getting article to update in mysql table by id? - php

Question

I have a reviews system on my site where users can rate other users. When a user logs in they can go to their pending reviews section where they can either approve or delete a review.
I pull through the reviews from the table ptb_reviews and list them on the page reviews.php. Each review then has an approve or delete link which goes to either approve_review.php or delete_review.php and in there is the SQL function to set the relevant column in my table, so approve or delete, from 0 to 1.
So if a user approves a review it updates approve in the table to 1 where that specific review has been chosen to be approved and then its the same for deleted.
I'm having a problem in that when I try to approve or delete a review, I echo out the query to test it to see what's happening and to see if its doing what I'm asking it to do and I get this:
UPDATE ptb_reviews SET approved = 1 WHERE id = '' LIMIT 1
this is implying that it cant find the review id and it wont therefore apply the update to 1 in the table where appropriate for that review.
here's my code for reviews.php where the reviews are pulled through:
<?php
$reviews_set = get_new_reviews();
while ($reviews = mysql_fetch_array($reviews_set)) {
$review_id = (int) $_GET['review_id'];
// Just this, is a great security enhancement. Forces the variable to be int (like all id's are).
// You can also check if its a numeric by doing
if (is_numeric($review_id)){
// continue with the update query
} else {
// something fishy is going on..
}
?>
<div class="prof-content-pend-reviews" id="reviews">
<div class="pend-review-content">
<?php echo "{$reviews['content']}"; ?>
</div>
<div class="message_pic">
<?php echo "<img width=\"50px\" height=\"50px\" src=\"data/photos/{$reviews['from_user_id']}/_default.jpg\" />";?>
</div>
<div class="forum-text">
<?php echo "Posted by {$reviews['display_name']}"; ?> <?php echo "".$age." days ago"; ?>
</div>
<div class="approve"></div>
<div class="delete"></div>
</div>
<? } ?>
And next is my code that carry's out the SQL function for approve_review.php:
<?php
require_once("session.php");
require_once("functions.php");
require('_config/connection.php');
$query = "UPDATE ptb_reviews SET approved = 1 WHERE id = '$review_id' LIMIT 1";
mysql_query($query, $connection);
echo $query;
die();
// See what is really sent to MySQL
if (!mysql_query($query, $connection)){
die(mysql_error());
}
?>
I'm basically asking is the reason nothing updates because it can not find the id for the review which is being either approved or deleted and what can I do to get it to update and so that it knows which review I'm asking it to approve or delete?
I'm still learning PHP and MySQL so if someone could show me or explain what to do that'd be great.

Answer 1

You are getting the query variable like this:
$review_id = (int) $_GET['review_id'];
But in your link you use:
<a href="includes/approve_review.php?review=<?php echo $reviews['review_id']; ?>">
^^^^^^
So your review ID is stored in $_GET['review'] and not $_GET['review_id'].
To start you should change that line to (or the other way around...):
$review_id = (int) $_GET['review'];