if statement (validating character)

[woodplease]

i'm trying to an if statement so that a piece of code is only executed if a returned variable equals a letter in the alphabet(any letter)

the variable is from a $_GET, and all i want to check is if the variable contains a letter.

This is what i have so far, but it doesnt work

 

$sort=$_GET[orderby];
if ($sort=="[A-Z]") {
$read=mysql_query("SELECT * FROM films WHERE title LIKE '".$sort."%'") or die(mysql_error());
$result=mysql_num_rows($read);
}
else { 
$read=mysql_query("SELECT * FROM films ORDER BY title") or die("query failed");
$result=mysql_num_rows($read);
}

Any help would be great.

[Rifts]

$sort=$_GET[orderby];

 

should be

 

$sort=$_GET['orderby'];

[woodplease]

sorry, typing error on my part, it already is    $sort=$_GET['orderby'];

 

so that isn't the problem

[Rifts]

I don't believe this is a real statement

($sort=="[A-Z]")

[woodplease]

well i'm not sure if it is or not, i do know that its similar to a regular expression, but i'm not quite sure how to use them

[BlueSkyIS]

the current logic is:

 

if the value passed to the script, $_GET['orderby'] is equal to "[A-Z]", then execute this SQL: SELECT * FROM `films` WHERE title LIKE '[A-Z]%'

 

which won't return any records except where titles start with [A-Z], probably zero.

 

I don't think that will get you what you want. Do you mean to take the value of $_GET['orderby'], and if it is equal to "[A-Z]", then return all titles that begin with a letter? or do you mean to return all results ordered alphabetically by title? or something else?

[woodplease]

the $_Get['orderby'] returns a single letter, so i want to return all the values that begin with that letter

[Rifts]

maybe try something like

 

$regexp = "[A-z]";

 

if (preg_match($regexp, $sort)) {

    echo "is a valid letter";

} else {

    echo "NOT A LETTER";

}

[Pikachu2000]

Still not so sure about the logic you're using, but according to the specs you gave, this should be what you want. This will only validate if $GET['orderby'] contains a single alphabetic character.

 

if( ctype_alpha($_GET['orderby']) && strlen($_GET['orderby']) === 1 ) {
     // meets the criteria.
}

[woodplease]

thanks very much, its working now