I'm getting an unexpected t_string error

[green917]

Hey all,

 

Relative newbie here. I am trying to create a script that generates a random image (and the associated title) from my mySQL database. The code doesn't seem to be working as the image is blank and the title does not appear either. A new set of eyes may be able to find the problem. Thanks!

 

<?php
include 'open.php';
include 'opendb.php';

$offset_result = mysql_query( " SELECT FLOOR(RAND() * COUNT(*)) AS 'offset' FROM 'recipes' ");
$offset_row = mysql_fetch_object( $offset_result );
$offset = $offset_row->offset;
$result = mysql_query( " SELECT * FROM 'recipes' LIMIT $offset, 1 " );

print "<table width=\"366\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" border=\"0\">";
print "<tr>";
print "<td class=\"recipe_head\">Healthy Lifestyle Gourmet Recipes</td>";
print "<tr>";
print "<td class=\"recipe_title\">{$result['title']}</td>";
print "</tr>";
print "<tr>";
print "<td><image src=\"{$result['image_path'].$result['image_name']}\" height=\"{$result['image_height']}\" width=\"{$result['image_width']}\" /></td>";
print "</tr></table>";

mysql_close();
?>

[nblackwood]

Here, this should help:

 

<?php

include 'open.php';

include 'opendb.php';

 

$offset_result = mysql_query( " SELECT FLOOR(RAND() * COUNT(*)) AS 'offset' FROM 'recipes' ");

$offset_row = mysql_fetch_object( $offset_result );

$offset = $offset_row->offset;

$result = mysql_query( " SELECT * FROM 'recipes' LIMIT $offset, 1 " );

 

print "<table width=\"366\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" border=\"0\">";

print "<tr>";

print "<td class=\"recipe_head\">Healthy Lifestyle Gourmet Recipes</td>";

print "<tr>";

print "<td class=\"recipe_title\">{$result['title']}</td>";

print "</tr>";

print "<tr>";

print "<td><image src=\"{".$result."['image_path']".$result."['image_name']}\" height=\"{".$result."['image_height']}\" width=\"{".$result."['image_width']}\" /></td>";

print "</tr></table>";

 

mysql_close();

?>

[DavidAM]

It would help if you indicated which line the error was reported on.  I think your problem might be in this line:

 

print "<td><image src=\"{$result['image_path'].$result['image_name']}\" height=\"{$result['image_height']}\" width=\"{$result['image_width']}\" /></td>";

 

I'm not sure, but I don't think you can use the dot operator inside the curly-braces.  I'm not sure, because I almost never use curly-braces.  This type of statement is very difficult to read when working with your code, and prone to errors. There are a couple of different ways to clean it up.

 

First, instead of escaping double quotes inside a double-quoted string, switch to single quotes for one or the other.

 

My favorite method is to use the printf() function:

printf('<td><image src="%s" height="%d" width="%d" /></td>',
    $result['image_path'] . $result['image_name'], 
    $result['image_height'], $result['image_width']);

I have switched to using printf() and sprintf() for HTML and SQL generation almost entirely. The reason is clear. If you look at that code, you can see the HTML you are going to generate with the placeholders for the variables, then the variables are listed in the order they are applied.

 

Or use single quotes for the print and concatenate the variables:

print '<td><image src="' . $result['image_path'] . $result['image_name'] . 
    '" height="' . $result['image_height'] . '" width="' . $result['image_width'] . '" /></td>';

 

If you really like the curly-braces, I think the correct way would be to remove the "." between the image_path and image_name and replace it with more curly-braces (they are separate varaibles):

print "<td><image src=\"{$result['image_path']}{$result['image_name']}\" height=\"{$result['image_height']}\" width=\"{$result['image_width']}\" /></td>";

 

[green917]

Thanks so much for the help!