This is weird. Url parameter and & symbol issue.

[man5]

I didn't notice this until know.

 

Say I have a url like this.

http://www.yoursite.com?category_id=3&category_name= Grocers & Shoppers

When I get the the category name using  $_GET, it'll only echo 'Grocers' and not the full word 'Grocers & Shoppers'. 

 

Anyone can tell me what's happening?

[QuickOldCar]

Yes it should be urlencoded

[man5]

Yes it should be urlencoded

 

 

I actually found a tutorial that does this.  I copied his code. It works. The only thing it doesn't do is replace the & symbol. 

 

Function

       public function createSlug($slug) {
		// Remove anything but letters, numbers, spaces, hypens
		// Remove spaces and duplicate dypens
		// Trim the left and right, removing any left over hypens
		
		$lettersNumbersSpacesHypens = '/[^\-\s\pN\pL]+/u';
		$spacesDuplicateHypens = '/[\-\s]+/';

		$slug = preg_replace($lettersNumbersSpacesHypens, '', mb_strtolower($slug, 'UTF-8'));	
		$slug = preg_replace($spacesDuplicateHypens, '-', $slug);
		$slug = trim($slug, '-');
		
		return $slug;
	}

Using the above function, it'll return this

http://www.yourwebsite.com?category_id=1&category_name=hot-amp-dogs

from this

http://www.yourwebsite.com?category_id=1&category_name=hot & dogs

I am guessing 'amp' shouldn't be there.  Also since I am echoing these out on the page, they have to be decoded to it's original form.

[man5]

I've solved the problem with the 'amp' removal.

 

Here is the updated function.

public function createSlug($slug) {
		// Remove anything but letters, numbers, spaces, hypens
		// Remove spaces and duplicate dypens
		// Trim the left and right, removing any left over hypens

		$slug   =   htmlspecialchars_decode($slug);
		
		$lettersNumbersSpacesHypens = '/[^\-\s\pN\pL]+/u';
		$spacesDuplicateHypens = '/[\-\s]+/';

		$slug = preg_replace($lettersNumbersSpacesHypens, '', mb_strtolower($slug, 'UTF-8'));	
		$slug = preg_replace($spacesDuplicateHypens, '-', $slug);
		$slug = trim($slug, '-');
		
		return $slug;
	}

Now for decoding. I have found out that I need to save two urls in db; original and slug. From there, I call on the original to echo the names.  So i'll look into how to do that.