Apostrophe PHP problem – Putting an ‘ into a mySQL database

You may notice that when you are putting data into your mySQL database from PHP, somehow a magical back slash appears from nowhere. This happens basically because PHP doesn't want anyone inserting malicious code or SQL injections into your database. The slash is there to protect us from our own coding. It appears from nowhere, and it is aptly named "Magic Quotes".  There are a couple of places online that explain how to address this, but it still took me a good few hours to really understand what I needed to do.

.

The first step for me was to get the input from the HTML form that was submitted:

$name=$_POST['name'];

Now, your code checks to see if Magic Quotes is on in your server's version of PHP
If it is, it will remove any of those extra slashes in names like O'Brian which was O\'Brian

if(get_magic_quotes_gpc())
{
$name = stripslashes($name);
}

Now you can use $name as it is in your code to display without the annoying backslash. To make it safe for your database, however, you need one final step. This last bit prepares your variable to be safely put in your mySQL database:

$name = mysql_real_escape_string($name);

I'm still a relative newbie at this stuff and wasn't able to find the above few lines of code just how I needed them. Hopefully they will be of service to you as you learn PHP

PHP – Global Variables / Passing Variables to another page

I was at a total loss when trying to set a variable that I could use from one PHP page to another. The POST and GET functions worked to a point for the basic stuff, but I was quickly outgrowing the introductory course. I wanted to do something like an #include for each page, or to set a global variable that each individual page could access. It was extremely difficult to realize, but I finally figured out that what I wanted to do was to set a Session variable. As long as the session variable is set, you can use it at any time from any of your other PHP pages. This turned out to be incredibly easy:

session_start(); //this goes at the top of each page - it either creates or maintains a session with the server

$_SESSION['user_name']; //creates a session variable and can be assigned to a regular variable

$user_name = $_SESSION['user_name']; //now the 'local' variable is assigned from the 'global'

Session variables are amazing, you can just call on them from out of the blue and they will be there as long as the session is open. Sessions do expire after a prolonged period of time or if you close the browser or call on a PHP function to destroy it.  I had a great "Aha!" moment once I realized that I could assign a variable in one file and easily use it in any other PHP file. I guess this is what happens when you teach yourself PHP from online tutorials.