Problem getting text field as string from MySQL with PHP - php

I'm having this problem that's driving me nuts.
I've got a MySQL database in which there is a table that contains a text field. I am querying the table in PHP and trying to put the content of the text field for each row into a var.
I am doing something like this:
for ($i=0;$i<$nbrows;$i++){
$id = $data[$i]['ID'];
$description = $data[$i]['DESCRIPTION'];
$mystring .= '<div>'.$id.': '.$description.'</div>';
}
DESCRIPTION is my text field.
I'll pass on the details. The $data array is built from mysql_fetch_array($result). I also tried using objects instead, as I use mysql_fetch_object for all my other routines, but there is no change.
Anyway, the problem is this: if I do "echo $description;" then it works. I am getting my text field data as expected. The problem is that I don't want to output it directly, but add it to a concatenated string, and that is not working. What happens in that case is it seems to be taking $description for some kind of array or object. To make the above example work, I have the replace the string with:
$mystring .= '<div>'.$id.': '.$description[0].'</div>';
So in the concatenated string code, if I treat $description as an array, it works, but obviously I am getting only one letter. (it doesn't actually seem to be an array because I can't implode it).
I tried a million things but I just can't make this work unless I use echo, but that is not what I am trying to do.
There is no issue with fields that aren't text.
Thanks for any ideas!

There is nothing visually wrong with the code you pasted, maybe if you could also add the fetching function as well, we might be able to help you further.
Maybe you could post a var_dump of your $data array?

Have you tried $mystring .= "<div> $id : $description </div>";

Ack, well, you know, hours spent on this and then it becomes obvious after I decide to post for help. This is just because of text encoding/escaping and nothing else. I just didn't see well enough where the problem was actually happening.
Thanks for taking the time to read and respond!

Related

PHP Array in Google Maps

I'm pulling google map data into a php array from MySQL. I have used this code as a base:
https://github.com/rajkavinchetty/Google-Maps-API-with-PHP-MySQL/blob/master/index.php
It almost works perfectly. The lat/long data is pulled from the array and sets-up the markers.
...
$locations[]=array( 'name'=>$name, 'lat'=>$latitude, 'lng'=>$longitude, 'lnk'=>$link );
...
But I'm having problem with the Title/Content of the infowindow.
With the base example I'm using, the content is formatted as a link:
var locations = [
<?php for($i=0;$i<sizeof($locations);$i++){ $j=$i+1;?>
[
'AMC Service',
'<p><?php echo $locations[0]['name'];?></p>',
<?php echo $locations[$i]['lat'];?>,
<?php echo $locations[$i]['lng'];?>,
0
]<?php if($j!=sizeof($locations))echo ","; }?>
];
but the variable pulls only the first link and name from the array, it does not go through the loop. I have tried many different variables, such as
<?php echo $locations[$i]['name'];?>
but this gives an error.
I'm not an expert in either php arrays or loop or java, so I'm fumbling around for clues. I've looked through all of the related questions here for help, and also consulted the Google stack as well.
Any help would be appreciated.
UPDATE:
The first three replies were useful, thank you, but no there yet.
After the comment from Andy, and encouragement from Divyamohan that the original solution should have worked, I realised that there must be some json formatting problem, so I tried:
<?php echo json_encode($locations[$i]['name']);?>
This worked and now I'm able to have these loop through.
But still trying to get this to work as an href link. I tried to solve with backslashes as Hardik and David observed, but still this does not work. Half way there.
'<p><?=$locations[$i]["name"]?></p>'
Just Replace this in your code and it should work.
You need to change this line
'<p><?php echo $locations[0]['name'];?></p>'
to
'<p><?php echo $locations[0][\'name\'];?></p>'
You need to add backslash ( \ ) character to escape quote from string literals.
So finally I found the solution to the problem. Thanks to the comments from everyone that helped me to look at it another way.
In the end, the problem was not with the code. The problem was the data. This should have been obvious. In the links column I had URLs with slashes and text in the names column included apostrophes and foreign characters. These combined were throwing off the json errors. I cleaned all the data and the modified code works perfectly.
<p><?=$locations[$i]['name']?></p>
Many thanks again for the comments.

