PHP Help needed!

[Boreded]

how do i get a new window to open with the URL a user types in a form, for example if you were to type a website address into a box it will open that address in a new window.
its hard to explain what i need this for, but anyone know how to do this?

 

[Tree]

<form action="URL" method="POST">

The action property defines where the user goes.

 

[Fried]

Tree, that's not what he wanted. But anyway, you can use the following code.

Form Code:

<form action="redirect.php" method="GET" target="blank">
<input type="text" name="url">
<input type="submit" value="Go">
</form>

redirect.php Code:

<?php
header("Location: ".$_GET['url']);
?>

I haven't tested it but it should work.

 

[redboyke]

why GET?

 

[brutetal]

GET or POST, it will both work.

 

[redboyke]

get is not a good methode

 

[Tree]

So you can change three letters and add a fourth one. Not too hard. GET is good for passing small amounts of non-sensitive data. Anything more than that should be used with POST.

 

[stuffradio]

Get is used to get information from a file, post posts information to a file

 

[krakjoe]

^^ nope, not even a litle bit, they are both server globals, they are both for retrieving information from the server, the get method reads a pre-formatted url to read variables, when you use the post method the information is hidden and posted straight to the apache processes cache, php / cgi /rails / asp or whatever reads this information and deciphers variables in the same way as get, only hidden from sight.

 

[AMC]

so one is more secure ?? sorry im a real php noob

 

[krakjoe]

Depends what you want to transmit, if you just want to tell the webserver which page of a search you want then you might use script.php?page=1 however if on page one you had to login it wouldn't be a good idea to have the username and password in the url and so you would use the post method to hide these variables, generally any data that is large (+5 chars) or sensitive at any level you would post, anything else it's safe to use get.

On both methods, it's always a good idea to sanitize the characters with stripslashes(trim($_POST['var'])) <-- same for get, also if the data is ever used for a mysql_query statement then make sure you use mysql_real_escape_strim( stripslashes( trim( $var ) ) ) or similar, look it up...

Also, try to check for instance if you expect a form to post numers, that the posted variable is numbers, or vice versa..