Hmmm, so my entire idea for how to do this appears to have been unsound. Well, better to find that out sooner than later! Thanks to everyone who replied. But I have a few questions: on 5/12/04 7:36 PM, Chris at chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > You could serialize up the data in sessions and then use that data > before adding it to the database. > See http://www.php.net/serialize and http://www.php.net/unserialize and > http://www.php.net/session OK, so if I understand this correctly, the serialize function can take something like a big associative array containing all the data I want to be able to write into the database and condense it into a single object that can be passed via a hidden form field or something to that effect, correct? Or the data can be put into the session array using $_SESSION, and then passed by using a $session_id in the page URL? But according to one of the user comments in the manual I have to use addslashes() and stripslashes() if I want to be able to put the data into the database after unserializing it - is that right? Also, what about character encoding? My database and my web pages are utf-8 because of the presence of special characters in some of the artists and names and image and exhibition titles (it's a Canadian gallery, so there are a lot of French artists). Will serializing the array containing the data affect that in any way? Sorry if I'm being a pest - the whole session thing is new to me and I want to make sure I understand it correctly. Thanks, Lynna -- Resource Centre Database Coordinator Gallery 44 www.gallery44.org
