[FX.php List] Interesting form problem and solution

[Chris Hansen]

Ouch!  I had a similar problem once: I was connecting to a client's  
existing database and one field name had a trailing space in it.   
Yeargh!

On a related tangent, this is one of the great things about BBEdit's  
"Show Invisibles" option.  It has sometimes driven folks in classes  
I've taught nuts, but seeing a little gray diamond (space) or  
triangle (tab) where it shouldn't be can really jump out at you.

Thanks for the tip, Bob.

--Chris Hansen
   FileMaker 8 Certified Developer
   FileMaker 7 Certified Developer
   Creator of FX.php
   "The best way from FileMaker to the Web."
   www.iViking.org


On Dec 6, 2007, at 11:39 AM, Bob Patin wrote:

> I just finished taking a 100-question survey that was written in  
> IWP, and rewrote it in PHP. The survey has lots of pulldowns, as  
> well as quite a few sets of checkboxes.
>
> The survey is in 4 separate pages; each of my form pages displays  
> previously-entered data (participants can go back and edit their  
> answers), and then POSTs to edit the survey data.
>
> On Safari, everything worked perfectly; all the questions were  
> being written to the database without any trouble. However, in  
> Firefox on the Mac, and on Firefox and IE on the PC, some answers  
> weren't being written to the database, or at least, weren't  
> displaying in the database.
>
> After scratching my head for an hour, I finally looked at the page  
> source of the forms, and discovered that a lot of the checkbox  
> names (which are pulled from 40 or 50 value lists that client had  
> put into his database) had tabs at the end of each line.
>
> When I went into the database and backspaced out all of his tabs,  
> everything started working.
>
> So I thought I might mention this here on the list, in case someone  
> else should have a problem like this and not be able to find the  
> cause. This was driving us crazy, and I couldn't see anything in my  
> code that would cause intermittent failure...
>
> Hope this helps someone at some point,
>
> Bob Patin
> Longterm Solutions
> bob at longtermsolutions.com
> 615-333-6858
> http://www.longtermsolutions.com
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