Question

I have a little problem… And I have looked up everywhere how to convert an integer to a string. I found several ways of doing it, but with no success. So right now I have no idea of what the problem might be. I thought that I should ask you if also other people have the same problem as I do.

So what doesn’t work:

$inputname = rand(1, 10000);
    $inputname = "$inputname";
    echo '
        <h3>Translate to English</h3>
        <form name="word" method="post" action="">
            <table border="0">
                <tr><td><label>Swedish:</label></td><td width="200"><input type="text" name="swe" maxlength="100" value="'.$swe.'" readonly /></td></tr>
                <tr><td><label>English:</label></td><td width="200"><input type="text" name="'.$inputname.'" maxlength="100" /></td></tr>
                <tr><td></td><td><input type="submit" name="nextword" value="Next Word" /></td></tr>
            </table>
        </form>
    ';

    if (isset($_POST['nextword'])) {
        $eng = $_POST[$inputname];
        $swe = $_POST['swe'];
        $word = $row['id'];
        if($eng == $row['eng']){
            mysql_query("UPDATE `words` SET `right`='yes' WHERE `id`='$word'");
        }
        else{
            mysql_query("UPDATE `words` SET `right`='no' WHERE `id`='$word'");
        }

I don’t get any errors, but when I check my database it says right=no even if I typed in the correct word. If I change $inputname to a string using $inputname = “string”; it works… So why doesn’t the convert work?

I have tried (string)$var, $var = “$var”, mysql_real_escape_string($var) but with no success…

If you have any ideas of how to solve this please respond.

Answer 1

Although I haven’t seen the contents of your variables, you have a logical problem: When you open your page the first time, a form is created with a random name for the English input. Then you submit the form and generate a new random name, so these will probably never ever match.

For example you send in a variable named $_POST['1234'] and then you look for $_POST[$inputname] where $inputname has just been generated randomly.

Giving a random name to your form variable is a bad idea because it is not that straightforward to receive it after the form has been submitted.

Apart from that I don’t think your name attribute can start with a number, but that’s not the cause of the problem.