[RESOLVED] Yet another newbie error issue...

[OdinSaysFold]

I have always been the type to try and figure everything out on my own no matter the endeavor but I've tried so many things on this and can't get past this error. So here I am. Might become a regular should I continue enduring an uphill battle.

I am receiving "Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING in ***.php on line 12

Also, I know there is a more streamlined method to accomplish what I am doing (that is, less lines of code) but since I am looping on this error I just broke it down into baby steps. I may also be way off when it gets down to the 'if' statement, not sure if I actually need to include an 'else' after it but that still should not cause me to get the error on the line indicated...

<?php

$con = mysql_connect("localhost","user","password");
if (!$con)

  {
  die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
  }

mysql_select_db("db_name", $con);

$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM newaccount WHERE UName='""'");

$result = mysql_query($query);

if (!$result)

  {
  mysql_query("DROP TABLE newaccount");
  mysql_close($con);
  header("Location: http://whatever.html");
  }

echo "All information needs to be provided in order to register. Please go back and submit the registration form again.";

mysql_query("DROP TABLE newaccount");

mysql_close($con);

?>

[dalecosp]

Yet another quoting nightmare:

$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM newaccount WHERE UName='""'"); 

I suppose this might work:

$query = mysql_query('SELECT * FROM newaccount WHERE UName='.'\"\"'); 

?

What exactly are you looking for ... an empty record?

[OdinSaysFold]

dalecosp;10967616 wrote:

Yet another quoting nightmare:

$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM newaccount WHERE UName='""'"); 

I suppose this might work:

$query = mysql_query('SELECT * FROM newaccount WHERE UName='.'\"\"'); 

?

What exactly are you looking for ... an empty record?

Well to sum it up this is just 1 part of the check I am running against any input values to a form (so that all fields have to be populated to allow the form to be submitted); When the fields were just submitted blank it was not creating a NULL in SQL and for some reason I could not call to it as a blank value. However I played around and found if I created a temp table and threw random values into it then overwrote those values with the submitted values it would then populate the value in SQL as "" (just as typed, actually has the 2 quotation marks with no space or anything in between). So the purpose is just to verify data was entered. If it was, then it goes to the next page and I will take the values from the temp table and put them in my users table. If there was a blank field then a message will be displayed and no values go to my static table.

I WAS going to just use JS to disallow form submission if fields were blank BUT that does leave a bit of security vulnerability open since the JS COULD be bypassed and data could still be input to SQL.

Hope that all made sense :queasy:

[dalecosp]

Well, you could certainly use PHP to check for empty values in the submission and reject the input in that case ...

[OdinSaysFold]

dalecosp;10967639 wrote:

Well, you could certainly use PHP to check for empty values in the submission and reject the input in that case ...

Yes I scrapped my fear of being banal and overly secure and just went with a slew of if / elseif statements after declaring variables to check the string length along with some other checks like password match and valid email address etc. Thanks for the input! First issue and had such quick response, makes me all warm and fuzzy 😃

I'll stick with the KISS / Keep It Simple, Stupid methodology going forward but will undoubtedly be posting in here again at some point with the dimmed light bulb floating above my head~