Beginner question on PHP (redhat 9) and variables

[Brian]

I am trying to work through a PHP book that I bought a year or so ago,
"Essential PHP" by Christopher Cosentino. In the beginning of the
book, after the Hello, World .php file, you get to a two-parter : a
form that sends it's results to another .php file, that then displays
those results.

Nothing I have been able to do has gotten this type of passing to
work. Checking the URL string for the second page, it properly shows
the values :

http://localhost/PHP/form_results.ph...t=Submit+Query

However, when I refer to $first_name or $address from the second .php
file, they always render as empty (NULL). I cannot figure out why
this relatively simple case is not working; I can define local
variables and output them, however, I cannot pull the variables from
the URL string, so I can't work with forms.

I'm using a default Redhat 9 install, that came with Apache and PHP
preconfigured. I have made a few unrelated changes to Apache (setting
up SSL, etc) - is there something that needs to be done to get PHP to
work with variables?

Any ideas? I'm at my wit's end...

Thanks a lot!

-- Brian

[Eric Bohlman]

br************@ hotmail.com (Brian) wrote in
news:a0******** *************** **@posting.goog le.com:

I am trying to work through a PHP book that I bought a year or so ago,
"Essential PHP" by Christopher Cosentino. In the beginning of the
book, after the Hello, World .php file, you get to a two-parter : a
form that sends it's results to another .php file, that then displays
those results.

Nothing I have been able to do has gotten this type of passing to
work. Checking the URL string for the second page, it properly shows
the values :

http://localhost/PHP/form_results.ph...st_name=Bibeau
lt&address=My+A ddress&home_pho ne=NA&submit=Su bmit+Query

However, when I refer to $first_name or $address from the second .php
file, they always render as empty (NULL). I cannot figure out why
this relatively simple case is not working; I can define local
variables and output them, however, I cannot pull the variables from
the URL string, so I can't work with forms.

That book probably presupposes that PHP's register_global s option is turned
on, which it was by default in earlier versions of PHP but hasn't been for
the last several releases. And it's generally not a good idea to turn it
on unless you really know what you're doing. The preferred way to access
form parameters is to use the $_GET and $_POST arrays; since in your case
you're using the GET method (parameters passed as part of the URL), you'd
want $_GET. Try looking at $_GET['first_name'] or $_GET['address'] and I
think you'll find what you're looking for.

[Brian Bibeault]

Eric Bohlman <eb******@earth link.net> wrote in message news:<Xn******* *************** *********@130.1 33.1.4>...

br************@ hotmail.com (Brian) wrote in
news:a0******** *************** **@posting.goog le.com:

I am trying to work through a PHP book that I bought a year or so ago,
"Essential PHP" by Christopher Cosentino. In the beginning of the
book, after the Hello, World .php file, you get to a two-parter : a
form that sends it's results to another .php file, that then displays
those results.

Nothing I have been able to do has gotten this type of passing to
work. Checking the URL string for the second page, it properly shows
the values :

http://localhost/PHP/form_results.ph...st_name=Bibeau
lt&address=My+A ddress&home_pho ne=NA&submit=Su bmit+Query

However, when I refer to $first_name or $address from the second .php
file, they always render as empty (NULL). I cannot figure out why
this relatively simple case is not working; I can define local
variables and output them, however, I cannot pull the variables from
the URL string, so I can't work with forms.

That book probably presupposes that PHP's register_global s option is turned
on, which it was by default in earlier versions of PHP but hasn't been for
the last several releases. And it's generally not a good idea to turn it
on unless you really know what you're doing. The preferred way to access
form parameters is to use the $_GET and $_POST arrays; since in your case
you're using the GET method (parameters passed as part of the URL), you'd
want $_GET. Try looking at $_GET['first_name'] or $_GET['address'] and I
think you'll find what you're looking for.

Thanks a lot, Eric, that was it, exactly. Too bad I didn't hear about
this before I reinstalled Apache and PHP (but the newer version have
other security fixes, so it wasn't wasted time).

-- Brian