html anchors from db records

Anon

Hi all,

I am switching from VBScript/ASP to PHP and have run into a problem with HTML anchors. My page has a list of links generated from a db. The links reference a second page, which displays multiple records from the db to include the referenced one. I need that page to load to the selected record based on the link from the previous page, with the other records ouputted before and after the selected record. Since the selected record's location will vary on the page I need to use the html <a href=name> anchors. The names of these anchors are also generated from the database. The second page is loading to the top of the page, regardless of the anchors, which appear correctly in the html source code. I suspect this is because my include header files are being sent to the browser before the anchors are generated.

In ASP I could set the buffer to send the output to the browser all at once, which would solve this problem (I think) but I can find nothing similar in PHP. Is there anything? Or is there another way around this problem?

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions.
Rebecca

kparker

I doubt this is the cause. Can you show a (condensed as much as feasible) sample of the code?

Anon

Hi, thanks for responding.

Here is the relevant code in my initial page for the links:

echo "<a href='../dogs/dogpage.php#";

echo strtolower($row[1]) . "'>";

/This is the name for the anchor. /

echo "?id=" . $row[0] . "'>";

/This passes the id for the record to the querystring to select the particular record . /

And here is the code in the referenced page dogpage.php:

echo "<a name=" . strtolower($name) . "></a>";

/ the $name variable here is the same as the $row[1] variable in the referencing page /

The HTMl output in both pages looks right. It just doesn't work. Thanks so much for your input.
Rebecca

kparker

Here's a little test program:

<?php

for ($i = 0; $i < 10; $i++ )
   {
   printf("<a name=\"anchor%02d\">Anchor %d", $i, $i );
   for ($j = 0; $j < 10; $j++ )
      echo "<br>";
   echo "\n";
   }

(The purpose of all the BR's is to make sure that some of the anchors are offscreen at any given time.)

Given this, I have no problem saying 'test.php' in my browser, and it goes to the top of the document, and 'test.php#anchor07' and it goes right to anchor 7 and displays the page from that point.

In other words, I don't know...

Anon

Dear Kirk,
Thank you so much for taking the time to help me on this - and at 3 in the morning no less!

I tried your program and also had no problem with it, which led me to the discovery that it is the id being passed through the querystring that is the problem, and causes the anchor to fail (in IE only). So I just need to pass the id another way and I think my problem will go away.

Again thank you for saving me many hours of work and frustration.
Rebecca