How do I mix php inside php strings? - php

I'm trying to mix <?php echo do_shortcode('[...]') with a field from Advanced Custom Fields within Wordpress.
So basically what I'm trying to do is give the user a text field in the page edit screen where she can paste in the ID of a youtube vide. This field will then update my do_shortcode to display the correct video.
I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong considering I've done this several times before and been succesful. I do have a feeling I'm not escaping the string correctly?
<?php echo do_shortcode('[video_lightbox_youtube video_id="' . the_field("youtube_video") . '" width="640" height="480" anchor="Play Video"]'); ?>
Anyone able to lead me in the right direction? :)
EDIT
The code above returns q_cHD1lcEOo with multiple spaces in front of it as well as this: "Error! You must specify a value for the Video ID, Width, Height parameters to use this shortcode!" That's why I was thinking I'm not escaping it correctly as these are all specified.
I'll add that if I remove the_field("...") and replace it with just an ID it displays perfectly.
SECOND EDIT
Since I was not supposed to echo it, I was using the wrong function to get the field. Instead of using the_field() which prints the value, I was supposed to use get_field() to simply return it to the string.

Your question is somewhat unclear, but I'm also 20 hours without sleep.
Anyways, as far as mixing PHP within a PHP string, there's numerous ways to do it..
You can use concatenation or { } within the string itself.
For example, say we want to echo out the property of an object within a string.
We could do the following
echo "This is my property " . $object->property;
Or, we can do this
echo "This is my property {$object->property}";
You can even do cool things like access associative arrays within strings like so
echo "This is my property {$object->property['cool']}";
Hopefully this leads you in the ride direction.

At first glance it looks like you should be using get_field instead of the_field. the_field will print without being prompted, whereas get_field will return its value, which is what you want.
I see you've also mentioned whitespace at the start, you should consider wrapping the function in trim.
See below:
<?php echo do_shortcode('[video_lightbox_youtube video_id="' . trim(get_field("youtube_video")) . '" width="640" height="480" anchor="Play Video"]'); ?>

Related

Handling %22 in urls

I have a page that uses an input field to search, and then uses that same field to go across pages. It also accepts double quotes for exact searching.
The url needs to look like blahblah.com/search/%22querystuff%22, but it autodefaults to blahblah.com/search/"querystuff" which fails in the browser.
Is there any way to get it to stop doing that or do I need to look into a different method.
Try out the urlencode method.
Here is an example of how to use it:
<?php
$userinput = '"Hello world"';
echo '<a href="http://blahblah.com/search/', urlencode($userinput), '">';
?>

PHP echo-ing a PHP code inside an echo

I'm quite new here. I'm trying to make a blog/journal site that allows users to post their own journal. I'm still quite reluctant on making it because I am really afraid of malicious code injections.
So here's a sample code:
<?php
$test = "<b>blah</b>"; //User input from SQL
echo "$test";
?>
What will come out is just the word "blah" in bold right? What I was trying to achieve was to echo "<b>blah</b>" instead. I don't want people to put some PHP codes that can actually mess up my whole web page. Please keep in mind that the variable $test is actually a MYSQL query, so that variable will be needed as an example. I know you can do echo '$test'; but it just comes out as "$test" instead. I feel like pulling my hair out I can't figure it out yet.
The second solution I know of is the htmlspecialchars(); function, but I want the strings to display as what I typed, not the converted ones...
Is there any way I can do that?
I think the OP wants the HTML itself to be output to the page, and not have the tags stripped. To achieve this, you can run the string first through htmlentities()
$test = '<b>blah</b>';
echo htmlentities($test);
This will output:
<b>blah</b>
Which will render in the page as
<b>blah</b>
Echo don't execute PHP code from string. This is impossible and this is not security hole in your code.
You can use a template engine like Twig for exemple.
If htmlspecialchars(); is not the one you are looking for, try the header() option.
header('Content-type: text/plain');
When you are gonna give <b>Hi</b> to a browser, it will be displayed in Bold and not the text be returned. But you can try this way, outputting it inside a <textarea></textarea>.
Or the other way is to use htmlentities():
<?php
$test = "<b>blah</b>"; //User input from SQL
echo htmlentities("$test");
?>

