Single Quotes Giving Me Grief

[Johnny2]

So, let's say you have to work with a variable that has a single quote in it like:

 

$name = "Johnny's Thing";

 

I figured out how to work with it in mysql by using mysql_real_escape_string(). But how do I work with it in this instance?:

 

$list .= "<a href='editStuff.php?name=$name'>Click Here</a>";

 

The single quote inside the variable is not allowing it to work correctly.

I've tried addslashes(), but that doesn't seem to help.

 

Any suggestions?

Edited March 24, 2013 by Johnny2

[falkencreative]

How are you trying to use it? Are you getting any specific error messages?

 

I don't really get any specific issues with your sample code. For example, this works the way I'd expect:

 

<?php
$name = 'test';
$list = "<a href='editStuff.php?name=$name'>Click Here</a>";
echo $list;

[Johnny2]

How are you trying to use it? Are you getting any specific error messages?

 

I don't really get any specific issues with your sample code. For example, this works the way I'd expect:

 

<?php
$name = 'test';
$list = "<a href='editStuff.php?name=$name'>Click Here</a>";
echo $list;

 

Yes, but the example you have shown assigns the variable $name with 'test'. You need to store a variable that contains an apostrophe to see what I mean. Such as $name = "Johnny's".

[falkencreative]

Sorry, guess I misunderstood.

 

To be honest, the more I think about this, the more I'd suggest avoiding the problem entirely -- why do you need quotes in a URL anyway? I'd really just suggest sticking primarily to alphanumeric characters only in URLs -- standard letters and numbers and dashes. You could use this to strip quotes from a variable:

 

$name = "test'ing";
$name = str_replace(array('"', "'"), '', $name);

 

Alternately, if you really need that apostrophe, you can encode it into the URL using "%27" (http://www.w3schools.com/TAGS/ref_urlencode.asp)

 

$name = "test'ing";
$name = str_replace("'", '%27', $name);