mysql query not updating (because of null fields)

[leeming]

basically i have this query

[code]$sql = "UPDATE Accounts SET Account_Aim = '".htmlentities($_REQUEST['aim'], ENT_QUOTES)."', Account_Msn = '".htmlentities($_REQUEST['msn'], ENT_QUOTES)."', Account_Yahoo = '".htmlentities($_REQUEST['yahoo'], ENT_QUOTES)."', Account_Icq = '".htmlentities($_REQUEST['icq'], ENT_QUOTES)."', Account_Gender = '".htmlentities($_REQUEST['gender'], ENT_QUOTES)."', Account_Website = '".htmlentities($_REQUEST['userwebsite'], ENT_QUOTES)."', Account_Location = '".htmlentities($_REQUEST['location'], ENT_QUOTES)."', Account_Army_Name = '".htmlentities($_REQUEST['arname'], ENT_QUOTES)."', Account_Sig = '".htmlentities($_REQUEST['sig'], ENT_QUOTES)."', Account_Personal = '".htmlentities($_REQUEST['personal'], ENT_QUOTES)."' WHERE Account_ID = '".USERID."'";

    $query = mysql_query($sql, cdb(0))or die('wtf');//bavaderror($sql);[/code]

and i checked it after the query, for affected rows (which always returns true, even if no update was done)

basically i have found out that that the query is not updating because say if a user didnt put in an AIM  field, then it would be blank (this is a update profile page), but because its blank, this is leading to the query not updating... im not quite sure on this one.. but that's what's happening

[btherl]

Try printing out the query to see what is happening.  And the mysql error too, like this: [code=php:0] ... or die("Error in $sql: " . mysql_error());[/code]

Also, replace htmlentities() with mysql_real_escape_string().  That will do all the right escaping.  If you haven't done so already, you may need to urldecode() the variables before escaping them for mysql.