Question

<?php>   
 while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result2))
      {
       echo "<tr>";
       echo "<td>" . $row['IDNO'] . "</td>";
    echo "<td>" . $row['ADDRESS'] . "</td>";
      echo "<td>" . $row['LASTNAME'] . "</td>";
        echo "<td>" . $row['FIRSTNAME'] . "</td>";
          echo "<td>" . <a href='update.php'>view</a> . "</td>"; 

      echo "</tr>";
      }
    echo "</table>";
    }
?>

That’s my code, I really don’t know the correct format of putting links inside the php tags:

 echo "<td>" . <a href='update.php'>view</a> . "</td>"; 

Please help

Answer 1

PHP is a templating language, there’s no need to be throwing HTML around in strings.

<?php while ($row= mysql_fetch_array($result2)) { ?>
    <tr>
        <td><?php echo htmlspecialchars($row['IDNO']); ?></td>
        <td><?php echo htmlspecialchars($row['ADDRESS']); ?></td>
        <td><?php echo htmlspecialchars($row['LASTNAME']); ?></td>
        <td><?php echo htmlspecialchars($row['FIRSTNAME']); ?></td>
        <td>
            <a href="update.php?idno=<?php echo urlencode($row['IDNO']); ?>">view</a>
        </td>
    </tr>
<?php } ?>

Note the use of HTML-escaping. Without this, < and & characters in your strings will be copied into the raw HTML, causing potential cross-site scripting security problems. Whether using PHP templating or sticking strings together, always HTML-escape plain text output.