Pesky Apostrophes in Database results - php

Question

Okay... to make a long story short... here is my code...
<?php
$con = mysql_connect($db_server_name,$db_username,$db_password);
if (!$con)
{
echo "0";
}
mysql_select_db("" . $db_database_name . "", $con);
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM sched_posts
WHERE user_id='$user_id'");
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
$post_id = $row['ID'];
$post_year = $row['post_year'];
$post_month = $row['post_month'];
$post_day = $row['post_day'];
$post_hour = $row['post_hour'];
$post_minute = $row['post_minute'];
$post_privacy = $row['post_privacy'];
$post_message = $row['post_message'];
echo " {";
echo " id: " . $post_id . ",";
echo " title: ' " . $post_message . "',";
echo " start: new Date(" . $post_year . ", " . $post_month . "-1, " . $post_day . ", " . $post_hour . ", " . $post_minute . "),";
echo " allDay: false";
echo " },";
}
?>
When returning results, the post_message sometime's comes back with apostrophes in it. How can I get those results to appear as \' instead of just ' (in other words... with a backslash in front of it)?
PS.. I know some of this code looks unnecessary but please try to ignore that.... this is only setup this way for some testing that i am doing for facebook SDK results (for example, the identifiers inside of the WHILE statement).
The problem is, the returned apostrophes are causing the entire thing to go loopy... you know what i mean.

Answer 1

If you convert all those "date partial" columns into a timestamp, you can simply use json_encode():
$ts = mktime($post_hour, $post_minute, 0, $post_month, $post_day, $post_year);
echo json_encode(array(
'id' => $row['ID'],
'title' => $row['post_message'],
'start' => date('r', $ts), // <-- that's a string now
'allDay' => false,
));
JavaScript has no problems using rfc822 formatted dates.

Answer 2

To add backslashes, the function addslashes() would work for this:
http://php.net/manual/en/function.addslashes.php
To encode JSON 100% reliably (especially for fields like this that you can't predict/expect certain values/input), it would be best to use json_encode():
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
$post_id = $row['ID'];
$post_year = $row['post_year'];
$post_month = $row['post_month'];
$post_day = $row['post_day'];
$post_hour = $row['post_hour'];
$post_minute = $row['post_minute'];
$post_privacy = $row['post_privacy'];
$post_message = $row['post_message'];
$dateString = ''; // computed date string...
echo json_encode(array("id"=>$post_id,"title"=>$post_message,"start"=>
$dateString,"allDay"=>false));
}

Answer 3

The json_encode() function is designed to generate JSON data but, since JSON is a subset of JavaScript, it's the best alternative to generate dynamic strings. Here's a use example:
<?php
$post_id = 314;
$post_message = <<<EOM
Jim "Big Boy" O'brian wrote:
<strong>Hi</strong>
EOM;
$post_year = 2013;
$post_month = 10;
$post_day = 9;
$post_hour = 17;
$post_minute = 4;
echo "{";
echo " id: " . $post_id . ",";
echo " title: " . json_encode($post_message) . ",";
echo " start: new Date(" . $post_year . ", " . $post_month . "-1, " . $post_day . ", " . $post_hour . ", " . $post_minute . "),";
echo " allDay: false";
echo "},";
... that produces:
title: "Jim \"Big Boy\" O'brian wrote:\r\n\r\n<strong>Hi<\/strong>\r\n"
Please note you have to omit the surrounding quotes; the function adds them for you.