textarea parsing problem

Anon

Hi,

I have problems with parsing a form textarea. All " and ' characters are replaced by \" and \'.

Why is this and what can I do about it?

Thanks,
Raoul

Anon

use the function stripslashes()

echo stripslashes($text);

Anon

Thanks Martin!

Works well for ". However got this strange thing happening for a single '.

All of this is for a mysql database. When a ' existes in a textarea and stripslashes() is used the handle the \, the mysql query to insert or update a row does not work.

What could this be?

Raoul

crusty_php

Sorry, thought you only had a prob with displaying.

With magic_quotes ON in your php.ini, data passed from one script to next will have slashes added.

It's up to you to check the state of variables so that any strings passed to the db have slashes. use addslashes() for unpassed strings. As previously stated, use stripslashes to get rid of them.

Anon

the slashes are stripped correctly before the mysql query, I checked this.

The weird thing is that the mysql query isnot accepted as soon as stripslashes() comes in place.

Or do you mean this can't be solved without changing the php.ini file and instead save the field as it is and use stripslashes() when getting data from mysql to display it?

siwis

Assuming the " are simple parts of text and not part of an html entry you are adding to the db then why not just replace them with a str_replace();

$text = str_replace("\"", """, $text);

The stripslashes should not be done before adding to the database, only once you call the database entries back and want to display them. " will cause havoc with html in some browsers anyway unless it is part of a tag, so should always be replaced by " anyway

siwis

Bugger! some of the " above should have been &quot;

corrections;

$text = str_replace("\"", "&quot;", $text);

should always be replaced by $amp;quot; anyway

Si Watts wrote:

Assuming the " are simple parts of text and not part of an html entry you are adding to the db then why not just replace them with a str_replace();

$text = str_replace("\"", """, $text);

Anon

Thanks, I tried that.

The same problem, it works fine for "

But:
$text = str_replace("\'", "'", $text);

keeps the row from saving correctly in mysql as soon as there is a ' in the textarea.

This is weird, right? Or is there an explanation for this?

Thanks,
raoul

Anon

ok, think I solved it. The form is set up this way:

first fill out all textareas. press submit.
the form is shown in a different design with the same textareas and the contents filled in by the user. press submit to confirm.

I thought that I needed to use the code from both Martin and Si Watts twice. first to strip the slashes before showing the form data then to strip the slashes to save the data as I thought that after the second submission the slashes would be there again. Apparantly not and it appears that the second stripslashes() is causing the error saving to mysql!