Checking multiline $_POST against predefined var

[cw22]

Hello - I was hoping I could receive some help today with something that's just been eating at me.

 

I want to have a php page with a form - and the user enters something like

 

"Hey

There"

 

into a textarea, and when they submit the form as POST on the same php page, the page will check the user input against a pre-defined variable, and

 

if $_POST['code'] == $predefined var {
//echo 'Correct';
}

 

 

I however want the POST and predefined var to be multiline capable, without me having to enter <br /> etc.

 

So, I used the nl2br() php function with $_POST['code'], and stripslashes() with $_POST['code'] (just in case I want to make a php page where the correct answer is.. code perhaps? like

 

<img src="blah.extension" />)

 

I declared a heredoc and assigned it to a variable, then used nl2br on that variable to make THAT variable multiline.

 

End result is something along the lines of ...

 

$hdoc = <<<EOD
Some
Text
EOD;

$hdoc = nl2br($hdoc);

if(isset($_POST['submit'])) {
  $code = stripslashes(nl2br($_POST['code']));
  if($code == $hdoc) {
   echo 'You win';
   } else {
   echo 'You lose';
   }
}

 

Then of course we just have a generic form declared after the block of PHP code...

 

<form method="POST">
<textarea name="code" row=10 col=30></textarea>
<br />
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>

 

 

Any ideas on why I am always getting the echo of "Lose"?

 

Any replies are strongly appreciated.

[radar]

First thing you could want to do right before your if($code == $hdoc) { is put:

 

echo $code.":".$hdoc; and make sure you have what you want there in both of them...  then you can adjust your coding from there to get the proper result.

[cw22]

@radar:

 

thanks for the reply. I have done this though and lets say my hdoc is:

 

hey

there

 

And I post:

 

hey

there

 

 

When I echo the results, it shows up as:

 

hey

there

 

hey

there

 

But, I still am getting "lose". I thought maybe it had something to do with $_POST changing one tad little thing, but I still can't find out what.

[DavidAM]

Use your browser's "View Source" feature to look at the output. Or, even better, use var_dump() on each variable, instead of echo.  The browser will hide spaces, newlines, etc. from view. A newline will still be difficult to see in View Source. var_dump() will give you the variable type, length and content. You should be able to see the true difference.

[radar]

check the html output of it, not just the display results.

[cw22]

New code:

 

<?php
$hdoc = <<<EOD
Some
Text
EOD;



if(isset($_POST['submit'])) {
$hdoc = nl2br($hdoc);
$chk = stripslashes(nl2br($_POST['code']));

echo var_dump($hdoc);
echo '<br />';
echo var_dump($chk);
}
?>

<form method="POST">
<textarea name="code" row=10 col=30></textarea>
<br />
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>

 

I get outputted:

 

string(15) "Some

Text"

string(16) "Some

Text"

 

Any idea why string(16) for the input? I'm not inputting any extra space.

[cmor]

Maybe a difference between \r\n and \n?

[cw22]

Wouldn't there be no difference since I am using nl2br() for both vars?

[DavidAM]

nl2br() might leave the CR ( "\r" ) in there, I'm not sure.  You might want to do a str_replace() on it just to be safe:

 

$chk = str_replace("\r", "", stripslashes(nl2br($_POST['code'])));

[cw22]

David, you're right.

 

Just for future reference - why did it leave \r in there for $chk and not $answer?

 

Marked: Solved.

[DavidAM]

If your source code file is saved in unix format it does not have CR's (\r) in it.  Windows systems end lines with CR-LF while unix based systems use only NL. So, your HEREDOC does not have CR's in it. I'm guessing your browser was running on a Windows system so it probably put the CR's in the response. 

 

Hmmm, maybe I should add that to my POST parameter cleanup. Always remove "\r" from any TEXTAREA's?  I'll have to look at that.