Notices

[Jeff]

I'm still coming to grips with Notices, particularly on missing indexes.

Lets say we have a form full of check boxes. An unchecked checkbox is
not sent in $_REQUEST and if you do something with
$_REQUEST['my_checkbox'] you'll get a notice. Is there a clean method of
dealing with this?

I'm a recovering perl programmer so conciseness is still important. I
suppose I'll get over it eventually but I still miss ||= .

Jeff

[Sjoerd]

Re: Notices

On Aug 9, 9:11 pm, Jeff <jeff@spam_me_n ot.comwrote:

   I'm still coming to grips with Notices, particularly on missing indexes.
>
   Lets say we have a form full of check boxes. An unchecked checkboxis
not sent in $_REQUEST and if you do something with
$_REQUEST['my_checkbox'] you'll get a notice. Is there a clean method of
dealing with this?
>
   I'm a recovering perl programmer so conciseness is still important.. I
suppose I'll get over it eventually but I still miss ||= .
>
   Jeff

A typical solution is to configure your PHP to not show notices
anymore, for they are annoying.

Alternatively, you may test if there really is a
$_REQUEST['my_checkbox'] with either of the following:
isset($_REQUEST['my_checkbox'])
array_key_exist s('my_checkbox' , $_REQUEST)

Of course, isset() is a language construct rather than a function.
That is why you do not get a notice, even though it looks like you are
referencing $_REQUEST['my_checkbox'].

[Jerry Stuckle]

Re: Notices

Jeff wrote:

I'm still coming to grips with Notices, particularly on missing indexes.
>
Lets say we have a form full of check boxes. An unchecked checkbox is
not sent in $_REQUEST and if you do something with
$_REQUEST['my_checkbox'] you'll get a notice. Is there a clean method of
dealing with this?
>
I'm a recovering perl programmer so conciseness is still important. I
suppose I'll get over it eventually but I still miss ||= .
>
Jeff
>

You should NEVER configure a development server to ignore notices. Each
one is a potential bug in your program - which is why they are being
displayed. They are notices to let you know there MAY be a problem. A
good programmer will fix these notices.

And it's easy to do. Just use isset() to determine of the checkbox is
set, or not, i.e.

$my_checkbox = isset($_POST['my_checkbox']) ? $_POST['my_checkbox'] : '';

The last value can be an empty string, null, 0 or whatever you want for
a value when the checkbox is not set.

Also, you should always user $_POST or $_GET instead of $_REQUEST.
$_REQUEST gets its data from $_GET, $_POST or $_COOKIE, and can too
easily cause problems (i.e. what happens if two years from now,
somewhere else in your program, you call setcookie('my_c heckbox', 1)?

This code could break, among other things.

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

[Geoff Berrow]

Re: Notices

Message-ID: <PZidneldV_Sruj _VnZ2dnUVZ_gedn Z2d@earthlink.c omfrom Jeff
contained the following:

>But missing index notices are NEVER harmless! They may not cause a
>problem now. But they will later.

>
>I remain skeptical that an undef has more harmful potential than an
>empty string.

when I first started with PHP you used to see a lot of

if($var){...}

in tutorials. So naturally I did the same. Recently I was updating an
old website and I saw that a notice had appeared. Clearly the ISP had
changed its PHP version to one with a higher level of error reporting.

--
Geoff Berrow 011000100110110 0010000000110
001101101011011 001000110111101 100111001011
100110001101101 111001011100111 010101101011

http://slipperyhill.co.uk