Question

I’m trying to learn PHP, and I figured I’d make myself a simple exercise of making a site that if someone goes to it, they get “Hello friend!” but if my wife (who is named Dawn) goes to it, she gets a different message.

Unfortunately, it’s always showing up as blank and I’m not really sure why.

I know it works for index.html with just text, and I know it works for index.php as long as I have no <?php tag in it (just text works). But when I try to make it actual php, it just fails.

• I’d like site/index.php to yield
  “Hello friend!”
• I’d like site/index.php?who=Bob to
  yield “Hello friend!”
• I’d like site/index.php?who=Dawn to
  yield “Hello Dawn! I love you!”

Here’s what I have:

<?php
print 'Hello ';
$who = $_GET("who");
if($who && $who == "Dawn")
    print "Dawn! I love you!";
else
    print "friend!";
/>

So, what’s wrong?

Answer 1

Access to arrays ($_GET is an array), like in Java, uses square brackets:

$who = $_GET['who'];

Also if($who) evaluates to true if $who is non-false, to check it’s set you need to use isset:

if(isset($who) && $who == "Dawn")

Last, as noted by @Shivan, the end tag should be ?>, not />.