Preserved Topic: unknown entity (validation) when using a '&' in a URL (Page 1 of 1)

I have a line like this:
<B><a class="supersmallred" href="/wanted.php?fid=17">More info</a>

can you escape it with '\'?


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I believe Mr. Max wrote "&amp;amp;" in his post a few times, forgetting that UBB changes that to "&".

So, why can't you embed &amp;amp; into your URLs? most browsers, I believe, will replace them with & and send the correct URL.

Ahhh, I made a mistake while editing my post that was above Slime's reply, and accidentally deleted it. Anyway, here's the text of my reply...

Using ampersands in URLs is not valid for quite some time. Everything that starts with "&" sign is treated as HTML entity nowadays (i.e. &amp;nbsp; ), and in your case validator looks for entity called 'fid' (which is in fact a variable name and not a real HTML entity).

Anyway, you have two options here:

1. Forget about validation and leave everything as it is.
2. Change all "&" signs in URLs to "&amp;amp;" or semi-colon ";" and modify PHP configuration, so that it knows that "&amp;amp;" / semi-colon are separators. Options that you need to modify are located in php.ini file and they are entitled "arg_separator.input" and "arg_separator.output"...




[This message has been edited by mr.maX (edited 08-07-2002).]

quote:

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Using ampersands in URLs is not valid for quite some time.

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"not valid" is probably too strong a statement. IIS doesn't even recognize the semicolon delimiter. i guess i shouldn't try to back up my arguments using MS software, but i doubt they are alone in their lack of support.

and who decided that semicolons were better than ampersands? what's the reasoning behind the shift?

quote:

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1. Forget about validation and leave everything as it is.
2. Change all "&" signs in URLs to "&amp;" or semi-colon ";" and modify PHP configuration, so that it knows that "&amp;" / semi-colon are separators. Options that you need to modify are located in php.ini file and they are entitled "arg_separator.input" and "arg_separator.output"...

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Hmmm...well, I'll have to settle for #1. I could do #2 for internal URLs, but I have THOUSANDS of links to external pages, and that'll cause the validation to fail, since I can't change those.

Thanks for the info!

Hlaford, according to HTML specification, everything that starts with "&" sign should be treated as HTML entity (no matter where it's located). That's why using "&" alone in URLs is not valid. Most web browsers will recover from this fine (i.e. they won't treat text that follows "&" sign as HTML entity), but W3C HTML validator doesn't allow this. In most cases simply replacing all "&" signs with "&amp;amp;" will work fine, because web browsers will translate "&amp;amp;" back to "&" and pass it like that to web server, but as usual YMMV...

You are aware, of course, that the *browser* makes the change from &amp;amp; to &? It happens *before* the request is sent. You don't actually have to change the URL of what you're linking to.

For instance, if I made a link to "http://www.somewhere.com/?action=this&amp;amp;query=that" then it would actually be a link to http://www.somewhere.com/?action=this&query=that. It's not like the owner of somewhere.com has to change their server to accept &amp;amp; instead of &.

It's the equivalent of escaping a double quote within a javascript statement:

var mystring = "he said \"hello\"";

In actuality, internally the string is represented without the backslashes. The escaping is just for the sake of input, after that they're forgotten about.

True, and I COULD write a function to change external links.......

Sure - just give me MORE work....

yeah, damnit! get to work, slave!
*cracks whip*


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