Simple PHP/MySQL Syntax error, told to "check manual?" - php

Question

You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 's website.
mysql_query("UPDATE Scholarships2 SET Requirements2 = '$requirements2'
WHERE scholarshipID = '$sID'")
or die("Insert Error1: ".mysql_error());
I read other Stackoverflow questions/answers on this subject but cannot find the reserved word I am using.
$sID is just an int while, $requirements2 is
$regex = '/<h4>Requirements<\/h4>([\n\n\n]|.)*?<\/table>/';
preg_match_all($regex,$data,$match);
$requirements2 = $match[0][0];

Answer 1

for the right syntax to use near 's website
This means it's complaining about the bit of your query that is 's website. "Where is that bit in your query?", I hear you ask.
Well, one of those variables in there contains something like Bob's website and the fact that you're blindly injecting that into your query will give you something like:
UPDATE Scholarships2 SET Requirements2 = 'Bob's website' ...
This particular query will not go down well with the SQL parser :-)
Other possibilities that don't immediately choke the parser will also not go down well with your customer base when little Bobby Tables steals or deletes your credit card database.
See this link for a fuller explanation and strategies for avoidance. In your case, that's probably going to involve mysql-real-escape-string.
In other words, you'll need something like:
mysql_query(
"UPDATE Scholarships2 SET Requirements2 = '" .
mysql_real_escape_string($requirements2) .
"' WHERE scholarshipID = '" .
mysql_real_escape_string($sID) .
"'"
) or die("Insert Error1: ".mysql_error());
As an aside, if $sID is just an integer (and not subject to injection attacks), you could probably remove the quotes from around it. I don't think it matters with MySQL (due to its "everything is a string" nature) but your query won't be portable to other DBMS'.

Answer 2

It depends on the values you have in your variables
Depending on the data type here is what you can do
$requirements2 = mysql_real_escape_string($requirements2); // escape string
$sID = (int)$sID; // force integer
the problem is if you have a string in your $requirement and it contains a single quote ' it will break your sql statement.
Here is something i often do to organize my code.
$sql = "UPDATE Scholarships2 SET Requirements2 = '%s'
WHERE scholarshipID =%d";
$sql = sprintf($sql,
mysql_real_escape_string($requirements2),
(int)$sID
);

Answer 3

Are you just taking form fields in from a POST or AJAX query? It sounds like you have a string containing 's website.
Make sure you run your code though mysqli_escape_string.

Answer 4

You need to escape whatever input you are getting in $requirements2
You can do this by
$req2=mysql_real_escape_string($requirements2);
mysql_query("UPDATE Scholarships2 SET Requirements2 = '$req2'
WHERE scholarshipID = '$sID'")
or die("Insert Error1: ".mysql_error());
This will escape any special characters like the apostrophe found in $requirements2

Answer 5

The problem is that your $requirements2 variable contains a single quote (the error message shows it when it says near 's website - presumably you're inserting something like welcome to Sal's website). When MySQL encounters this character, it's interpreting it as the termination of the entire string.
For example, if you substituted the phrase Welcome to Sal's website into your query where $requirements2 currently is, your query would look like this:
UPDATE Scholarships2 SET Requirements2 = 'Welcome to Sal's website'
As you can see, this results in a quoted string Welcome to Sal with the rest of the string hanging off the end not a part of anything. That's the part that the error is complaining about.
You really need to switch to PDO and prepared statements, otherwise you're leaving yourself wide open to these types of errors, including SQL injection which is a Very Bad Thing.
Prepared statements allow you to specify queries with placeholders where dynamic data can be placed. This extra data is then passed to PDO in a separate function where PDO/the database can determine the best way to sanitize it so that it doesn't get misinterpreted as part of the query structure itself.