Workaround for ENCAPSED_AND_WHITESPACE - php

Question

I am very new to php programming. I have tried googling and searching this website for a fix to this but I don't know what to even type into google to really find my answer.
I get the error:
unexpected T_ENCAPSED_AND_WHITESPACE, expecting T_STRING or T_VARIABLE or T_NUM_STRING
I am unsure what I can do avoid this.I know it is caused by the ['userid'] but I need that as part of my coding.
Here is my code:
<?php
include ('auth/userInfo.php');
$servername = "example";
$username = "example_1";
$password = "example";
$dbname = "example_enter";
// Create connection
$conn = mysqli_connect($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);
// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}
$userprofile['userid'] = mysqli_real_escape_string($userprofile['userid']);
$sql="INSERT INTO today (accessed)
VALUES ('$userprofile['userid']')";
if ($conn->query($sql) === TRUE) {
echo "Success";
} else {
echo "Error: " . $sql . "<br>" . $conn->error;
}
$conn->close();
?>
In case my coding is so bad that no one knows what it is attempting to do. I am attempting to write to a MySQL DB when a user has signed in.

Answer 1

The problem is caused by the fact that you are (a) using quotes to reference an array index inside a literal string (b) inserting a line break inside that same string:
$sql="INSERT INTO today (accessed)
VALUES ('$userprofile['userid']')";
What you probably meant to write is:
$sql="INSERT INTO today (accessed) VALUES ('" . $userprofile['userid'] . "')";
However even this is problematic due to SQL injection attacks - I recommend you read up on parameterized queries (mysqli_prepare).