$_POST case sensitivity

[Bill H]

I wouldn't consider myself a newbie to PHP since I have never written
one line of code in it (am a perl guy myself), but part of a team I am
working with is writing some php interfaces into a database and I
noticed that they are relaying on HTML form value names to always be
lowercase in their code (ie $_POST['save'] (fyi that may be typed
wrong)) and from my experience it is always better, when reading in
the post information to convert the the form value name to uppercase
on the off chance that one web page may have NAME="save" and another
may have NAME="Save", this way you can will always get the value.

In perl this is easy cause you are pulling in the name / value pairs
straight from the ENV value. But since, from what I see and they say,
PHP does this for you and puts it into $_POST, is there a way to tell
PHP to always convert the name of the value to uppercase?

Bill H

[Paul Lautman]

Re: $_POST case sensitivity

Bill H wrote:

>I wouldn't consider myself a newbie to PHP since I have never written
one line of code in it (am a perl guy myself), but part of a team I am
working with is writing some php interfaces into a database and I
noticed that they are relaying on HTML form value names to always be
lowercase in their code (ie $_POST['save'] (fyi that may be typed
wrong)) and from my experience it is always better, when reading in
the post information to convert the the form value name to uppercase
on the off chance that one web page may have NAME="save" and another
may have NAME="Save", this way you can will always get the value.

In my experience php scripts are written to interact with specific web
pages. You code the web page to match the script that will process its
input.

[macca]

Re: $_POST case sensitivity

$_POST is just another array

foreach ($_POST as $key=>$value){

strtoupper($key );

}

[Tim Roberts]

Re: $_POST case sensitivity

Bill H <bill@ts1000.us wrote:

>
>...
>I noticed that they are relaying on HTML form value names to always be
>lowercase in their code (ie $_POST['save'] (fyi that may be typed
>wrong))

Nope, that's correct.

>...and from my experience it is always better, when reading in
>the post information to convert the the form value name to uppercase
>on the off chance that one web page may have NAME="save" and another
>may have NAME="Save", this way you can will always get the value.

I find this philosophy interesting. Because these names ARE
case-sensitive, I would consider it a programming error to use different
spellings in different web pages. It seems to me that this kind of
mangling is just hiding errors and inconsistancies . I mean, if the company
standard is that "<inputfiel d names should always be in lower case", then
by golly they should always be in lower case, and a programmer who writes
NAME="Save" has committed an error.
--
Tim Roberts, timr@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Re: $_POST case sensitivity

Tim Roberts wrote:

Bill H <bill@ts1000.us wrote:

>...
>I noticed that they are relaying on HTML form value names to always be
>lowercase in their code (ie $_POST['save'] (fyi that may be typed
>wrong))

>
Nope, that's correct.
>

>...and from my experience it is always better, when reading in
>the post information to convert the the form value name to uppercase
>on the off chance that one web page may have NAME="save" and another
>may have NAME="Save", this way you can will always get the value.

>
I find this philosophy interesting. Because these names ARE
case-sensitive, I would consider it a programming error to use different
spellings in different web pages. It seems to me that this kind of
mangling is just hiding errors and inconsistancies . I mean, if the company
standard is that "<inputfiel d names should always be in lower case", then
by golly they should always be in lower case, and a programmer who writes
NAME="Save" has committed an error.

And you end up with the sort of mess this computer is in.
I decided to include case sensitivity in the OS-X re-format. Now I cant
install Adobe CS3.

Adobe being Mac people have always relied on the fact that case didn't
matter.

And can't cope with life when it does.

Its a pain when I have a pair of directories on a samba mount called
images and Images, and he computer wrecks the whole file system trying
to work out which is which.

[Geoff Berrow]

Re: $_POST case sensitivity

Message-ID: <poj074df5uogtc h41qe5ujc2ells5 8m1fv@4ax.comfr om Tim
Roberts contained the following:

>I find this philosophy interesting. Because these names ARE
>case-sensitive, I would consider it a programming error to use different
>spellings in different web pages.

