PHP QUERY HELP

Yes that did work, I know that it has something to do with the & sign but didnt know how to solve it.

any ideas?

You would have to think about special chars, try using amp; instead of & in that query.

Hi Roads,

$sql = "
SELECT *
FROM customer
    LEFT JOIN notes
        ON customer.customer_name = notes.customer_name
WHERE customer.customer_name = 'MRS amp; ANNA NORRIS'";

Did not work please note the amp; in between MRS and ANNA

Does this one in any way apply to your situation ?
https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/23221903/Problem-Ampersand-in-MySQL-query-of-a-PHP-file-not-retrieving-data.html

If not, this will work I guess
http://php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-real-escape-string.php

OK,

Can you echo out the contents of $val  just before the query is run to see if it is being stored correctly.

In theory
WHERE customer.customer_name = '" . $val . "'";
and
WHERE customer.customer_name = 'Cooke & Sons LTD';

should be exactly the same if it is

$sql = sprintf("SELECT * FROM customer LEFT JOIN notes ON customer.customer_name = notes.customer_name WHERE customer.customer_name = '%s' ",mysql_real_escape_string($val));

Select allOpen in new window

Have tried using LIKE search instead of this ?

$sql = "
SELECT *
FROM customer
    LEFT JOIN notes
        ON customer.customer_name = notes.customer_name
WHERE customer.customer_name  LIKE '" %. $val .% "'";

@ OnALearning Curve the echoed value of WHERE customer.customer_name = '" . $val . "'";

was

MRS

when obviously it should be MRS & ANNA NORRIS

@Roads : Thanks for the attemept but the sprintf did also not work.

OK,

So it looks as though we have an issue when the string is being passed to $val

How is $val being defined?

can you post the code that handles that?

Cheers,

Mark.

https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/23221903/Problem-Ampersand-in-MySQL-query-of-a-PHP-file-not-retrieving-data.html

Have you seen the link ?

Looks like Roads_Roads could have nailed it with that link.

It seems to go in exactly the same direction I was starting to head.

Yes i have looked at the link,

the val is passed through a get clause in the url

here is the code below

<input type="button" onclick="var val = document.getElementById('ddlCompanies').options[document.getElementById('ddlCompanies').selectedIndex].value; var url = 'mobilenum.php?val=';url+=val;window.location=url;" value="Submit..." />

i read on the link something about:

escapedStr = window.escape(str)
url=url+"?q="+escapedStr

but was not sure where to put this.

Roads hit the nail on the head, Points will be awarded all round for time and effort.

All is greatly appreciated.

Thanks for the points, very generous

to be fair Roads_Roads got there with the answer and deserved them all

I'll accept them anyway ;)

Cheers,

Mark.

Time as well as answers are appreciated.

Time is money in this world. so I appreciate all relevant attempts to help me

Thank you all gentlemen.