Entry

How do I pass multiple variable in the URL String?

Dec 13th, 2002 00:53
Philip Olson, Kris Erickson, Corky Williams, http://www.php.net/variables.external

The most common forms of receiving GET information from an URL is as 
follows:
  http://www.example.com/test.php?fruit=apple&type=sauce&id=402
In this case, the first argument seperator is a '?' followed by a 
series of '&'  This is configurable, instead of '&' some use a semi-
colon ';', and using '&' isn't uncommon either.  See the 
arg_seperator setting in your php.ini for more information.
There are a few ways to get this information many of which depend on 
your particular servers settings (see php.ini).  If test.php in our 
example above made a call to the phpinfo() function, we'd see the 
information in various formats.  For example:  
  a) If track_vars = on
     - ALL php versions since 4.0.3 have this setting on, most 
       versions before did too.
       print $HTTP_GET_VARS['fruit']; // apple
       print $HTTP_GET_VARS['type'];  // sauce
       print $HTTP_GET_VARS['id'];    // 402
     As of PHP 4.1.0 the preferred Autoglobals / Superglobals
     became available and are:
       print $_GET['fruit'];
       print $_GET['type'];
       print $_GET['id'];
     Note that the above are available regardless of your
     register_globals setting.
  b) If register_globals = on
     - Is on by default on versions before 4.2.0 and you are
       encouraged to NOT rely on or use this method.
     http://www.php.net/manual/en/configuration.php#ini.register-globals
     http://www.php.net/manual/en/security.registerglobals.php
       print $fruit; // apple
       print $type;  // sauce
       print $id;    // 402
  c) Another predefined variable is QUERY_STRING
     // This prints: fruit=apple&type=sauce&id=402          
     print $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'];  
Those are the most common methods.  You may want to encode your data 
before passing it to the URL (like if it includes =, &, %, + or 
other 'unsafe' characters).  For example:
  $var = '++ I'll be < %encoded% > okay? ++';
  $id  = 402;
  <?php
    $url  = '<a href="http://www.example.com/test.php';
    $url .= '?var='. urlencode(htmlspecialchars($var));
    $url .= '&id='.  $id;
    $url .= '">Pass a couple variables through GET method!</a>';
    print $url;
  ?>
Dealing with "encoding" is beyond the scope of this FAQ.  See the 
following for more information:
  http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.urlencode.php
  http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.htmlspecialchars.php
  http://www.jmarshall.com/easy/http/http_footnotes.html#urlencoding
  http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2396.html
Also see:
  http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.variables.predefined.php
  http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.variables.external.php