Agreed but it may be sensible to allow for the possibility of the use of
incorrect case if the people preparing the html are not programmers.
Thanks to Bill Gates there are a lot of people who do not recognise that
case sensitivity exists.
--
Geoff Berrow 011000100110110 0010000000110
001101101011011 001000110111101 100111001011
100110001101101 111001011100111 010101101011

[Jeff]

Re: $_POST case sensitivity

Bill H wrote:

I wouldn't consider myself a newbie to PHP since I have never written
one line of code in it (am a perl guy myself), but part of a team I am
working with is writing some php interfaces into a database and I
noticed that they are relaying on HTML form value names to always be
lowercase in their code (ie $_POST['save'] (fyi that may be typed
wrong)) and from my experience it is always better, when reading in
the post information to convert the the form value name to uppercase
on the off chance that one web page may have NAME="save" and another
may have NAME="Save", this way you can will always get the value.
>
In perl this is easy cause you are pulling in the name / value pairs
straight from the ENV value. But since, from what I see and they say,
PHP does this for you and puts it into $_POST, is there a way to tell
PHP to always convert the name of the value to uppercase?

Not tested. My PHP is not great, but why not:

foreach($_POST as $key){
$_POST[strtoupper($key )]=$_POST[$key];
}

Jeff

>
Bill H

[larry@portcommodore.com]

Re: $_POST case sensitivity

On Jul 6, 10:37 am, Jeff <jeff@spam_me_n ot.comwrote:

Not tested. My PHP is not great, but why not:
>
foreach($_POST as $key){
$_POST[strtoupper($key )]=$_POST[$key];
>
}
>

It would be more like:

$strtoupper($_P OST[$key]) = $_POST[$key];

If that doesn't work this will:

$var = strtoupper($_PO ST[$key]);
$$var = $_POST[$key];

note: Always make sure you validate/filter any POST data that could
lead to vulnerabilities .

[Jerry Stuckle]

Re: $_POST case sensitivity

Geoff Berrow wrote:

Message-ID: <poj074df5uogtc h41qe5ujc2ells5 8m1fv@4ax.comfr om Tim
Roberts contained the following:
>

>I find this philosophy interesting. Because these names ARE
>case-sensitive, I would consider it a programming error to use different
>spellings in different web pages.

>
>
Agreed but it may be sensible to allow for the possibility of the use of
incorrect case if the people preparing the html are not programmers.
Thanks to Bill Gates there are a lot of people who do not recognise that
case sensitivity exists.

Nope, just teach them the correct way to do it. It's never a good idea
to hide programming problems. They always come back to haunt you in the
end. And by that time they are much more expensive to fix than they
would have been if the job had been done right in the first place.

--
=============== ===
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attgl obal.net
=============== ===

[Bill H]

Re: $_POST case sensitivity

On Jul 6, 3:12 pm, Jerry Stuckle <jstuck...@attg lobal.netwrote:

Geoff Berrow wrote:

Message-ID: <poj074df5uogtc h41qe5ujc2ells5 8m...@4ax.comfr om Tim
Roberts contained the following:

>

I find this philosophy interesting.  Because these names ARE
case-sensitive, I would consider it a programming error to use different
spellings in different web pages.  

>

Agreed but it may be sensible to allow for the possibility of the use of
incorrect case if the people preparing the html are not programmers.
Thanks to Bill Gates there are a lot of people who do not recognise that
case sensitivity exists.

>
Nope, just teach them the correct way to do it.  It's never a good idea
to hide programming problems.  They always come back to haunt you in the
end.  And by that time they are much more expensive to fix than they
would have been if the job had been done right in the first place.
>
--
=============== ===
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstuck...@attgl obal.net
=============== ===

Agreed they should always follow a set way, all form value names
uppercase (or lowercase), but you never know what someone may do
without thinking in the future. On the perl side, I try to always make
my form value names uppercase so they will always work with a cgi I
may have written awhile back, but by having this catch in there
(converting the key to uppercase) I never have to wonder if the form
valeu name is the reason why it somethign didn't work the way I
expected.

All the examples I have seen here (and thanks for them) all seem to be
making a 2nd entry in the $_POST array with the key value corrected to
uppercase. So am I correct in assuming you can't just tell PHP to do
it?

Bill H

[Jerry Stuckle]

Re: $_POST case sensitivity

Bill H wrote:

On Jul 6, 3:12 pm, Jerry Stuckle <jstuck...@attg lobal.netwrote:

>Geoff Berrow wrote:

>>Message-ID: <poj074df5uogtc h41qe5ujc2ells5 8m...@4ax.comfr om Tim
>>Roberts contained the following:
>>>I find this philosophy interesting. Because these names ARE
>>>case-sensitive, I would consider it a programming error to use different
>>>spellings in different web pages.
>>Agreed but it may be sensible to allow for the possibility of the use of
>>incorrect case if the people preparing the html are not programmers.
>>Thanks to Bill Gates there are a lot of people who do not recognise that
>>case sensitivity exists.

