How do you fine duplicates? What if I want to know where the duplicates are?

The trick is to use count() and compare it to an integer.

SELECT count(*), locations.* FROM locations GROUP BY number HAVING COUNT(*) > 1

That will select a count of unique instances of a value from a table called “locations”, group them by a field called “number” where the count is greater than 1. In other words, it will return all the fields where there are more than one instance of the same value in the column “number”.

Did you find this post useful or have questions or comments? Please let me know!

The problem lies in escaping characters in your SQL queries. Do I addslashes()? Is magic_quotes_gpc enabled?

My quick-and-dirty solution is the following function:


function request_cleanup()
{
  if(get_magic_quotes_gpc() == 0)
  {
    foreach($_REQUEST as $req_key => $req_value)
    {
      $_REQUEST[$req_key]=addslashes($_REQUEST[$req_key]);
    }
  }
}


By calling that function on every page that deals with inserting content in to the database, I know will will get my content escaped correctly.

Of course it escapes all submitted content, including that which isn’t going in to the database so don’t forget to stripslashes() when you are working with data that doesn’t need it.

Example:

request_cleanup();

print "Your note was: $confirmation";