PHP

mindsport · 12-29-2010, 04:06 PM

The following script keeps telling me: Notice: Undefined index: name in /usr/files/www/rage.php on line 6 Name:

any ideas?

PHP Code:



<html> 
    <?php 
        error_reporting(E_ALL); 
        ini_set('display_errors',1); 
 
        echo "Name: ".$_POST['name']."<br>\n"; 
    ?> 
 
    <br><br><br> 
    <div align='center'> 
        <form method="post" action="rage.php"> 
            Name:   <input type='text'   name='name'  size=40> 
            URL:    <input type='text'   name='url'   size=60> 
            Genre:  <input type='text'   name='genre' size=40> 
            <br><br><input type='submit' value='Submit'> 
        </form> 
    </div> 
</html>

bathory · 12-29-2010, 04:51 PM

You can turn off notices, by setting display_errors to 0:

PHP Code:



<html> 
    <?php 
        error_reporting(E_ALL); 
        ini_set('display_errors',0); 
 
        echo "Name: ".$_POST['name']."<br>\n"; 
    ?> 
 
    <br><br><br> 
    <div align='center'> 
        <form method="post" action="rage.php"> 
            Name:   <input type='text'   name='name'  size=40> 
            URL:    <input type='text'   name='url'   size=60> 
            Genre:  <input type='text'   name='genre' size=40> 
            <br><br><input type='submit' value='Submit'> 
        </form> 
    </div> 
</html>

Regards

mindsport · 12-29-2010, 04:53 PM

I put the notices on because the script isn't working. When I put information into the form it gives the error because the values aren't being written to the index in the array and I cant figure out why?

michaelk · 12-29-2010, 05:06 PM

Actually it is working. The variable does not exist until you press the form submit button. As stated setting display errors to 0 will not print the error to the screen.

mindsport · 12-29-2010, 05:13 PM

I'm saying I've ran the script with putting information into the fields and pressed submit and its not printing the value for name that I put in there, its giving me the error instead.. Removing this just prints nothing..

Nominal Animal · 12-29-2010, 06:14 PM

Your example produces malformed HTML. Browsers may understand it, or they may not. This works:

Code:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"><?PHP
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8');
$name = @$_POST['name'];
$safename = htmlentities($name, ENT_COMPAT, 'UTF-8');
?><html>
<head>
<title> Test page </title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<p>Name: <?PHP echo $safename; ?></p>
<form method="POST" action="?" accept-charset="UTF-8">
<input type="text" name="name" value="<?PHP echo $safename; ?>">
<input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>
</body>
</html>

Don't trust a browser. Always prefer standards, for example HTML 4.01 and CSS 2. The W3C Markup Validator is your friend.
Browsers like HTML attributes with double quotes. Bugs are known to occur without quotes and with single quotes.
Here, $name is either the "name" variable from POST, or null. @ suppresses the warning if "name" does not exist in $_POST.
Beware of nasty input. $safename is the "name" variable with special characters and double quotes converted to entity references; the result can be used anywhere in HTML.
If you were to save $name to a database or a file, use appropriate escaping functions to $name. When reading from a database or file, first do the converse de-escaping, then derive $safename using htmlentities() or something similar. Use $safename everywhere in HTML output.
You can look up any PHP function using http://www.php.net/function.

Hope this helps,

Nominal Animal

graemef · 12-30-2010, 02:54 AM

You can wrap you diagnostic around an isset() call

PHP Code:



if (isset($_POST['name']))
   echo "Name: ".$_POST['name']."<br>\n";
else
   echo "Form not yet submitted."

mindsport · 01-02-2011, 09:36 PM

I still couldn't get this to work, I was using lighttpd and I'm guessing it was the problem because when I installed apache everything just the way it was before worked this time. Thanks for all the help!