I am stuck with the do it yourself exercise for Chapter 3... I've checked the answer and everything looks the same, but I keep getting this error message:

'You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '1' at line 4':o

referring to:

'LIMIT $offset,1";'

Any ideas how I make it work?

Can you post back the entire code you've tried to use?

i had the same problem,
the problem is that the $offset variable does not get initialised until you define it in the url (localhost/page.php?offset=n).

When you just go to localhost/page.php
the mysql query will look like this:
"SELECT movie_name, movie_year " .
"FROM movie " .
"ORDER BY movie_name " .
"LIMIT ,1"

whilst mysql expects a "LIMIT n,x"

So you have to set a value for offset ONLY when it has no value yet.
As this is not yet explained at that point, this is the answer:


Instead of
you have to do this

For those not comfortable using this particular syntax (i am not sure if it has limitations compared to the next example) here is another way to do it:

if (!isset($_REQUEST['offset'])
{
$offset=0;
}
else
{
 $offset=$_REQUEST['offset'];
}

echo $offset;