Trim newlines and whitespaces

The issue seems to be in lines 17 through 20.  You trim() $row['email'] and assign that value to $email on line 17 but you use the untrimmed value on line 20. So eventually if you rerun this successfully, you would get everything trimmed.

So if you rerun this and do not catch all the values, it might be that there are non=unique rows identified by $IDKey.  

Another possibility is that the initial SELECT query failed.  What kind of error would this throw if it did not work"

$result= $db_conn->query($query);

To debug, I would print out all the results from the SELECT query and test both queries for success.
Does that make sense?

makes a little sense but as said, a rerun has no effect as for line 17 and 20, I echo'ed out the trimmed and non-trimmed so should what was happening, the database is updated with the trimmed $, I would except on a rerun that all would be trimmed.

and for IDKey, it is the primary and 100% unique.

Please try this and post the result here.:

To debug, I would print out all the results from the SELECT query and test both queries for success.
Does that make sense?


Thank you, ~Ray

ray, your a man in the know...

I have another odd thing happening with trim() and wonder if the 2 are linked somehow, on my site if someone enters their password, say because the drag/dropped or cut/paste from an email, there is a chance they picked up a whitespace from the front of the password or maybe even put a space in front of the password via the keyboard, my trim() does not trim it (so it seems) but should that happen at the end of the password it does trim it...

I heard that chr(160) may cause this, if so it could be the problem with my original question as someone may have dragged and dropped the record.

what is a chr(160) and could this be the problem, if so, can it be removed.

Stummed

HERES THE OUTPUT

DB is from the $ out of the database with CD being the $ after trim()

DB617 XDanglerX
CD617 XDanglerX

DB618 XDanglerX
CD618 XDanglerX

DB619 XShore AnglerX
CD619 XShore AnglerX

DB620 XShore AnglerX
CD620 XShore AnglerX

DB621 XShoreAngler X
CD621 XShoreAnglerX

DB622 XDanglerX
CD622 XDanglerX

DB623 XShore AnglerX
CD623 XShore AnglerX

DB624 XDangler X
CD624 XDanglerX

DB625 XDanglerX
CD625 XDanglerX

DB626 XShore AnglerX
CD626 XShore AnglerX


Look at 621 and 624, not updated in DB even after a rerun, really odd, in the export list from phpMyAdmin those 2 records have \n still the others records are cleaned

Check this:
http://php.net/manual/en/function.html-entity-decode.php

"Note: You might wonder why trim(html_entity_decode(' ')); doesn't reduce the string to an empty string, that's because the ' ' entity is not ASCII code 32 (which is stripped by trim()) but ASCII code 160 (0xa0) in the default ISO 8859-1 characterset."

So here is what I might try.  You might use something like $str = str_replace(' ', ' ', $str);

Another way to verify what is really in there is to use var_dump() to print out the data fields.  Then look at the view source in the browser window.  

You might also try something like this: echo htmlentities($str); to try to visualize the invisible data.

For processing input fields like user names and passwords, I have a requirement that they be composed of letters and numbers only, and I use this "clean_string" function.  I trim the field, then run it through the function.  If the field after the function is different from the field after trim and before the function, then the input was unacceptable.

HTH, ~Ray

<?php // RAY_clean_string.php
error_reporting(E_ALL);



// A FUNCTION TO TEST FOR A CLEAN STRING OF SPECIFIC LENGTH
function clean_string($str, $len=20)
{
    // LETTERS AND NUMBERS ONLY
    $regex = '/[^A-Za-z0-9-]/';

    $str = trim($str);
    $str = substr($str,0,$len);
    $str = preg_replace($regex, '', $str);
    return $str;
}




// DEMONSTRATE THE FUNCTION IN ACTION
if (isset($_GET["e"]))
{
    $e = clean_string($_GET["e"]);
    echo "<br/>$e";
}
// END OF PHP - PUT UP THE FORM
?>
<form method="get">
ENTER A STRING FOR TESTING:
<input name="e" />
<input type="submit" />
</form>

Select allOpen in new window

i'm not getting anywhere with this orginal question, the var dump and the htmlentities just show a single whitespace between the double quotes, guess I am going to have to go through them all by hand, may be quicker in the long run.

Thanks for the function ray, had a play with it, similar to my version but a lot clear to follow, many thanks

If you want to email a segment of the bad data to me, please use the email address in my public profile.  Maybe I can spot something right away if I can see it in HEX in my editors.

ps , part of the var dump, look at title, still has white space, in the database show as \n

array(29) { ["IDKey"]=> string(3) "677" ["title"]=> string(12) "ShoreAngler " ["blog"]=> string(0) ""

Yeah - it is getting translated to a blank in the transition from your location to my location, sorry.

ray if I email you, what data would you like, a var dump or export from mysql? var dump shows the whitespace whilst mysql export show a \n (slash n)

Probably the MySQL export.  Anything that gets us the least risk of munged data.  Thanks, ~Ray

the quick answer to that and many times of different versions of that is, no luck... Ray I have just 65 records to change, my new input form is clean and does not cause this to happen so I will save mine and your time and get the wife to ecit all the records by hand, lol...

thanks so much for all your efforts.

thanks Ray

Thanks for the points - and with only 65 records to fix, I think I would ask your wife to do it, too!

;-)

Best regards, ~Ray