My scripts are not working, why?

urbanTaz · August 17th, 2004, 12:02 AM

I I wanted to learn php programming, so I purchase Beginning PHP 4.
By the way Great book!
But when I began writing out some of the example scripts, and loading them into my web sever. The example scripts did not work.
The examples scripts in the chapter 1 and 2 worked just fine, but the example scripts from chapter 3 and up just does not work.
Here are some of the example script, below:

HTML Script:
<html>
<head></head>
<body>
<form method=post action="radio.php">
What is the state of Portugal?
<br>
<br>
<input name="Question1" type="radio" value="Porto">Porto
<br>
<input name="Question1" type="radio" value="Lisbon">Lisbon
<br>
<input name="Question1" type="radio" value="Madrid">Madrid
<br>
<br>
<input type="Submit">
</form>
</body>
</html>

PHP Script:
<html>
<head></head>
<body>
<?php
echo "You have selected the answer: $Question1";
?>
</body>
</html>

Or see it live: http://www.urbani.ws/php/radio.htm

Please help; I am starting to get discouraged.

qazi_nomi · August 17th, 2004, 12:20 AM

Dear you should use echo like this

echo "You have selected the answer:" $Question1;

Numan
--------------------------------------------------
Love is the most precious thing of this world. So find and grab it!

Daniel Walker · August 17th, 2004, 05:05 AM

No, that makes no difference, at all.

This is register_globals (again). Global variables (the values sent from your form) are no longer available by default within PHP and haven't been for several years. Wiley continue to publish the book in its original edition, despite this fact, and the data within it is therefore out of date. Hey, who am I to say they're wrong? they're making money, and we went bankrupt: so who am I to judge :)?

TO EXPLAIN:
You must now refer to variables sent from a HTML form via their global array values. In your code, above, replave $Question1 with $_POST['Question1'].

Try this:
http://p2p.wrox.com/search.asp?mode=...lobals&x=0&y=0

...and this:
http://p2p.wrox.com/archive/site_sea...gister_globals

snappy316 · August 22nd, 2004, 03:09 PM

so the script should be as follows?:

HTML Script:
<html>
<head></head>
<body>
<form method=post action="radio.php">
What is the state of Portugal?
<br>
<br>
<input name="Question1" type="radio" value="Porto">Porto
<br>
<input name="Question1" type="radio" value="Lisbon">Lisbon
<br>
<input name="Question1" type="radio" value="Madrid">Madrid
<br>
<br>
<input type="Submit">
</form>
</body>
</html>

PHP Script:
<html>
<head></head>
<body>
<?php
echo "You have selected the answer: $_POST['Question1']";
?>
</body>
</html>

I'm learning PHP too, thanks for putting up with us "beginners"!

Daniel Walker · August 23rd, 2004, 04:43 AM

That'll work if you concatentate your reference to the the $_POST variable onto the end of your string - i.e.:

echo 'You have selected the answer: ' . $_POST['Question1'];

This is the most efficient approach, since PHP carrys out less processing when it encounters single-quoted strings, as opposed to double quoted ones.

If you want to make use of PHP's advanced parsing ability WRT how it handles double-quoted strings, you could encapsulate the refereence to the $_POST variable within the string, but you'll have to surround it in {} brackets - i.e.:

echo "You have selected the answer: {$_POST['Question1']}";

...so in actual fact you gain nothing, other than a demonstration of how very clever the PHP team are at building a flexible, fast language processor :).

If you use method="get", instead, for your form, the value will be in the $_GET[] array, of course.

As a added suggestion, I'd advise you to quote all your HTML element attributes (i.e. method="post", in your HTML quoted above), since A) elements that aren't quoted are not strictly correct HTML markup, and B) pages without quoted attributes will not work as expected in old browsers like Netscape 4.x, for precisely that reason.

Admittedly, Netscape 4 has now been replaced by something called 'Internet Explorer' as everyone's favourite Broken Grey rectangle That You Have To Provide Gruesome Hacks For... but still, in this respect Netscape 4 fails because of its adherance to Web standards, and not despite them (which is usually the case).

Take it easy,
Dan

peter_budo · August 26th, 2004, 04:57 AM

I do have similar problem. On beginning I thought it is gone be only global variables, but in my case I think is problem with settings. Do any of you have any suggestions?:(

P.T.