PHP Forum

**scrobins** · 10-11-2008, 02:08 AM

I am having difficulty correctly printing a parameter that is coming from an internal link. The parameter looks like this http://www.example.com/link.php?nme=Happy & Fun&desc=Loads of fun for the kiddies.

I can parse nme and get "Happy" and parse desc and get "Loads of fun for the kiddies." but i can't get the "& Fun" part of the nme parameter.

Currently I am using this code to try and do it;

PHP Code:


			
htmlspecialchars_decode($_GET['nme'],ENT_QUOTES);

but it doesn't seem to want to play the game.

I'm using PHP 5.2.6 which is hosted, if that's of any help.

**chrishirst** · 10-11-2008, 05:56 AM

one reason why URIs should not have spaces in them

and query strings should NEVER EVER have a space in them.

http://uk.php.net/urlencode

( a space is a delimiter in HTTP so to all intents and purposes your URI ended after "Happy"

**scrobins** · 10-11-2008, 09:57 AM

Cheers Chris but it doesn't have a problem with the desc parameter! I'm wondering whether the ampersand itself is halting the parameter as it thinks that another one is to be expected?

Any thoughts?

**scorpioserve** · 10-20-2008, 03:40 PM

I agree with Chrishirst, the spaces would be a problem, however I do see your point about the desc parameter working, I think that if you changed the code from & to a normal "and" then things would work out, alternativly you could also look into escaping the chars that it is looking at as code or encoding your URI, it just seems like an awful amount of work, instead of just taking out the spaces, but not knowing the full extent of the project you are working on, only you can make that determination.

**ElectricSheep** · 10-20-2008, 04:26 PM

Because of the ampersand, the interpreter will see three 'get' pairs in your URL, here they are with their values :

nme : Happy
Fun :
desc : Loads of fun for the kiddies.

As has been stated, don't use raw spaces and ampersands in variable values being passed in URLs as they have special meaning. However, if you have to retain these characters encode them first, and decode after submission :

Code:

$nme_value  = base64_encode('Happy & Fun');
$desc_value = base64_encode('Loads of fun for the kiddies.');

echo <<<HTML
<a href="$_SERVER[PHP_SELF]?nme=$nme_value&amp;desc=$desc_value">click to test</a>
HTML;

echo '<hr />';
echo isset($_GET['nme']) ? base64_decode($_GET['nme']) : '';
echo '<br />';
echo isset($_GET['desc']) ? base64_decode($_GET['desc']) : '';