I have links on a page on my Wordpress website that look something like this:

directory/?category=Audio+%26+Video

I'm using +%26+ because I need the search to look for a ' & ' (i.e. an ampersand with a space on either side of it).

Obviously I can't use '&' or '&' because then the PHP code I'm using will expect a value after it.

But if I click a link such as

directory/?category=Audio+%26+Video

Then no results are displayed, even though there should be! There are many records in my database that have this value.

As a quick test, I performed a search through Wordpress' search box and only entered '&' into the text field.

After clicking search I noticed that it appeared as '%26' in the address bar, so that must be the way to search for an ampersand character... but it just doesn't bring up any results when clicking the hardcoded links!

Does anybody know what the problem might be? I hope the only solution isn't for me to go through countless Wordpress custom fields and replace every '&' symbol for the word 'and'

urlencode

Thanks for the link, but I seem to be having the same problem

I've added this code to produce a link to search for 'Travel & Tourism':

PHP Code:

<?php
                        $foo = 'Travel & Tourism';
                        $query_string = 'category=' . urlencode($foo);
                        echo '<a href="';
                        echo get_bloginfo('url');
                        echo '/directory/?' . htmlentities($query_string) . '">Travel & Tourism</a>';
                    ?>

It appears that the value of $foo is being passed to the URL successfully, as my web page displays:

Travel & Tourism

In the <h1> tag (I've set it to output the search term). I can also see in the address bar that the '&' symbol has been converted to '%26'.

But still no results are showing

I've looked in my database and the record is saved as 'Travel & Tourism'.

Not sure why this wouldn't be brought up in the results??

You reverse the encode with urldecode before performing the search.

Hmmmm I've changed my search query to:

PHP Code:

<?php query_posts('post_type=company&meta_key=Category&meta_value=' . htmlspecialchars(urldecode($_GET['category'])) . '&orderby=title&order=ASC&paged=' . $paged); ?>

But still no luck.

I've even tried:

PHP Code:

<?php echo htmlspecialchars(urldecode($_GET['category'])); ?>

And the result is:

Travel & Tourism

Chances are that your results are failing and Audio & Video produces no results

Originally Posted by pealo86

I've even tried:

PHP Code:

<?php echo htmlspecialchars(urldecode($_GET['category'])); ?>

There is no need to use htmlspecialchars(urldecode(...)). This is going to turn the & right back into &amp; when the urldecode() function is ran. This is probably why you are running into problems. Try using ONLY urlencode() and urldecode().