So, I have this HTML form:
<form id="search_form" class="form_wrapp"
accept-charset="utf-8" method="get" action="http://testing.com/results">
<input class="inputbox" type="text" name="search_query">
<input class="ic_search" type="submit" value="">
<input type="checkbox" value="checkbox1" name="search_filter[]">
<label for="Checkbox1">Checkbox1</label>
<input type="checkbox" value="checkbox2" name="search_filter[]">
<label for="Checkbox2">Checkbox2</label>
</form>
and it redirects to this URL upon submit with the 2 checkboxes checked
results?search_query=dreams&search_filter[]=checkbox1&search_filter[]=checkbox2
It works like this (inside codeigniter I get the data with $this->input->get('search_filter')), but my question is: I am doing something wrong inside the form, or this is how it's supposed to work?
And I mean about: &search_filter[]=checkbox1&search_filter[]=checkbox2. Shouldn't it be something like: &search_filter[]=checkbox1,checkbox2 ? And if not, how can I make it work like that?
If you want it in the comma format you can do the following:
$filters = (array) $this->input->get('search_filter');
$filters = implode(',',$filters);
If you want to alter the format in which the form is submitted, assuming jquery for js:
$('#search_form').submit(function() {
var $hidden = $('<input type="hidden" name="search_filter" />').appendTo($(this)),
$filters = $('input[name^=search_filter]'),
value = '';
//loop through the filters check if there checked and add them to the value
$hidden.val(value);
$filters.remove();
});
Of course if the user doesn't have js enabled it will submit natively
Am I doing something wrong inside the form, or this is how it's supposed to work?
That's how it's supposed to work. At least if you need to read query string with PHP, those brackets need to be there to read the whole query string without each search_filter value being overwritten by the next one.
And if not, how can I make it work like that?
If you have to, you can use a POST request instead, process the submission, and redirect to the URL of your choice with whatever query string you want.
From your comment:
I wanted to make the url like this &search_filter[]=checkbox1,checkbox2 just to make it a bit more "beautiful"
Don't worry about that, seriously. The only time this matters is when you're doing extreme SEO and you don't want two URLs that point to the same place. It's common practice in those cases to remove all unused keys and alphabetize them so that all URLs with query strings are consistent, but mangling them into something custom still isn't a part of that.
Besides that, don't fight against the behavior - work with it - it's not "broken" and making it "beautiful" won't matter to anyone, plus you'll have to guess/remember which pages process query strings the correct way, and which ones use your "custom" method.
I am doing something wrong inside the form, or this is how it's supposed to work?
That is how it is supposed to work
Shouldn't it be something like: &search_filter[]=checkbox1,checkbox2 ?
Then you couldn't tell the difference between two items and one item that had a comma in it.
And if not, how can I make it work like that?
Obtrusive JavaScript. Don't do that. Forms work well the way they work.
That's perfectly normal. form data is always sent in key=value pairs, with one single value. Submitting key=value,value is not part of the HTTP spec, and would have the values treated as a single monolithic string, not two separate comma-separated values.
You can certainly use some JS to rebuild your form on the fly to use the value,value format, but then you'll have to mod your server-side scripts to accept that new format as well. PHP won't auto-split the values before you, because it's not a standard representation.
&search_filter[]=checkbox1,checkbox2
Why you need this?
Use this like:
<?php
$searchFilter = $this->input->get('search_filter');
foreach($searchFilter as $filter)
// some actions with filters.
You search_filter[] is simple array with values from checkbox inputs.
Related
for explanation i need this information for a project to handle Datamatrixcode - till this moment just everytime a number.
Okay i have a table with some numbers (unique_codes) and i take this numbers via SELECT these from a table (MySQL) and put them to an array ($row).
Scenario: the worker scans a number (and this numbers MUST BE a number from this $row list - then i $_POST this $row to other site to take it for the next step) otherwise i want a Error Exception.
My idea goes to us pattern like:
<form action="next site.php" method="post">
<input pattern="<?php $row['unique_code']; ?>"/>
<button class="btn btn-success">Send</button>
</form>
But this doesn´t work.
