Need some urgent help...

jbwhitcombe

Hey, i've got this code here, I'm new to the whole thing and this is due tomorrow for class. I keep getting an unexpected $end all the time...

Here is my code:

<?php
if ((isset($POST['name'])) && (trim($POST['name']) != "")){

	$namedata = $_POST ['name'];

	$db_hostname="localhost";
	$db_username="cgscompu_whitcj2";
	$db_password="120298";
	$db_server=mysql_connect($db_hostname, $db_username, $db_password);
	if (!$db_server) die("Unable to connect to MySQL: " . mysql_error());

	$db_database="cgscompu_whitcj2";
	mysql_select_db($db_database, $db_server)
	or die("Unable to select database: " . mysql_error());

	$query = "INSERT INTO contact_info (name) VALUES ($namedata)
	INSERT INTO contact_info (`age`) VALUES ($age)
	INSERT INTO contact_info (`email_address`) VALUES ($email_address)
	INSERT INTO contact_info (`phone_number`) VALUES ($phone_number)
	INSERT INTO contact_info (`postcode`) VALUES ($postcode)";
	$result = mysql_query($query);
	if (!$result) die ("Database insert failed: " . mysql_error());
	}

else {
$name = "Name not inputted";
?>

<html>
<head>
<title> Contact Information </title>
<h1> <font face="verdana" color="grey" size="3">Contact Information Application</font> </h1>
<h1> <font face="verdana" color="red" size="1"> Indicates required fields</font></h1>
<hr/>
</head>
<body>
<table border="0">
<tr>
<form name = "update_contacts" method="post" action="update_contacts.php"></td>
<td><font face="verdana" color="grey" size="3"> Name <font face="verdana" color="red" size="2" > </font></td>
<td><input type="text" name="name" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="verdana" color="grey" size="3"> Age <font face="verdana" color="red" size="2" > </font></td>
<td><input type="number" name="age" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="verdana" color="grey" size="3">Email Address <font face="verdana" color="red" size="2" > </font></td>
<td><input type="text" name="email_address" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="verdana" color="grey" size="3">Phone Number <font face="verdana" color="red" size="2" > </font></td>
<td><input type="number" name="phone_number" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="verdana" color="grey" size="3">Postcode <font face="verdana" color="red" size="2" > </font></td>
<td><input type="number" name="postcode" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><input type="submit" name="update_contacts" /></td>
</tr>
</form>
</body>
</html>

Please respond ASAP!

bradgrafelman

The '{' on line 25 (according to my copy-paste) is never closed.

Some other issues:

You might want to refrain from posting usernames and passwords for the world to see in the future.
Your INSERT query uses variables $age, $email_address, $phone_number, and $postcode which are all undefined.
You should never place user-supplied data directly into a SQL query, else your code will be vulnerable to SQL injection attacks and/or just plain SQL errors. Instead, you must first sanitize the data or use prepared statements.
The entire [man]mysql[/man] extension (e.g. any functions that begin with 'mysql_') is severely outdated and has been deprecated in favor of newer extensions such as [man]MySQLi[/man] or [man]PDO[/man].

You say this is for a class? If the class is specifically teaching you PHP, surely they didn't teach you to use such an outdated extension. (Or are they also teaching you that the world is flat and the Earth is at the center of our solar system? 😉)

Ashley_Sheridan

Bradgrafelman, I would wager that that is indeed what they teach. From what I gather, programming classes in schools don't always go teach what's current but what's in the curriculum. Problem is, technology often moves too fast for the curriculum to catch up, which tends to move at a glacial speed at the best of times :bemused:

Weedpacket

Which is why programming and debugging skills should be taught, not the programming language version du jour.

Ashley_Sheridan

Yes, sadly that seems to be lacking in some teaching establishments. I remember being "taught" HTML and PHP at university; only a third of those subjects total time was given over to PHP and that was only to cover the basics. We spent more time being shown how to use Fireworks, and to this day I've not seen it in use in the industry. This is what I mean about being out of date.

Weedpacket

I say things went downhill when University Computer Science departments started basing everything on Java. In MY day we had to learn enough Haskell, Prolog, Pascal, and Scheme (and if you were doing other papers as was required, they probably came with domain-specific languages) to at least be able to ask for the location of the nearest toilet in an emergency.

Rant over.

nancy30

you should use some good editor while coding it will help you find minor errors your coding skills are good

dalecosp

Weedpacket;11016623 wrote:
I say things went downhill when University Computer Science departments started basing everything on Java. In MY day we had to learn enough Haskell, Prolog, Pascal, and Scheme (and if you were doing other papers as was required, they probably came with domain-specific languages) to at least be able to ask for the location of the nearest toilet in an emergency.

Rant over.

Rant appreciated. 😉

sneakyimp

nancy30;11016897 wrote:
you should use some good editor while coding it will help you find minor errors your coding skills are good

Although the old man in me believes one must first learn to do things the hard way, I think this is good advice. In particular, I have found a good IDE useful for the following super-helpful features:
syntax highlighting and checking as you type
highlighting of other instances of the currently selected variable
highlighting of matching parens or brackets
one-key lookup of variable or function definitions or documentation
* debugging

I've used Eclipse for a while but am wondering if there might be a better IDE out there somewhere for PHP. It was a total nightmare to get my local apache install set up to allow me to debug by stepping through my code. Eclipse itself has lots of redundant and confusing settings related to debugging and it never really seems to work when I want it to.