing them on screen as they are shown above.
So I am going to assume that and offer this...

$url = 'addtogroup.php?';
$args = array();
$args['cmd'] = 'add';
$args['id'] = $cid;
$args['forename'] = $cforename;

foreach($args AS $k => $v){
    $url .= $k .'='.$v.'&';
}

echo '<a href="'.$url.'">Add to Group</a>';

Will output...

<a href="addtogroup.php?cmd=add&id=valueOfcid&forename=valueOfForename&">Add to Group</a>

Is that what you are looking for? There are simpler methods, its just that with this you can keep appending arguments to the URL by adding.

$args['argumentName'] = 'argumentValue';

And it will automatically append to the URL.

James_G

sorry, I didn't make that very clear did I!

I am echoing the code, I just took a snippet of it for the examples above

Echo"<td><a href='addtogroup.php?cmd=add&id=$cid'>   Add to A Group</a></td>";

is the full line. it's probably pretty bad code but it's one of my first PHP projects.

Your code looks a bit more sophisticated than my level, but i'm going to give it a go. Thanks for your help, Stryker250. I'll let you know how I get on.

Cheers!

James_G

I've tried the method above, but my URL is only coming out with

/addtogroup.php?cmd=add&id=13 whichever way I try it - i've also tried tidying up the code a bit

Echo '<td><a href="addtogroup.php?cmd=add&id=' .$cid . '&title=' .$title . '&"> Add to A Group</a></td>';

to no avail. Why would the generated URL not show anything after the &id=$cid bit?

zzz

Is your $cid a numeric value? How long is your $title? Does it include special characters? Perhaps you can encode it and see if it'll go through that way.

James_G

Hi ZZZ 🙂

Yes, $cid is a numeric value

$title will be no more than 5 characters (i.e. mr, miss, dr, etc..) - it has not special characters (full stop's etc...)

I'm not sure what you mean by encode it - could you explain in laymens terms?

Thanks

zzz

something like http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.urlencode.php

I'm not saying you have to do that but you can certainly try this while trying to debug your code.

James_G

i've had a look at that page above and tried to incorporate it into my code but still to no avail. Can you definitely have more than two arguments passed through a URL? I've tested this in firefox 3 and IE 7 just to make sure it wasn't a browser specific issue.

laserlight

I'm a little confused here. What exactly did you try that does not work, and how does it not work?

James_G

what doesn't work is any method of passing more than two parameters through a URL, - i.e. if I put
Echo"<td><a href='addtogroup.php?cmd=add&id=$cid&title=$title'> Add to A Group</a></td>";

The URL will only come up with:
addtogroup.php?cmd=add&id=5
(for example) anything after the $cid simply isn't there - i've tried formatting the line and also using Stryker250's more sophisticated method.

laserlight

hmm... okay, let's test this in steps.

First, create a web page named test.html and place the code below in there:

<a href="http://www.example.com?a=1&amp;b=2&amp;c=3">example.com</a>

Visit the web page and check the query string. Is the "&c=3" portion present? If so, proceed to the next step.

Next, test this PHP script:

<?php
echo '<a href="http://www.example.com?a=1&amp;b=2&amp;c=3">example.com</a>';
?>

Do you still get the "&c=3" portion of the query string? If so, proceed to the next step.

Finally, test this PHP script:

<?php
$cid = 123;
$title = 'James G';
echo '<a href="http://www.example.com?cmd=add&amp;id=' . $cid
    . '&amp;title=' . urlencode($title) . '">example.com</a>';
?>

Do you get the "&title=James+G" portion of the query string?

zzz

and yes, you can pass way more the 3 vars in a URL, which may not be a very secure method.

James_G

Your scripts work perfectly - I've realised the issue - i've (extremely stupidly) been editing the wrong part of code - hence it looking like it wasn't working, when i'm sure any of the suggestions above would have sorted it.

I apologise for wasting peoples time, and shall don my dunce hat.

laserlight

Good to hear the problem was so trivial; you had me rather puzzled for awhile 🙂

Nonetheless, note that you should be using & instead of &. Read the PHP manual on PHP and HTML.

James_G

Cheers! I feel a bit of a fool but i've learned a few useful things in the process. I like your troubleshooting method - I hadn't thought about taking a problem out of the context of my site and testing it but I definitely will in future.