Question

In my form I have a text field that has data such as >2012-01-01 <2012-02-01
but when I serialize the form and post the data the field only has the >2012-01-01 and not the <2012-02-01.

Where did it go?

$("#grouppositionsform").live("submit",function(e){ 
    e.preventDefault();
    $('body').addClass('wait');
    $.post("/page.php",$(this).serialize(), function(data){
        $('.showdirectory').fadeOut('slow', function() {
            $(".showdirectory").html(data);
            $(".showdirectory").fadeIn("slow");              
        });
  }).error(function() { 
    //alert("error"); 
  }).complete(function() { 
    //alert("complete"); 
    $('body').removeClass('wait');
  });
});

Answer 1

The answer is that joomla took that character and said no to it and didn’t parse it.
So the jquery was fine and was posting the data but joomla has a function that makes sure returned data is safe.

So when I checked $_POST[“searchstring”]; all the data was there.

When I use JRequest::getVar(“searchstring”,-1); it protects me and removes the <.

As it happens Joomla explain this here: http://docs.joomla.org/Secure_coding_guidelines
and I changed getVar to allow the data through.

So this worked for me.
$sstr = JRequest::getVar(“searchstring”,’-1′,’REQUEST’,’STRING’,JREQUEST_ALLOWRAW);