[RESOLVED] Problem echoing database variables into textarea

Maharg105

Hi Guys,

I have a small problem and was wondering if someone might be able to help me with it.

I have an sql table containing address, phone and email details which are then displayed on the contact us page of the site.

I am designing a basic CMS element that will allow these to be updated. When the user goes to this page, I want the existing details to be echoed into the text boxes.

My problem is that whilst it works for the email and phone variables, I am having trouble getting the address to work. This is the code I am currently using;

$link=mysql_connect('localhost','username','password');
mysql_select_db('database');

$getitem = mysql_query("SELECT address, phone, email FROM user_setting")
or die(mysql_error());

while ($code = mysql_fetch_object($getitem)) {

$address=$code->address;
$phone=$code->phone;
$email=$code->email;

echo " 
<form action='./setcontact_submit.php' method='post'>
<br />
<label for='address'>Contact Address</label><textarea name='address' name='address' rows=10 cols=40 value=$address></textarea>
<br />
<label for='phone'>Contact Phone</label> <input type='text' name='phone' id='phone' maxlength='100' class='form_input' value=$phone />
<br />
<label for='email'>Contact Email</label> <input type='text' name='email' id='email' maxlength='150' class='form_input' value=$email />
<br />
<label>&nbsp; </label><input type='submit' value='Submit' class='button' /></form>";}} ?>

I'm thinking it might have something to do with there being newline tags in the address. Because if I echo it into the textarea using nl2br then it kind of works, but obviously there are <br /> tags in it.

I want it to appear as it would appear on the website.

I hope that makes sense and I will be eternally grateful for any help anyone can give me.

Thanks,

david8787

Not sure if this is an issue but for your textarea tag used the name property twice, I'm assuming the second one is meant to be id. Also did you try putting the $address between the textarea tags?

<textarea>$address</textarea>

bradgrafelman

As david8787 points out, your main problem is that the TEXTAREA element doesn't have a 'value' attribute at all - the default value for textarea's goes between the opening and closing tags.

Couple of other concerns as well:

Make sure you're using valid HTML syntax. For example, all attributes (e.g. "value") must be surrounded in quotes.
When echo'ing stored data into an HTML document, you must take care to avoid the HTML from becoming broken. For example, you might consider using the [man]htmlentities/man function (using the ENT_QUOTES quote style if you stick with single quotes.. otherwise switch to using double quotes and you can stick with the default ENT_COMPAT option).

Maharg105

Thanks for that guys. I put the address variable between the <textarea> tags and all was good in the world 🙂

Thanks for the additional advice Brad, that definitely looks like it will be of help in the near future.

God I love this forum. It keeps me with a little more hair on my head each day 🙂

bradgrafelman

Glad we could help.. don't forget to mark this thread resolved (if it is) using the link on the Thread Tools menu above.