Question

i have a dropdown list of countries.. the html code is as below:

<select>
<option value=”Singapore“>Singapore</option>
</select>

This html code resides in a php page, which then sends the form and stores the value from the dropdown into mysql db.

Before I send it to db, within php I do a small data sanitization as below:

$post_tag2 = mysqli_real_escape_string($db_conn, $post_tag2);
$post_tag2 = preg_replace('/\s+/', '', $post_tag2);
$post_tag2 = strtolower($post_tag2);

where post_tag2 has the value from the dropdown list. i basically convert it into lowercase and remove all the spaces and then store it into my db.

But the result of all this, when the data gets saved into db is like this:

â€singapore“

And if the dropdown value is burkina faso, then in db it is: â€burkina
(basically the word after the space is gone, and then there is that extra symbol before Burkina)

how do i make sure that these extra symbols â€ do not come? Also, why is it cutting off the word after the space?

thanks!

Answer 1

You are using the wrong type of quotes, ”and “ will be interpreted as content. Consequently a space would indicate the end of the attribute value since there are no proper delimiters.

You’ll have to use either ' or ":

<option value="Singapore">Singapore</option>
<option value='Singapore'>Singapore</option>