Re: pop textarea field w/ text incl. quotes

From: "Paul Warner" <pwarner@winners-circle.com> > I seem to be stuck on a very simple (to me) issue. I am trying to build a > database of links for a site. A user inputs an HTML link into a text box > which is stored in a SQL db. This works fine. I need to display this data > on pages, and retrieving it into the page displays fine as well. The > problem arises when I need to provide a means to edit this link. Here's > what I've got: > > Link as stored in db: <a > href="http://winners-circle.com">Winners Circle > Design Group</a> > variants I've tried to store: <a href=\"http://winners-circle.com\">Winners > Circle Design Group</a> > <a > href=\\\"http://winners-circle.com\\\">Winners > Circle Design Group</a> > <a > href='http://winners-circle.com'>Winners Circle > Design Group</a> > > All result in the textarea box in the form being populated with (basicly all > the output to the end of the page): Winners Circle Design > Group</a>"></form></td>\n </tr> > <tr> > <th width = "40%" align = "right">Created:</th> > <td width = "60%">20010221195310</td> > </tr> > <tr> > <th width = "40%" align = "right">Last Modified:</th> > <td width = "60%">20010219104604</td> > </tr> > </table> > </div> > </body> > </html> > > I'm sure that the answer is right in front of me, but my heads bleeding to > badly from hitting the wall so many times, I can't see it! > > -- Paul > Don't worry about quotes - the problem is that you have HTML markup inside your <textarea>. You just need to convert < and > to &lt; and &gt;, respectively, in your link text. The functions htmlspecialchars() or strip_tags() can do this for you. i.e.: <? echo "<textarea>" . htmlspecialchars($link) . "</textarea>"; ?> When the form is submitted (and when it's viewed), those entities will be converted back to their real characters automatically by the browser. Cheers Simon Garner