$_POST case sensitivity

[Bill H]

I wouldn't consider myself a newbie to PHP since I have never written
one line of code in it (am a perl guy myself), but part of a team I am
working with is writing some php interfaces into a database and I
noticed that they are relaying on HTML form value names to always be
lowercase in their code (ie $_POST['save'] (fyi that may be typed
wrong)) and from my experience it is always better, when reading in
the post information to convert the the form value name to uppercase
on the off chance that one web page may have NAME="save" and another
may have NAME="Save", this way you can will always get the value.

In perl this is easy cause you are pulling in the name / value pairs
straight from the ENV value. But since, from what I see and they say,
PHP does this for you and puts it into $_POST, is there a way to tell
PHP to always convert the name of the value to uppercase?

Bill H

[Paul Lautman]

Bill H wrote:

>I wouldn't consider myself a newbie to PHP since I have never written
one line of code in it (am a perl guy myself), but part of a team I am
working with is writing some php interfaces into a database and I
noticed that they are relaying on HTML form value names to always be
lowercase in their code (ie $_POST['save'] (fyi that may be typed
wrong)) and from my experience it is always better, when reading in
the post information to convert the the form value name to uppercase
on the off chance that one web page may have NAME="save" and another
may have NAME="Save", this way you can will always get the value.

In my experience php scripts are written to interact with specific web
pages. You code the web page to match the script that will process its
input.

[macca]

$_POST is just another array

foreach ($_POST as $key=>$value){

strtoupper($key );

}

[Tim Roberts]

Bill H <bi**@ts1000.us wrote:

>
...
I noticed that they are relaying on HTML form value names to always be
lowercase in their code (ie $_POST['save'] (fyi that may be typed
wrong))

Nope, that's correct.

>...and from my experience it is always better, when reading in
the post information to convert the the form value name to uppercase
on the off chance that one web page may have NAME="save" and another
may have NAME="Save", this way you can will always get the value.

I find this philosophy interesting. Because these names ARE
case-sensitive, I would consider it a programming error to use different
spellings in different web pages. It seems to me that this kind of
mangling is just hiding errors and inconsistancies . I mean, if the company
standard is that "<inputfiel d names should always be in lower case", then
by golly they should always be in lower case, and a programmer who writes
NAME="Save" has committed an error.
--
Tim Roberts, ti**@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Tim Roberts wrote:

Bill H <bi**@ts1000.us wrote:

>...
I noticed that they are relaying on HTML form value names to always be
lowercase in their code (ie $_POST['save'] (fyi that may be typed
wrong))

Nope, that's correct.

>...and from my experience it is always better, when reading in
the post information to convert the the form value name to uppercase
on the off chance that one web page may have NAME="save" and another
may have NAME="Save", this way you can will always get the value.

I find this philosophy interesting. Because these names ARE
case-sensitive, I would consider it a programming error to use different
spellings in different web pages. It seems to me that this kind of
mangling is just hiding errors and inconsistancies . I mean, if the company
standard is that "<inputfiel d names should always be in lower case", then
by golly they should always be in lower case, and a programmer who writes
NAME="Save" has committed an error.

And you end up with the sort of mess this computer is in.
I decided to include case sensitivity in the OS-X re-format. Now I cant
install Adobe CS3.

Adobe being Mac people have always relied on the fact that case didn't
matter.

And can't cope with life when it does.

Its a pain when I have a pair of directories on a samba mount called
images and Images, and he computer wrecks the whole file system trying
to work out which is which.

[Geoff Berrow]

Message-ID: <po************ *************** *****@4ax.comfr om Tim
Roberts contained the following:

>I find this philosophy interesting. Because these names ARE
case-sensitive, I would consider it a programming error to use different
spellings in different web pages.

Agreed but it may be sensible to allow for the possibility of the use of
incorrect case if the people preparing the html are not programmers.
Thanks to Bill Gates there are a lot of people who do not recognise that
case sensitivity exists.
--
Geoff Berrow 011000100110110 0010000000110
001101101011011 001000110111101 100111001011
100110001101101 111001011100111 010101101011

[Jeff]

Bill H wrote:

I wouldn't consider myself a newbie to PHP since I have never written
one line of code in it (am a perl guy myself), but part of a team I am
working with is writing some php interfaces into a database and I
noticed that they are relaying on HTML form value names to always be
lowercase in their code (ie $_POST['save'] (fyi that may be typed
wrong)) and from my experience it is always better, when reading in
the post information to convert the the form value name to uppercase
on the off chance that one web page may have NAME="save" and another
may have NAME="Save", this way you can will always get the value.

In perl this is easy cause you are pulling in the name / value pairs
straight from the ENV value. But since, from what I see and they say,
PHP does this for you and puts it into $_POST, is there a way to tell
PHP to always convert the name of the value to uppercase?

Not tested. My PHP is not great, but why not:

foreach($_POST as $key){
$_POST[strtoupper($key )]=$_POST[$key];
}

Jeff

>
Bill H

[larry]

On Jul 6, 10:37 am, Jeff <jeff@spam_me_n ot.comwrote:

Not tested. My PHP is not great, but why not:

foreach($_POST as $key){
$_POST[strtoupper($key )]=$_POST[$key];

}

It would be more like:

$strtoupper($_P OST[$key]) = $_POST[$key];

If that doesn't work this will:

$var = strtoupper($_PO ST[$key]);
$$var = $_POST[$key];

note: Always make sure you validate/filter any POST data that could
lead to vulnerabilities .

[Jerry Stuckle]

Geoff Berrow wrote:

Message-ID: <po************ *************** *****@4ax.comfr om Tim
Roberts contained the following:

>I find this philosophy interesting. Because these names ARE
case-sensitive, I would consider it a programming error to use different
spellings in different web pages.

Agreed but it may be sensible to allow for the possibility of the use of
incorrect case if the people preparing the html are not programmers.
Thanks to Bill Gates there are a lot of people who do not recognise that
case sensitivity exists.

Nope, just teach them the correct way to do it. It's never a good idea
to hide programming problems. They always come back to haunt you in the
end. And by that time they are much more expensive to fix than they
would have been if the job had been done right in the first place.

--
=============== ===
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
js*******@attgl obal.net
=============== ===

[Bill H]

On Jul 6, 3:12*pm, Jerry Stuckle <jstuck...@attg lobal.netwrote:

Geoff Berrow wrote:

Message-ID: <poj074df5uogtc h41qe5ujc2ells5 [e-mail] om Tim
Roberts contained the following:

I find this philosophy interesting. *Because these names ARE
case-sensitive, I would consider it a programming error to use different
spellings in different web pages. *

Agreed but it may be sensible to allow for the possibility of the use of
incorrect case if the people preparing the html are not programmers.
Thanks to Bill Gates there are a lot of people who do not recognise that
case sensitivity exists.

Nope, just teach them the correct way to do it. *It's never a good idea
to hide programming problems. *They always come back to haunt you in the
end. *And by that time they are much more expensive to fix than they
would have been if the job had been done right in the first place.

--
=============== ===
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstuck...@attgl obal.net
=============== ===

Agreed they should always follow a set way, all form value names
uppercase (or lowercase), but you never know what someone may do
without thinking in the future. On the perl side, I try to always make
my form value names uppercase so they will always work with a cgi I
may have written awhile back, but by having this catch in there
(converting the key to uppercase) I never have to wonder if the form
valeu name is the reason why it somethign didn't work the way I
expected.

All the examples I have seen here (and thanks for them) all seem to be
making a 2nd entry in the $_POST array with the key value corrected to
uppercase. So am I correct in assuming you can't just tell PHP to do
it?

Bill H