Re: Updating rows in a MySQL database with PHP

Nothing is being updated because $id is empty and in fact is not even set. You need to pass the id via a hidden form variable in order to get the results you expect. In the future I suggest always debugging your scripts by echoing your variables so that you can determine if they contain what you think they contain. Fred Chris Janes <Ginga@mad-monkey.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message news:000e01c177c1$79a78620$a25ffea9@d7e5f4... > Ok, this may well turn out to be a total newbie question. But it's got me > stumped. > > I'm trying to create a small, simple news system for a personal website. > I've gotten sections to insert the news into the database. but I can't seem > to get it to update itself. > > So far I have > > <?php > > include("accesscontrol.php"); > > (This is a login script to authenticate users, so they cannot access pages > by merely typing the address into the address bar. > It references the database connection script, so that I shouldn't need to > call that again. Is that right?) > > dbconnect(My_db_name); > > mysql_query ("UPDATE news SET subject='$newsubject', > content='$newcontent' > WHERE id='$id'"); > > ?> > > The $newsubject and $newcontent variables are taken from the results of a > form on an earlier page. when the script is run through in full, I get no > errors, but the database is not updated. > > The table has the following format > > id, date, subject, content, user > > I can get the correct news entry displayed in the forms on previous screen, > where the altering takes place. (code for the form is below) > > <form name="news" method="get" action=alternews.php> > <input type="hidden" name="user" > value="<?=$username?>"> > <p>Subject: > <input type="text" name="newsubject" > maxlength="120" > value="<?=$subject?>"> > </p> > <p>Content:<br> > <textarea name="newcontent" rows="6" > cols="60"><?=$content?></textarea> > </p> > <p align="right"> > <input type="submit" name="Submit" > value="Submit"> > <input type="reset" name="reset" > value="Reset"> > </p> > </form> > > The variables are passed through to the page that actually performs the > update, but the update never takes place. I don't get an error from MySQL, > or a parsing error from PHP, all the pages display as if the update had > taken place. > > Can anyone see what I'm doing wrong? > > This all seemed like a good way of learning PHP and MySQL, it's just leading > to further hair loss! > > Oh, and I'm sorry if this really should go to another list, but this was the > first one that leapt to mind. > > Cheers, > > Chris Janes >