This error was making me crazy with my PHP / mySQL project ! No matter what I seemed to do, the error was the same: Column count doesn't match value count at row 1
I was trying to insert some values into a mySQL database, and I was first have problems with the following code:
$mysql_query = "INSERT INTO reports VALUES ('$data1', '$data2', '$data3', '$data4', '$data6', '$user_ID', '')";
After a lot of headaches, I realized that my database had more rows then the query I was using. I forgot to list $data5 in the query. (I've changed the variable names to more clearly illustrate my mistake)
But then I had the following query string and was STILL getting the same error:
$mysql_query = "INSERT INTO reports VALUES ('$data1', '$data2', '$data3', '$data4', '$data5' '$data6', '$user_ID', '')";
I kept banging my head against the fridge when I realized that my query string was missing a comma between $data5 and $data6. Once I put the comma in, there were no worries.
This problem was especially frustrating, because the database wouldn't insert the data and there was no warning message. To see a mySQL PHP error message, you need to explicitly ask for one by including the following:
echo "Error message = ".mysql_error();
Having added the above code, I could finally start to identify why the INSERT command wasn't working. What a pain. Of course, this isn't the preferred method to insert data anyway into a mySQL database, but maybe understanding the error message will help you.
I recently noticed that my mysql database was filling up with a lot of strange junk code, like StartFragment and <w:WordDocument>, and other miscellaneous xml garbage. I quickly discovered that the problem stemmed from some users copying and pasting text from Microsoft Word into the HTML form editor. This was creating havoc in the database, as frequently the tags would be broken, and then formatting would suffer elsewhere. I couldn't find any decent solutions online, so I created my own, albeit imperfect, solution.
Step 1 : Recognize problematic code in the string-- assign variables for these code fragments.
$bad_fragment = "<w:";
$bad_fragment2 = "StartFragment";
Step 2: Check to see if the form submitted contains either bad code fragment.
$contains_junk_code = strpos($submitted_form, $bad_fragment);
$contains_junk_code2 = strpos($submitted_form, $bad_fragment2);
Step 3: If the bad code was found, go ahead and strip out ALL formatting.
$submitted_form = strip_tags($submitted_form);
Of course, you could just always strip the tags off every single string formatted using the above function, but I want to keep HTML formatting if it's not problematic. If the bad MS Word xml code fragments are found, they are stripped and I alert the user.
echo "Your submission has been saved as text only. This occurs when copying and pasting from MS Word. To add formatting, edit the text by clicking below.";
While this solution is not perfect, it was the most simple and straightforward approach I could think of for my web app. Hopefully it will help you or inspire you to create a better fix.
$bad_tag = "w:";
$bad_tag2 = "!--";
$bad_tag3 = "StartFragment";