passing an ampersand

[bigbird3156]

Hi... if I am passing a string variable from one page to another that contains an ampersand I get all sorts of problems...

I know there are special characters like & and & but if these values are saved in an SQL file then it still passes the ambersand and not the special charcter...

does anyone know if there is any way around this...

for example I have a designer who's name is 'Melly & Me' in my database, I want to pass this value to a page where I get to see the designers profile (and no I can't use the associated record number) ... the designer is insistant on having the ambersand in her name... is there any way around this??

The Bird from Down Under- Bigbird 3156

 

[mwpclark]

This url is generated by a cgi script that prints

print "Location: [URL unfurl="true"]http://www.castleyellow.com/byname/$catid/$s_name/$startswith/$n1-$c1/0\n\n";[/URL]

But it doesn't matter, the url is formed correctly, just the php is not grabbing the ampersand.

 

[mwpclark]

http://www.webmasterworld.com/apache/3551631.htm

This states that

According to the HTTP specification, ampersands are not allowed in the url-part, only in the appended query string.

Maybe that's the issue I'm running into...

 

[feherke]

Hi

That is correct.

Put that CGI script to URL-encode those variable's values. Or just replace the ampersands ( & ) with %26 .

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[mwpclark]

I have done both of the above but the index.php script still will not grab the ampersand character.

 

[mwpclark]

I found a workaround, it's ugly but it passes the value:

byname.cgi

$n1 =~ s/&/[AND]/g;

produces the url:

[URL unfurl="true"]http://www.castleyellow.com/byname/commercial-property-management//1/j%20%5BAND%5D%20j-/0[/URL]

which is interpreted by index.php

$n1 = str_replace("[AND]", "&", $n1);