[Wylug-help] LAMP: form vars not passed to php script

[James Holden]

mikeb@gbdirect.co.uk wrote:

>On Wed, Jan 08, 2003 at 01:03:35PM +0000, Andy Macdonald wrote:
>
>
>>Thanks to Mike, Gavin & Jason for their comments.
>>
>>I've now glanced at (is this my problem? I don't really want to learn a
>>programming language, I just want to get the computer to do stuff) php.org and
>>phpfreaks.com. I have quickly rewritten login.php - but I have still evidently
>>missed something somewhere ...
>>I gathered that, instead of $foo, I now have to use $_POST('foo'] or
>>$_REQUEST['foo'], so I rewrote:
>>
>>$query = "SELECT userId, userName, userPass from users WHERE userName =
>>$_REQUEST['frmuser'] AND userPass = MD5($_REQUEST['frmpass'])";
>>
>>But still no values come thru, or with $_POST ...
>>
>>
>
>Welcome to the bag of contradictions and ill-thought through features that
>PHP proves to be. Sadly, you can't interpolate arrays in strings like that.
>
>You would have to use:
>$query = "SELECT userId, userName, userPass from users WHERE
>userName =" . $_REQUEST['frmuser'] .
>" AND userPass = MD5(" . $_REQUEST['frmpass']. ")"
>
>I.e. doing your own interpolation by string-pasting instead,
>at least that's what I believe without actually trying it in
>practice.
>
>And have you looked into whether or not magic_quotes is set?
>That will affect the values of the variables coming in from the
>form - the best tactic there is to enter form data containing
>a single or double quote or a backslash and see what values
>you get in your PHP - if the data sprouts extra backslashes
>then you do indeed have magic_quotes turned on.
>
Sadly, there are a lot of things about PHP which can nobble you when you
try and move a working app from one system to another. I found this out
when learning PHP. Debugged locally, then uploaded it to my hosting
service and found it didn't work.

You can find out a bit about the configuration of the host with the
following one-liner:

<? phpinfo() ?>

Just stick it in a file and it'll spout out all the environment settings
etc...

James