Question

I have this line of code below:

     foreach ($searchResults as $key=>$question) {

 echo '<tr class="questiontd"><td>'.htmlspecialchars($question).'</td>';
 echo '<td class="optiontypetd">'.htmlspecialchars($searchOption[$key]).'</td>';
 echo '<td class="noofanswerstd">'.htmlspecialchars($searchNoofAnswers[$key]).'</td>';
 echo '<td class="answertd">'.htmlspecialchars($searchAnswer[$key]).'</td>';
 echo '<td class="noofrepliestd">'.htmlspecialchars($searchReply[$key]).'</td>';
 echo '<td class="noofmarkstd">'.htmlspecialchars($searchMarks[$key]).'</td>';
 echo "<td class='addtd'><button type='button' class='add' onclick=\"parent.addwindow('$question','$searchMarks[$key]','$searchNoofAnswers[$key]','$searchOption[$key]','$searchReply[$key]','$searchAnswer[$key]');\">Add</button></td></tr>";
}

Now I wanted to use str_repace to replace some string characters but when I do this I get this error in the line above:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING in
…text.php on line 154

How can I remove this error?

UPDATE:

OK I remove the single quote as mentioned but problem is that it messes my add button up. I am now getting this error when I click on the “Add” button:

syntaxError: unterminated string literal error:

parent.addwindow(‘!

The line of code where the error is displayed like this in the console:

<button type='button' class='add' onclick="parent.addwindow('!"�$%^&*()-=\'.,:;/?#~*/\\><'

How can this be fixed?

Answer 1

T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING is basically a quote mismatch. StackOverflow’s syntax highlighter makes it more obvious with the color change.

$question')

Remove the single quote and you should be good.

Follow-up:

• PHP Parser Tokens
• PHP String Syntax

Alternatives:

As Cups mentioned, you can use heredoc (though I personally think it doesn’t help in this particular scenario from a readability standpoint–you’re still embedding a lot of variables within HTML syntax). Another method is to store the parent.addwindow arguments as a variable then pass it within the string (save yourself from both an extended echo line and worrying about quote mis-matches. For example:

$addWindowArgs = "'" . implode("','", array(
  str_replace('"','"', $question),
  $searchMarks[$key],
  $searchNoofAnswers[$key],
  $searchOption[$key],
  $searchReply[$key],
  $searchAnswer[$key]
)) . "'";

echo  "<td class=\"addtd\">"
    . "<button type=\"button\" class=\"add\" onclick=\"parent.addwindow({$addWindowArgs});\">Add</button>"
    . "</td></tr>";

Alternatively, you can use sprintf instead of implode with the same echo call:

$addWindowArgs = sprintf("'%s','%s','%s','%s','%s','%s'",
  str_replace('"','"', $question),
  $searchMarks[$key],
  $searchNoofAnswers[$key],
  $searchOption[$key],
  $searchReply[$key],
  $searchAnswer[$key]
);

This gives you more control in case some arguments are numbers, some are strings, etc.