PHP variables look the same but are not equal (I'm confused)

OK, so I shave my head, but if I had hair I wouldn't need a razor because I'd have torn it all out tonight. It's gone 3am and what looked like a simple solution at 00:30 has become far from it.
Please see the code extract below..
$psusername = substr($list[$count],16);
if ($psusername == $psu_value){
$answer = "YES";
}
else {
$answer = "NO";
}
$psusername holds the value "normann" which is taken from a URL in a text based file (url.db)
$psu_value also holds the value "normann" which is retrieved from a cookie set on the user's computer (or a parameter in the browser address bar - URL).
However, and I'm sure you can guess my problem, the variable $answer contains "NO" from the test above.
All the PHP I know I've picked up from Google searches and you guys here, so I'm no expert, which is perhaps evident.
Maybe this is a schoolboy error, but I cannot figure out what I'm doing wrong. My assumption is that the data types differ. Ultimately, I want to compare the two variables and have a TRUE result when they contain the same information (i.e normann = normann).
So if you very clever fellows can point out why two variables echo what appears to be the same information but are in fact different, it'd be a very useful lesson for me and make my users very happy.
Do they echo the same thing when you do:
echo gettype($psusername) . '\n' . gettype($psu_value);
Since i can't see what data is stored in the array $list (and the index $count), I cannot suggest a full solution to yuor problem.
But i can suggest you to insert this code right before the if statement:
var_dump($psusername);
var_dump($psu_value);
and see why the two variables are not identical.
The var_dump function will output the content stored in the variable and the type (string, integer, array ec..), so you will figure out why the if statement is returning false
Since it looks like you have non-printable characters in your string, you can strip them out before the comparison. This will remove whatever is not printable in your character set:
$psusername = preg_replace("/[[:^print:]]/", "", $psusername);
0D 0A is a new line. The first is the carriage return (CR) character and the second is the new line (NL) character. They are also known as \r and \n.
You can just trim it off using trim().
$psusername = trim($psusername);
Or if it only occurs at the end of the string then rtrim() would do the job:
$psusername = rtrim($psusername);
If you are getting the values from the file using file() then you can pass FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES as the second argument, and that will remove the new line:
$contents = file('url.db', FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES);
I just want to thank all who responded. I realised after viewing my logfile the outputs in HEX format that it was the carriage return values causing the variables to mismatch and a I mentioned was able to resolve (trim) with the following code..
$psusername = preg_replace("/[^[:alnum:]]/u", '', $psusername);
I also know that the system within which the profiles and usernames are created allow both upper and lower case values to match, so I took the precaution of building that functionality into my code as an added measure of completeness.
And I'm happy to say, the code functions perfectly now.
Once again, thanks for your responses and suggestions.

json_decode() single quote

I want to use json_decode() to decode a string stored in a database like this:
{"results":[{"r":"1","c":"0"},{"r":"2","c":"0"},{"r":"3","c":"0"}]}
The problem is: the function returns NULL.
But when I try the following code, everything works:
$data ='{"results":[{"r":"1","c":"0"},{"r":"2","c":"0"},{"r":"3","c":"0"}]}';
$JO=json_decode($data);
var_dump($JO);
The value returned from the database is exactly the same as I described above.
For all the people who might get the same problem, my problem was that when I was getting data from database to display it, I was adding html style and table parameters to the data, after removing them everything went back to normal.

