Question

I am reading emails from database. And i want to echo the emails as hyperlink, but its not working.

<?php
$un = $_POST['username'];
$pw = $_POST['password'];

// connect to the db
$user = 'proc';
$pswd = 'passwd';
$db = 'school';
$conn = mysql_connect('localhost', $user, $pswd);
mysql_select_db($db, $conn);

// run the query to search for the username and password the match
$query = "SELECT email AS text FROM contact";
$result = mysql_query($query) or die("Unable to verify user because : " . mysql_error());

// this is where the actual verification happens
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    echo ("\n".$row['text']);
    echo "<a href=.$row['text']>some text</a>";
}
?>

Any idea what is wrong in my code?

Answer 1

You cannot embed variables in doubly-quoted strings like that in all cases. Here’s what you can do:

echo "<a href={$row['text']}>some text</a>";

or

echo "<a href=".$row['text'].">some text</a>";

Personally I prefer the second form because it has historically been easier to see at a glance that a variable is being embedded through your editor’s syntax highlighting (although today editors might also highlight the first form).

Be aware that your current code has other problems: no quotes around HTML attribute values, and not properly escaping values that get embedded in HTML. Fix that as well with something like

echo '<a href="'.htmlspecialchars($row['text']).'">some text</a>";

The exact correct form depends on the encoding of your data as well; see htmlspecialchars for the details.