How can i solve this? Try and catch as an alternativ ?
EDIT - with a solution:
I let the input field to that what a input form does: receive input.
So i $_POST a number to the second page and proof this to my values.
I think you should either put print or echo in front of $row['unique_code'] or replace <?php with <?=, but then you have to enable short_open_tag in php.ini
I have input in html like this.
<input name="hoteltaxi" type="text" style="text-transform: uppercase;">
These inputs send the information throughout a post method. The PHP file that receive the information, got to save it in a mysql database.
To this point, is ok. Everything is working, but i have a little question about the form style.
If css can transform the value presentation... can also transform the value that i send to php? ¿Or is just presentation? Because, i really need to see this in uppercase, but i need to store with PHP in the original string format (can also be numbers, lowercases, and uppercases, doesn't matter) because from the original string, previously stored, will use it to make a MD5 hash.
The code is my frenemy.
The answer is No
You can see it clearly in this screenshot
If you really want the data to be transformed to uppercase do it on server side like this
$hoteltaxi = strtoupper($_POST['hoteltaxi']);
more about strtoupper
Or if you want it to be done on client-side a little bit of javascript can help you
$('input[name="hoteltaxi"]').change(function(){
var self = $(this);
self.val(self.val().toUpperCase())
})
The page I'm currently working on has an "add another" option, which inserts a fieldset containing a title and a list of 3 input boxes. Each of these input boxes, for form submission sake, needs to be given a name with an incremented value. ("field1_1", "field1_2" etc)
I know that I could add the fields by dynamically creating elements with $('<input/>', {...}); but for more than a few elements this makes for code that's hard to read and difficult to maintain.
I'm currently using jQuery's .load() function to pull in the file but through searching I can't find a way to pass variables to the response, and therefore can only use preset name attribute values.
Is this possible, or is the method above the only way?
Put your template into a dummy script, with unknown type to avoid errors:
<script id="template1" type="text/template">
<h2>{title}</h2>
<input type="text" name="field{id}_1">
<input type="text" name="field{id}_2">
<input type="text" name="field{id}_3">
</script>
Then use replace (with "g" global option as replace usually replaces first only) to insert your values.
var template = $('#template1').html();
template = Template.replace(/\{title\}/g, mytitle);
template = Template.replace(/\{id\}/g, nextId);
$('#somewhere').append(template);
You can of course concatenate the replaces, but going for readable here.
This method allows complex HTML without messing up the code with loads of string manipulation. Your template looks like the final result so no mental translation required. Very low-maintenance technique.
The placeholders can just be simple names (without braces) to avoid regex delimiters, so long as the names will not match anything else in the template. I just use braces so the placeholders stand out in the template (again for maintenance purposes).
When I submit a form with multiple checkboxes that have the same name I get a URL that looks something like this:
www.mysite.com/search.php?myvalue%5B%5D=value1&myvalue%5B%5D=value2
Is there someway that I can remove the %5B%5D to make the URL "pretty", with something like htaccess?
Code:
<form>
<input type="checkbox" name="myvalue[]" value="value1">
<input type="checkbox" name="myvalue[]" value="value2">
</form>
Is there someway that I can remove the %5B%5D to make the URL "pretty", with something like htaccess?
No. The [] are reserved characters in URLs, so they definitely need to be URL-encoded.
If using POST is not an option, which makes sense given that it's a search form, your best bet is to just give them each a different name with a value of 1 or so.
<form>
<input type="checkbox" name="option1" value="1" />
<input type="checkbox" name="option2" value="1" />
</form>
Or, if you really insist in them having the same name, then you should be extracting the query string yourself instead of relying on the PHP specific feature of returning an array when obtaining a parameter with a [] suffix in the name.
$params = explode('&', $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']);
foreach ($params as $param) {
$name_value = explode('=', $param);
$name = $name_value[0];
$value = $name_value[1];
// ... Collect them yourself.
}
This way you can just keep using the braceless name.
