Characters Issue

[ziycon]

I have a textarea and when i add content to the DB say:

#hello&again

It will ad fine, but if i query that string from the DB and place it in a textarea to be edited and save it, anything after and including the & is removed, this seems to happen with & and ; characters. These are the only to i've come across so far, can't seem to figure it out!??

[TheServant]

Not 100% sure but do you have magic_quotes on? Do you strip/add slashes?Can you use html replacements?

[ziycon]

magic_quotes is turned off in the htaccess file and strip slashes is being used!?

[Markus]

With HTML & has a special use. Change it to it's entity equivalent (&)

http://uk3.php.net/manual/en/function.htmlspecialchars.php

[ziycon]

That will just give the same problem because the two characters causing the problem are bout in it & and ;!?!

[TheServant]

What is your database saving it as? If you have MyPHPAdmin or something to view your database values, see if "&" and ";" characters are being stored there. If so, then it is your database output script that we need to look at, otherwise it is the input.

[ziycon]

Ok, i've tested it and this is how it is stored:

I create a new article on the site with the & symbol and it saves to the database, it shows up in the database as & and then when i edit the article on the website it outputs the symbol & but it removes it when saving from the edit!?

[TheServant]

Well I guess the obvious question is: does the edit get processed the same way as the new form? I imagine no which is why there is a difference. Can you post any differences between how those two forms are handled?