Passing variables to a function...

Anon

I'm trying to link to a php/database page using hyperlinks, but I can't get the output_entries() function to recognise variables within my query string - I just get errors.

The query string looks like this -
$cur= odbc_exec( $cnx, "select Index,ItemName,ItemOwner,Description,ItemPrice,ImageURL from Inventory where Type='CD' and Category=\"$criteria\" " );

where $criteria is defined earlier in the function. What's happening?

Also, is linking to a PHP page with hyperlinks instead of a form possible? (currently my URL's look like href="view.php?type=1&category=2". Is that legal?
Cheers.

badman

the query string is perfectly legal!

for your url view.php?type=1&category=2
the variable $category is available in page view.php (its value is 2)

so if you are using variables from query string in your 'linked' page make sure that you append a '$' to them and also that thier case/spelling i same.

Are you trying to use the query string variable inside a function? if yes then
1. you must pass this to your function
output_entries($category) and
2. make sure the function is called!

I(and almost everyone) use this all the time and dont see why your code shud give an error!

cheers!

Anon

Thanks for that, but I'm obviously still doing something wrong. I think it might be in my query:

$cur= odbc_exec( $cnx, "select Index,Field1, Field2,etc from Inventory where Type=\"$type\" and Category=\"$criteria\"" );  returns false...

$criteria is declared in the function,
$type is passed to it through view.php?type=1

as output_entries( $type) which is also called in the function defn:

function output_entries ( $type) {}

what's going wrong?
Is there something else I'm missing?

Anon

UPDATE: Ok, problem is with the query....
Is there some trick to using variables in a DB query?

$cur= odbc_exec( $cnx, "select Index,ItemName,ItemOwner,Description,ItemPrice,ImageURL from Inventory where Type='$type' and Category='$criteria'" );

works fine, just returns no entries, cos it's not valuating the variables, while

$cur= odbc_exec( $cnx, "select Index,ItemName,ItemOwner,Description,ItemPrice,ImageURL from Inventory where Type=\"$type\" and Category=\"$criteria\"" );

returns the error "too few parameters, expected 1.,SQL state 07001 in SQL exec or something, what's wrong with my syntax?

kparker

Actuall, in your first case, the variables are being evaluated, because the entire string is in double-quotes. Inside that string, you are properly using single-quotes to delimit character data for sql, again exactly as you should.

The next thing to do here is to put the entire query string into its own variable, so you can echo this and see the expanded version before it executes:

$qry = "select Index, ItemName, ItemOwner, Description, ItemPrice, ImageURL
  from Inventory where Type='$type' and Category='$criteria'";
echo "Trying to execute: $qry ";
if (! ($cur= odbc_exec( $cnx, $qry )))
  echo "Query failed: $php_errormsg";

Anon

cheers for that, that's sorted out most of the problems.... cept now for some reason it's telling me there are no entries in my DB that fit that criteria, and there are... I checked my database, and tried using various format's of the values (text, number, integer, etc..) and my query is returning "0 entries". Which isn't true...

Anyone any idea why?

Cheers