>Nope, just teach them the correct way to do it. It's never a good idea
>to hide programming problems. They always come back to haunt you in the
>end. And by that time they are much more expensive to fix than they
>would have been if the job had been done right in the first place.
>>
>--
>============== ====
>Remove the "x" from my email address
>Jerry Stuckle
>JDS Computer Training Corp.
>jstuck...@attg lobal.net
>============== ====

>
Agreed they should always follow a set way, all form value names
uppercase (or lowercase), but you never know what someone may do
without thinking in the future. On the perl side, I try to always make
my form value names uppercase so they will always work with a cgi I
may have written awhile back, but by having this catch in there
(converting the key to uppercase) I never have to wonder if the form
valeu name is the reason why it somethign didn't work the way I
expected.
>
All the examples I have seen here (and thanks for them) all seem to be
making a 2nd entry in the $_POST array with the key value corrected to
uppercase. So am I correct in assuming you can't just tell PHP to do
it?
>
Bill H
>

No, PHP is case sensitive, just like HTML is. And that is the correct
way to do things.

You need standards on how to do things, and people need to follow those
standards. Otherwise, you have chaos. And if they do something else in
the future, the code breaks. That's simple.

But as an example as to why you shouldn't do it -

<input type=text name="NAME" ...>

Now what happens if later someone comes along with:

<input type=hidden name="name" ...>

In over 40 years of programming, I've seen things like this happen way
too many times because, rather than enforcing standards, someone tried
to cover up errors.

But when you set standards and enforce them, you have fewer errors in
the code, and find those errors earlier in the development process.

--
=============== ===
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attgl obal.net
=============== ===

[Paul Lautman]

Re: $_POST case sensitivity

macca wrote:

$_POST is just another array
>
foreach ($_POST as $key=>$value){
>
strtoupper($key );
>
}

I KNOW that! What the !¬"!££$£$ are you telling me for?

Learn how to post replies!

[macca]

Re: $_POST case sensitivity

blow me arse wipe.

[mike.coakley@gmail.com]

Re: $_POST case sensitivity

If all you are tying to do is uppercase (or lowercase - whatever) the
key names of an array you can use the PHP function
array_change_ke y_case.

http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.array-change-key-case.php

It can change the values to upper or lower case depending upon the way
you call it. No need to build your own iterator.

So in your case: $_POST = array_change_ke y_case($_POST, CASE_UPPER);

BUT of course as someone else mentioned you should always NOT TRUST
input from the web so you should probably iterate over the $_POST
array anyway so do something like this:

$myPost = $_POST;
$_POST = array();
while (list($key, $value) = each($myPost)) {
$_POST[strtoupper($key )] = htmlentities($v alue);
}

Of course there are a million ways to to this and the htmlentities
(see http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.htmlentities.php) might not
be how you want to handle input "cleansing" but this is a start.

Thanks,

Mike

[Bill H]

Re: $_POST case sensitivity

On Jul 6, 7:43 pm, mike.coak...@gm ail.com wrote:

If all you are tying to do is uppercase (or lowercase - whatever) the
key names of an array you can use the PHP function
array_change_ke y_case.
>

http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.array-change-key-case.php

>
It can change the values to upper or lower case depending upon the way
you call it. No need to build your own iterator.
>
So in your case: $_POST = array_change_ke y_case($_POST, CASE_UPPER);
>
BUT of course as someone else mentioned you should always NOT TRUST
input from the web so you should probably iterate over the $_POST
array anyway so do something like this:
>
$myPost = $_POST;
$_POST = array();
while (list($key, $value) = each($myPost)) {
  $_POST[strtoupper($key )] = htmlentities($v alue);
>
}
>
Of course there are a million ways to to this and the htmlentities
(seehttp://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.htmlen tities.php) might not
be how you want to handle input "cleansing" but this is a start.
>
Thanks,
>
Mike

Thanks Mike - this is what I am looking for. The problem I forsee and
am trying to avoid is after the database guys get done building their
php pages to interface with the database and the designers then take
over them in dreamweaver that they may mess form element names up
without realizing what they are doing since they don't no anythign
about programming, they just make the pages "pretty".

Bill H