Question

I try to redirect a search to the right controller. This works fine if I have no special chars in the searchkey. If I have special keys in it I get an error from codeigniter:

The URI you submitted has disallowed characters.

Here is my code:

public function search()
{
    $searchkey = urlencode($this->input->post('searchkey'));
    switch ($this->input->post('searchtype')) {
        case 'request':     redirect('portal/requests/search/'.$searchkey, 'refresh');
                            break;
        case 'offers':      redirect('portal/offers/search/'.$searchkey, 'refresh');
                            break;
        case 'projects':    redirect('portal/projects/search/'.$searchkey, 'refresh');
                            break;
        default:            redirect('portal/requests/search/'.$searchkey, 'refresh');
                            break;
    }
}

Answer 1

that is because you cannot put ‘special’ characters in your url

i.e. if I search for “test” I am taken to portal/projects/search/test

but if I search for test@#$)*&&f – you cannot have a url with some of those characters

to solve this either perform a validation on the post, and make the search term only have numbers and letters:

$this->form_validation->set_rules('searchtype', 'Search Type', 'required|alpha_numeric');

or you have to ‘pass’ the search term to function in another way – perhaps using flash data, so that the search term is not passed by a url

edit: default url chars for your reference (from line 129 (approx) of config.php)

 $config['permitted_uri_chars'] = 'a-z 0-9~%.:_\-';