Question

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How to pass a PHP variable to Javascript?

I need to somehow make this function to accept parameter.

index.html

function dataOut(name2) {
    var names = name2.value;
    document.getElementById("output2").innerHTML = names;
    //even document.getElementById("output2").innerHTML= "blablabla"; 
    //just to show that it works
}

And the function will be called from :

dbase.php

...
echo "<td><a href='javascript:dataOut(this.value)'>" . $row['FirstName'] . "</a></td>";
...

I dont have problem on displaying the the table. The link does show with their respective "$row[‘FirstName’]" which are string from database. I tried to use non-parameter function:

function dataOut(){}
echo "<td><a href='javascript:dataOut()'>" . $row['FirstName'] . "</a></td>";

and these work fine.

If i try to pass parameter, the function will not do anything; not even if i just want to print random string as in the commented section of the function. If i hover my mouse on the link created within that table i see:

javascript:dataOut(firstname)
//where first name is the value of the $row['FirstName']

Alternatives that i tried:

echo "<td><a href='javascript:dataOut(this.value)'>" . $row['FirstName'] . "</a></td>";
echo "<td><a href='javascript:dataOut($row['FirstName'])'>" . $row['FirstName'] . "</a></td>";
echo "<td><a href='javascript:dataOut('" . $row['FirstName'] .'")'>" . $row['FirstName'] . "</a></td>"; //this give me undefined variable error
echo "<td><a href='javascript:dataOut(". $row['FirstName']. ")'>" . $row['FirstName'] . "</a></td>"; // this no error

Any help would be appreciated. More over i tried also <a onclick=dataOut ....> which doesnt work either.

Answer 1

You shouldn’t try to create JavaScript strings by concatenating quotes and plain strings. Use json_encode() instead which is guaranteed to output a valid JavaScript expression:

echo "<td><a href='javascript:dataOut(".json_encode($row['FirstName']).")'>" . $row['FirstName'] . "</a></td>";

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On a side-note, using javascript: urls is generally a bad idea. Better use onclick="dataOut(...); return false;" instead and use a useful href value or # if no proper URL for people without JavaScript exists. Of course it would be even better to register the event properly instead of using an inline event, and storing the data in a data- attribute but this would be even more off-topic here.