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To: "Sara Golemon" <pollita@php.net>,
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Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 17:42:35 -0400
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Message-ID: <200308281742.35888.ilia@prohost.org>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Proposed Function: urlencode_array
From: ilia@prohost.org (Ilia Alshanetsky)

I all my time coding PHP I have yet to encounter where such a function would 
be useful. It most cases, it would be simpler to generate the final data 
rather then 2 source arrays, which then will be used to generate the final 
query string. The one possible issue that I see is people using 
urlencode_array($_GET) and forgetting about things like magic_quotes_gpc 
resulting in data corruption etc... Many people also do quite a bit of input 
validation and usually re-use the same code to build the query string for 
subsequent pages.

-0.5

Ilia
 

On August 28, 2003 05:16 pm, Sara Golemon wrote:
> proto urlencode_array(array formdata [, string numeric_prefix])
>
> Purpose: Generate a form encoded query string from an associative (or
> indexed) array.
>
> Example:
>
>   $formdata = array('page'=>'home',
>
> 'users'=>array('bob'=>array('fname'=>'Bob','lname'=>'Smith'),
>
> 'jdoe'=>array('fname'=>'Jane','lname'=>'Doe')),
>                                'errors'=>array('missing date','missing
> time','sums not =='),
>                                 'other data');
>
>   echo urlencode_array($formdata);
>   /* outputs the following
>
> page=home&users[bob][fname]=Bob&users[bob][lname]=Smith&users[jdoe][fname]=
>J
> ane&users[jdoe][lname]=Doe&errors[0]=missing+date&errors[1]=missing+time&er
>r ors[2]=sums+not+%3D%3D&0=other+data
>  */
>
> Example 2:
>
>   Same array as above but encoded using a prefix for numeric values:
>
>   echo urlencode_array($formdata, 'misc_');
>
> page=home&users[bob][fname]=Bob&users[bob][lname]=Smith&users[jdoe][fname]=
>J
> ane&users[jdoe][lname]=Doe&errors[0]=missing+date&errors[1]=missing+time&er
>r ors[2]=sums+not+%3D%3D&misc_0=other+data
>
>
> Note Example 2 allows numerically indexed arrays to generate query strings
> which will yield legal variable names, but doesn't enforce such behavior.
> Also, the numeric_prefix only applies to the root array's indexes since
> subsequence arrays may be indexed without compromise.
>
> The patch is available at:
> http://frankenbox.alphaweb.net/test/urlencode_array.diff.txt
>
> The underlying function php_url_encode_hash() is meant for later use in
> http_request() and for handling a context option in the http:// wrapper,
> but it seems as though there's no harm exporting it to userland. (Hence the
> addition of urlencode_array() -- I'm flexible on the name,
> array_urlencode() has been suggested as well)
>
> I'm looking for a couple +1s before I actually commit this though.
>
> -Sara