Table updating works only occasionally.

[sunday]

When trying to update a table, the following works only occasionally;
it doesn't work reliably. Can anyone show me where I'm going wrong,
please?

// $commenrts_new is the data from the form ;

$Query="SELECT comments FROM clients WHERE id='$cli_update_id' ";
$Result=mysql_db_query ($DBName, $Query, $Link);
while ($Row=mysql_fetch_array ($Result))
{
$comments_old=$Row[comments];
}
$comments=$comments_old." <br>".$comments_new;
$Query="UPDATE clients SET comments='$comments' WHERE
id='$cli_update_id' ";
$Result=mysql_db_query ($DBName, $Query, $Link);

TIA.

[Rik Wasmus]

On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 08:47:10 +0100, <su****@hotmail.comwrote:

When trying to update a table, the following works only occasionally;
it doesn't work reliably. Can anyone show me where I'm going wrong,
please?

// $commenrts_new is the data from the form ;

$Query="SELECT comments FROM clients WHERE id='$cli_update_id' ";

Where does $cli_update_id come from, and is it sanatised?

$Result=mysql_db_query ($DBName, $Query, $Link);

if(!$Result) echo mysql_error();//or log mysql_error() to a file in case
of a live website

while ($Row=mysql_fetch_array ($Result))
{
$comments_old=$Row[comments];
}
$comments=$comments_old." <br>".$comments_new;

$comments = mysql_real_escape_string($comments);

$Query="UPDATE clients SET comments='$comments' WHERE
id='$cli_update_id' ";
$Result=mysql_db_query ($DBName, $Query, $Link);

Again:
if(!$Result) echo mysql_error();//or log mysql_error() to a file in case
of a live website

I'd say the most likely scenario for failure is a ' in either
$comments_old or $comments_new.

Also: why not do this:

$cli_update_id = mysql_real_escape_string($cli_update_id);
$comments_new = mysql_real_escape_string($comments_new);
mysql_query("UPDATE clients SET comments =
CONCAT(comments,'<br>','$comments_new' WHERE id = '$cli_update_id'");
--
Rik Wasmus

[sunday]

Thank you. I put in some of your code (particularly the escape_string
and the CONCAT bits) and it seems to do the business on all the trials
I've made of it. I'll keep an eagle eye on it throughout the next few
days.

Thanks again.