Question

lets get straight to my problem, the code I have written here does not write to my database and I cannot figue out why. At the moment I am simply trying to get to grips with php and sql so there is no point to this form other than learning. Here is the error i am getting(the first sentence ‘connected to database’ is from my if statement):

“Connected to databaseError: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ”test’ (‘name’) VALUES (‘daniel’)’ at line 1″

The code I have may look a little confusing as some of it is from w3schools and some is from a friend. I cannot figure out why this code isn’t working, I have tried many variations of the syntax based on loads of articles I have found online and on stackoverflow but none seem to work. I fear that maybe I am not even connectec to the database, although my if statement tells me otherwise, so that could be a problem?

Hopefully if this gets solved this question will clarify database connection and writing to a database from a form in one hit. Thanks in advance guys and here’s my code.

HTML

<form action="insert.php" method="post">
Name: <input type="text" name="namefield" />
<input type="submit" />
</form>

PHP (insert.php)

<?php
$dbhost  = 'localhost';
$dbname  = 'carbon_db';
$dbuser  = 'username';
$dbpass  = 'password'; 

$con = mysql_connect($dbhost, $dbuser, $dbpass);

if($con == FALSE)
{
    echo 'Cannot connect to database' . mysql_error();
}
else
{
    echo 'Connected to database';
}

mysql_select_db($dbname, $con);


$sql="INSERT INTO 'test' ('name') 
VALUES ('$_POST[namefield]')";

if (!mysql_query($sql, $con))
{
    die('Error: ' . mysql_error());
}
echo "1 record added";

mysql_close($con)
?>

Answer 1

Change the single quotes surrounding the table name and the column name to backticks. Or get rid of them all together.

$sql="INSERT INTO `test` (`name`)  VALUES ('{$_POST['namefield']}')";

Also, don’t reference associative arrays ($_POST) directly in a string without using {} syntax or breaking up the string – what you have done there issues an E_NOTICE and should be avoided.

Read this thoroughly – you’d be amazed what you can (and can’t) legally do in PHP strings…