Inserting HTML into a database

[MortimerJazz]

Hiya - I wasn't quite sure where to post this ...

I've designed a type of PM system. The idea is that a dynamically generated PM is sent to a user.

However, I'd like this PM to include clickable links and also format it with new lines etc.

So my question is, is it possible to store HTML in a MySQL database? When I've tried storing regular href's, I keep getting error messages on my page. Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks,

[corbin]

make sure you mysql_real_escape any data put into the database(make sure to stripslashes() it if magic quotes are on)...  That might not be the problem, but it probably is...

[lilman]

Yes you can store HTML tags into a MySQL database. Paste your code and I'll see if I can help you out.

[MortimerJazz]

Thanks lilman.

The code's quite simple so far:

[code]
$message="The following person has expressed an interest in your toy:
<p>
Reference Number: <a href="http://www.mysite.com/viewtoy.php?toy=$ref
<p>
User: $username";


$sql = mysql_query("INSERT INTO prv_msg (sender, recipient,
        subject, message, sell_msg, date_sent, ip_sender)
        VALUES('$username', '$recipient', '$subject', '$message', '1', now(), '$ip')")
        or die (mysql_error());
[/code]

[lilman]

Try this

[code]$message="The following person has expressed an interest in your toy:
<p>
Reference Number: <a href=\"http://www.mysite.com/viewtoy.php?toy=$ref\"
<p>
User: $username";[/code]

I added \ in front of your quotation marks, if you don't PHP will assume that is the end of your statement when in act it is not. Give that a run and let me know if it works or not.

[Orio]

If you are still having trouble, you could always encode the PM using base64 and then decode it. It will take a bit more memory (about 33% more) but it's comfortable.

Orio.

[rantsh]

[quote author=lilman link=topic=124442.msg515593#msg515593 date=1170013916]
Try this

[code]$message="The following person has expressed an interest in your toy:
<p>
Reference Number: <a href=\"http://www.mysite.com/viewtoy.php?toy=$ref\"
<p>
User: $username";[/code]

I added \ in front of your quotation marks, if you don't PHP will assume that is the end of your statement when in act it is not. Give that a run and let me know if it works or not.
[/quote]

Could you achieve this easily with the addslashes function???

[Jessica]

"Could you achieve this easily with the addslashes function???"
Yes, or you could use htmlentities

[corbin]

When assigning variables you cannot use quotes inside of the variable with out escaping them if you use quotes around the variable content (dunno if that made sense)...
So you could not assign the variable to htmlentities it... but if it was input by a user then you could...