Bear (pun intened) with me on this one i havn't read the whole thread, so you may get a repeat answer. On Fri, Jan 13, 2006 at 10:55:00AM -0600, Jay Blanchard wrote: > I am having a problem with a an ampersand sign. I have a list of things on a > page, in which one category is 'Oil & Gas'. I store it in the database as > 'Oil & Gas'. When the category is clicked the query string shows just an > ampersand, i.e. The database should really hold text/plain, not text/html. If you take the string 'Oil & Gas' out side of the context of html that & is a rather strange sequence of characters. > "Filter=Process&FilterKey=Oil%20&%20Gas&Order=Application&Direction=ASC&comm > ents=" and therefore just shows as an '&' and the query only sees 'Oil'. You forgot to urlencode() each value that is passed. And say you did urlencode the data you would have: Filter=Process&FilterKey=Oil+%26+Gas Now the $_GET['FilterKey'] is 'Oil & Gas' If you do a search on the db for this value with something like: $cat = mysql_real_escape_string($_GET['FilterKey']); $sql = "select * from table where cat = '$cat'"; You will come back with 0 results since you really have in that cat field 'Oil & Gas'. > > I guess that I am too tired to deal with this or the answer would come to > mind immediately. Can someone drop kick me in the right direction? Thanks! Remember: characters only have meaning in the context they are used If I want to use 'Oil & Gas' in: html: i need to html_entity_docode()/htmlentities() it sql: i need to ensure it is escaped *_escape_string(); url: i need to urlencode() it. plain/text: just an echo/print store on a main frame: ASCII2EBCDIC() it Curt. -- cat .signature: No such file or directory -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
