Query PHP output suddenly only shows code, no values? - php

Question

I recently had my eureka moment when I finished my first database connection. After closing my browser and reopening the html form, the output suddenly changed to code instead of the database values?
HTML form:
<form action="formulier3.php" method="post">
Hoogte: <input type="text" name="height"><br>
Breedte: <input type="text" name="width"><br>
<input type="submit">
</form>
PHP Page:
<?PHP
$user_name = "root";
$password = "root";
$database = "addressbook";
$server = "127.0.0.1";
$db_handle = mysql_connect($server, $user_name, $password);
$db_found = mysql_select_db($database, $db_handle);
if ($db_found) {
$SQL = "SELECT * FROM price WHERE height = " . $_POST["height"] . " AND width = " . $_POST["width"] . "";
$result = mysql_query($SQL);
while ( $db_field = mysql_fetch_assoc($result) ) {
print $db_field['ID'] . "<BR>";
print $db_field['value'] . "<BR>";
print $db_field['height'] . "<BR>";
print $db_field['width'] . "<BR>";
}
mysql_close($db_handle);
}
else {
print "Database NOT Found ";
mysql_close($db_handle);
}
?>
This is my output:
"; print $db_field['value'] . "
"; print $db_field['height'] . "
"; print $db_field['width'] . "
"; } mysql_close($db_handle); } else { print "Database NOT Found "; mysql_close($db_handle); } ?>
Does anyone knows what's going on here?
Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

Somehow your server has stopped processing your php pages through the php processor (apache module or fastcgi or whatever).
What you see is the effect of presenting your php code as html. The fact that you don't see all your code but rather a small part of it, it is because the part from the first < (in <?php) until the first > (in print $db_field['ID'] . "<BR>"; is being parsed by the browser as an html tag and so it is not printed. If you look at the page source you'll see the full php code.
So there has been some server-side change that has produced that php files are directly server to the browser instead of parsed by the php engine.
One possible cause, is that you are developing in your local computer and when it worked you typed in your browser something like http://localhost/your_page.php but now you are opening the php file directly from the filesystem, so the browser shows something like file:///xampp/htdocs/your_page.php. You should always open your php pages through the web server (ie. using http://localhost/....) and never by double-clicking on the file in the file explorer.