SimplePie RSS not accepting variable with comma separated strings

I'm trying to use SimplePies "$feed->set_feed_url (array());" function but I am having major difficulty understanding why it wont accept my values.
When I add the URLS manually (i.e directly below), they work just fine. The feeds go through ok and displays the feeds as needed.
$feed ->set_feed_url (array(
'http://www.theverge.com/tag/rss',
'http://feeds.ign.com/ign/all'
));
I have URLS in a database table that I am pulling out like normal with a while loop. I then append a comma and remove the trailing comma so its nice for the SimplePie array. Like so:
while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($pullAllAccountsDoIt)){
$result4mdb .= $row[0] . ",";
}
$result4mdb = substr($result4mdb, 0, strlen($result4mdb) -1);
echo "the result is: " . $result4mdb;
When I do this, and echo out "$result4mdb", it prints out: the result is: http://www.gamespot.com/feeds/mashup/,http://www.theverge.com/tag/rss
Meaning that the variable is good and printing out what i need. So far so good.
I then go into the simplePie code, put in my varialble like so:
$feed ->set_feed_url (array($result4mdb));
and nothing happens. I don't get any errors or anything, just that the page stays blank and nothing comes up.
For testing, I do a gettype($result4mdb); and it tells me that the variable is a "string" and again, the output of this variable when echoed is the URLS it got from the database so I KNOW that the whole process so far is working.
For further testing, I go to the database and remove one of the URLS so that when queried, that it returns one value, and all of the sudden SimplePie works.
I've been searching for a good day and a half now, trying different things and googling as much as possible but to no avail. I just cant quite get it.
I'm at my wits end. Any assistance as to why this isn't working is GREATLY appreciated.
Thank you in advance everyone
You're just producing a string containing comma seperated values. What you need is an array, so just explode() your string:
Change:
$feed ->set_feed_url (array($result4mdb));
to
$feed ->set_feed_url (explode(',', $result4mdb));
More elegant version, change:
while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($pullAllAccountsDoIt)){
$result4mdb .= $row[0] . ",";
}
to
while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($pullAllAccountsDoIt)){
$result4mdb[] = $row[0];
}
This way you're not creating a string that needs to be exploeded, but create an array at first.

Why is constructing a URL with a mysql entry in PHP giving me a different String?

I'm writing some code to look at PTO assignment data, and noticed a strange problem where the URL didn't work when I generated it from my database entry, but did work when I entered the same string manually. When I echo them both strings look the same exactly, but when I equate them they are different. Is there some kind of hidden character or something with the encoding I can't see, and if so how do I fix it? I'm running the code using WAMPSERVER.
$pto = "assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&reel=";
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
$ReelFrame = $row['ReelFrame']; // Should be "007358/0006" and looks to be correct.
$reelframearray = explode("/",$ReelFrame);
$gourla = $pto . $reelframearray[0] . "&frame=". $reelframearray[1];
$gourl = "assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&reel=007358&frame=0006";
echo "$gourla <br>";
echo "$gourl <br>";
if ($gourl === $gourla){
echo "same string";
} else {
echo "different";
}
This is what the results look like:
assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&reel=007358&frame=0006
assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&reel=007358&frame=0006
different
I've narrowed it down to the mysql entry since replacing that with this:
$ReelFrame = "007358/0006";
Makes the strings the same.
Thanks for any help. The column for ReelFrame is a VARCHAR if that makes any difference.
please try to var_dump() your both variables instead of echoing them - maybe there are some leading/trailing whitespaces, linebreaks or something like that.
EDIT: just as a note: you realy shouldn't save multiple values in one database-coumn. if ReelFrame consits of two values, make two colums out of it: Reel and Frame - and don't use charchar for this, it looks like they should be ints (and that will avoid you from saving whitespaces linebreaks or something like that accidentally)
The first thought that comes to my mind is \n character.
Try this:
$ReelFrame = trim($row['ReelFrame']);
I tried the trim() suggestion, but it doesn't seem to work. I'm not sure what kind of character it is inserting, but I guess trim isn't removing it.
I just tried the var_dump, and it does show the strings are different lengths though nothing else looks different.
vardump of a ReelFrame entity compared with manual string:
string(20) "007358/0006"
string(11) "007358/0006"
likewise for the final string:
string(81) "assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&reel=007358&frame=0006"
string(72) "assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&reel=007358&frame=0006"
trim() doesn't seem to make any difference on the entity so it's still showing 20.
Are there any other invisible characters that trim might miss?

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