Using variable type variables as array names in php

I'm trying to make a dynamic menu in my web, in which only some pages from each section will appear.
The code I wrote was:
$menulist=array();
$menulist[1]='file1%#16';
$menulist[2]='file2%#9';
$menulist[3]='file3%#19';
$menulist[4]='file4%#8';
$menulist[5]='file5%#13';
$menulist[6]='file6%#14';
$menulist[7]='file7%#10';
$menulist[8]='file8%#23';
$menulist[9]='file9%#19';
$menulist[10]='file10%#18';
$menulist[11]='file11%#12';
function actualizaciones($matriz)
{
$linea=explode("%#",$matriz);
echo '<li><a href="first_chunk_of_URL'.$linea[0].'middle_chunk_of_url'.$linea[1].'last_chunk_of_URL">'.${$linea[0]}[$linea[1]].'</li>;
}
echo '<ul>';
array_walk($menulist,'actualizaciones');
echo '</ul>';
Every $linea[0] string is the name of another array (not shown in this code) which contains the text that should be in every possible link corresponding to every key passed by $linea[1].
I must have done something wrong, because the hyperlinks work fine but there's no text showing on them.
use the simple character like below
echo '<li><a href="first_chunk_of_URL'.$linea[0].'middle_chunk_of_url'.$linea[1].'last_chunk_of_URL">'.${$linea[0]}[$linea[1]].'<li>';
and the problem in your code is
.'</li>;
^^^^^
here is the problem it should be
.'</li>';
If I'm reading the question right, you're asking how to use variable variables in PHP.
This can be done using the double-dollar syntax - ie $$linea[0]. See the PHP manual for more info: http://uk.php.net/manual/en/language.variables.variable.php
But if that is what you're doing, I would say you're not writing good code: if variable variables are involved, there's almost always a better way of doing it.
Can't really offer much better assistance here without understanding more about what you're trying to do, but it sounds like you should be using subarrays rather than separate named variables for everything.
Hope that helps.

Problem getting text field as string from MySQL with PHP

I'm having this problem that's driving me nuts.
I've got a MySQL database in which there is a table that contains a text field. I am querying the table in PHP and trying to put the content of the text field for each row into a var.
I am doing something like this:
for ($i=0;$i<$nbrows;$i++){
$id = $data[$i]['ID'];
$description = $data[$i]['DESCRIPTION'];
$mystring .= '<div>'.$id.': '.$description.'</div>';
}
DESCRIPTION is my text field.
I'll pass on the details. The $data array is built from mysql_fetch_array($result). I also tried using objects instead, as I use mysql_fetch_object for all my other routines, but there is no change.
Anyway, the problem is this: if I do "echo $description;" then it works. I am getting my text field data as expected. The problem is that I don't want to output it directly, but add it to a concatenated string, and that is not working. What happens in that case is it seems to be taking $description for some kind of array or object. To make the above example work, I have the replace the string with:
$mystring .= '<div>'.$id.': '.$description[0].'</div>';
So in the concatenated string code, if I treat $description as an array, it works, but obviously I am getting only one letter. (it doesn't actually seem to be an array because I can't implode it).
I tried a million things but I just can't make this work unless I use echo, but that is not what I am trying to do.
There is no issue with fields that aren't text.
Thanks for any ideas!
There is nothing visually wrong with the code you pasted, maybe if you could also add the fetching function as well, we might be able to help you further.
Maybe you could post a var_dump of your $data array?
Have you tried $mystring .= "<div> $id : $description </div>";
Ack, well, you know, hours spent on this and then it becomes obvious after I decide to post for help. This is just because of text encoding/escaping and nothing else. I just didn't see well enough where the problem was actually happening.
Thanks for taking the time to read and respond!

Cake PHP Link Doesn't Display

I have string like "Venditoris: Beware of Scams » Blog Archive » Trilegiant Complaints ..." in Database but when I try to display it ,It is not displaying.
So,I used html_entity_decode function but still it is not display.
I am Using cakePHP.below is my code to display that links.
echo $html->link(html_entity_decode(
$listing_end_arr[$i]['Listing']['listing_title'],ENT_QUOTES),
$listing_end_arr[$i]['Listing']['listing_url'],
array('target'=>'_blank', 'style'=>'color:'
. $colorArr[$listing_end_arr[$i]['Listing']['listing_sentiment']])) ;
Please Help me.
Check the CakePHP manual if you are using $html->link correctly. If so, var_dump the return value instead of echoing it. If it is empty, do
var_dump( $listing_end_arr[$i]['Listing'] );
to see what the Listing key contains. If the desired content is not in the dump, you know the error is elsewhere; probably in fetching the string from where it is stored.
Also, instead of using array[n][foo][bar][baz], consider assigning the subarray to a variable while looping over the array, e.g. $listing = array[n][foo][bar], so you can just do $listing[baz]. This will dramatically increase readability of your code.
inspect generated html first.. your code should echo a link, maybe it's just not visible (styling, color..).

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