Displaying links in PHP/MySQL?

Question

Thank you for answering my question at Ignore null results in MySQL JOIN queries

I've created my own radio station website in localhost, at http://myradiostation.localhost

This is the code:

<?php
    $connection = mysql_connect("localhost", "root", "PASSWORD") or die("Error connecting to database");
    mysql_select_db("radio1", $connection);
    $result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM presenters;", $connection) or die("error querying database");
    $i = 0;
    while($result_ar = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
    ?>

This is the HTML code:

            <div class="divider"></div>
            <div class="main" style="width:552px;">
                <img src="<?php echo $result_ar['image']; ?>" width=115 height=60>
                <div class="time"><?php echo $result_ar['airtime']; ?></div>
                <div class="show"><h3><b><a href="<?php echo $result_ar['link']; ?>"><?php echo $result_ar['presenter']; ?></a></b></h3>
                    <p><?php echo $result_ar['showinfo']; ?></p></div>
                <div class="footer"></div>
            </div>
    <?php
    $i+=1;
    }
    ?>

It does work, except for one thing - the content without links still links back to the page itself, even though the database columns have some blank content.

Here's the SQL code - create a database called radio1 in PHPmyadmin and this code:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `presenters` (
  `presenter` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  `link` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  `image` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  `airtime` time NOT NULL,
  `showinfo` varchar(255) NOT NULL
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

--
-- Dumping data for table `presenters`
--

INSERT INTO `presenters` (`presenter`, `link`, `image`, `airtime`, `showinfo`) VALUES
('Non-Stop Nightshift', '', '', '01:00:00', 'More Music Variety through your weekend'),
('Greatest Hits', '', '', '06:00:00', 'Hit Music now!'),
('John Doe', 'http://www.myradiostation.localhost/johndoe', '', '08:00:00', 'Join John at the weekend');

It works with no major issues, except the linking one.

It displays properly, like this:

https://i.sstatic.net/b91Dj.jpg

How can I fix this? (if there's no images I suppose I could set a default value in the field though), and what would you recommend?

In short, how should I store HTML links in a PHPMyadmin database?

Thanks

Is that the entirety of your code? Where do your anchor (<a>) tags begin? — George Cummins
– George Cummins, Commented Jul 15, 2011 at 19:37
<div class="show"><h3><b><a href="<?php echo $result_ar['link']; ?>"><?php echo $result_ar['presenter']; ?></a></b></h3> is the code with the anchor tags. — avenas8808
– avenas8808, Commented Jul 15, 2011 at 19:40

Eric · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-15 19:44:39Z

0

Its not a PHP or MySQL problem. It's HTML 101. Whenever there is an <a href=""> tag, it will link to that page if it's blank. I believe that this will fix it: <php> If $array['link '] echo '<a>' You can make it a bit neater, but this is the basic idea.

answered Jul 15, 2011 at 19:44

Eric

3712 silver badges11 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Comments

George Cummins · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-15 20:53:33Z

0

You will need to use a conditional statement to detect rows without links. Something like this:

<div class="show"><h3><b>
<?php
if ( empty( $result_ar['link'] ) ) {
    echo $result_ar['presenter'];
}
else {
    echo '<a href="' . $result_ar['link'] . '">' . $result_ar['presenter'] . '</a>';
}
?>
</b></h3>

edited Jul 15, 2011 at 20:53

answered Jul 15, 2011 at 19:40

George Cummins

29k8 gold badges74 silver badges91 bronze badges

8 Comments

avenas8808 Over a year ago

Thanks! Where should I replace the code within the original coding then?

George Cummins Over a year ago

@avenas8808: You can replace the line <div class="show"><h3><b><a href="<?php echo $result_ar['link']; ?>"><?php echo $result_ar['presenter']; ?></a></b></h3> with the code above.

avenas8808 Over a year ago

Tried that; got this error: Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '{' in C:\www\vhosts\localradio\schedsun.php on line 13

George Cummins Over a year ago

There was a missing right-parenthesis. I updated the answer. More importantly, do you understand what I did here? If the link field in the DB is empty, we are just outputing the name. Otherwise, we construct and output a link.

horatio Over a year ago

I think I do: on line 18: there is an extra double quote after the closing > for the link tag ($result_ar['link'] . '">"' ) should be ( $result_ar['link'] . '">' )

|

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Displaying links in PHP/MySQL?

2 Answers 2

Comments

8 Comments

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

Comments

8 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related