<form>
<input type="checkbox" name="option" value="option1" />
<input type="checkbox" name="option" value="option2" />
</form>
[ and ] are reserved characters in a URL, so the browser must encode them in order for the URL to work correctly. You cannot have these characters in a URL. Nor can you have any other reserved characters such as spaces, ampersands, etc. They will all be encoded automatically for you (in many cases, even if you type the URL into the browser manually).
If you need a "pretty URL" you can:
Not use a form at all; provide a link to a known "pretty" URL.
Accept the ugly URL, but redirect it immediately to the pretty URL in point 1 above.
Avoid using angle brackets at all in your field names (but this would mean a lot of changes to your back-end code too)
Use a POST method on the form, so that the field data doesn't show up on the URL at all (but this would mean you don't have a link the user can bookmark).
If you must "prettify" this URL, my suggestion would be option 2 above.
Frankly, though, I wouldn't worry about it. People get waaaay to stressed about "pretty" URLs. I don't really get why.
Very few people I know ever actually type in a URL longer than just a domain name.
If you're worried about SEO for this, don't -- the search engine bots know what ULR encoding is and can look past it.
The only other reason for wanting a "pretty" URL is so that it looks good if users share it via an email link or something. To be honest, if you're worried about URL prettyness for that and it's got form fields in it then it's already too ugly, with just the & and = signs all over the place. The encoded brackets really don't make it any worse.
So my honest answer is: don't sweat it. It's normal; ignore it; get on with more important parts of your web development work.
If that is really a problem for you, how about "merging" everything into a single param using some kind of separator like , (or whatever you want).
So, instead of having a URI like myvalue%5B%5D=value1&myvalue%5B%5D=value2, you would end up with a URI like myvalue=value1,value2.
This is just an idea, don't have the code right now, but you will need to do it with JS, and parse the param value on your backend (in order to have an array).
I am trying to pass a string that already contains quotation marks from one php file to another via a hyperlink and the GET method.
I am retrieving thousands of lines which contain quotation marks in a while loop and saving the output to a variable as follows:
while ($trouble_row = mysql_fetch_array($trouble_result)) {
$ticketid = $trouble_row['ticketid'];
$ticketno = $trouble_row['ticket_no'];
$created = $trouble_row['createdtime'];
$modified = $trouble_row['modifiedtime'];
$title = $trouble_row['title'];
$solution = $trouble_row['solution'];
$hoursattended = $trouble_row['cf_629'];
$hoursbilled = $trouble_row['cf_628'];
$csv .= "$firstname $lastname,$ticketno,$created,$modified,$hoursattended,$hoursbilled,$title,$solution\n";
}
The variable $title sometimes contains an entry that looks like this:
The user "tom" is having problems.
The variable $csv is collecting all the results from each pass and creating a CSV formatted string that I then need to pass to a new php script, which I am trying to do using a hyperlink:
a href="export_csv.php?csv=$csv">Export to CSV</a>
Unfortunately the embedded quotation marks are recognized by the hyperlink and cut off the majority of the output. Any suggestions on how to collect the data differently, store it differently, or pass it differently would be greatly appreciated!
For parameters in links, you need to use urlencode():
echo 'Export to CSV';
note however that GET requests have length limits starting in the 1-2k area (depending on browser and server).
Alternative approaches:
Forms
One method that is immune to length limits is creating a <form> element for each link with method="post" and adding the values in <input type='hidden'> inputs. You would then style the submit button of the form like a link.
<form action="export_csv.php" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="csv" value=".......">
<button type="submit">Click here </button> <!-- Use CSS to style -->
</form>
Sessions
Another very elegant way to pass the data would be
Generating a random key
Saving the CSV data in a $_SESSION variable with the random key
Passing the random (short) key in the URL instead of the full data
You'd just have to take care of deleting unused random keys (and their data) frequently.
These kinds of links couldn't be bookmarked, of course.
Use urlencode() before creating the hyperlink url, and use urldecode() to get the original string.
use urlencode() for embedding into a link, and html_special_chars() for embedding into form fields.
url_encode and url_decode.
Quickest and easiest solution given what you already have is probably to change this:
Export to CSV
To something like this:
Export to CSV