Question

I seem to be having a rough time with this snippet of code, Which i dont understand because on my home server this works 100% perfect. basically this script takes the users ip and stores it into a mysql table. every time a user posts it checks the table to see if the ip has already posted. when i run mysql_error() on num_rows which apears to be the problem, i get:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_LOGICAL_OR on line 119

Any ideas?

php:

$poster_ip=$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];//Posters ip
//check for ip double posting
//selecet ip from table
$sql="SELECT * FROM $tbl_name WHERE ip='$poster_ip'";
$result=mysql_query($sql);

// Mysql_num_row is counting table row
$count=mysql_num_rows($result);
or die mysql_error();//line 119
//if result matche posterip, table row must be 1
if($count==1){
//ip taken
echo "This IP has already submited a post. You may not submit another.";
exit();
//else script continues
}

Answer 1

Remove the semicolon because that terminates the statement and the or die is treated as a new statement, causing the error:

$count=mysql_num_rows($result) or die(mysql_error());
                         //   ^ no semicolon

You also need parenthesis around the die() call.

Side note: or die(mysql_error()) is not considered good practice because it’s difficult to maintain between development and production environments. or trigger_error(mysql_error()) would be better – this writes to your error log. Also consider upgrading to PDO or MySQLi because this MySQL library is deprecated and discouraged.