How to get actual result of echo $things to HTML

Question

First of all, I have really limited knowledge with php. This is the code I use to show a ref for the unique person visiting the page.

<p>http://mywebsite.com/?ref=<? echo $ref; ?></p>

I also have a Facebook Share that is suppose to copy the ref url and add it.

$url=urlencode('http://mywebsite.com?ref=<? echo $ref; ?>');

Obviously this won't work.

Answer 1

$ref=123;
$url='http://mywebsite.com?ref='.urlencode($ref);
echo "$url<br>";

--> http://mywebsite.com?ref=123

I don't think you want this:

$url=urlencode("http://mywebsite.com?ref={$ref}");
echo "$url<br>";

--> http%3A%2F%2Fmywebsite.com%3Fref%3D123

Answer 2

Your call to urlencode() is in your PHP script, right? No need to use echo for that. Just pass $ref as part of the string that you're passing into urlencode().

$url = urlencode("http://mywebsite.com?ref={$ref}");

Make sure you use double-quotes as I've shown. Single quotes will cause PHP not to recognize {$ref} as a variable name.

Answer 3

You can add a variable to a string with a period, like this:

$url=urlencode('http://mywebsite.com?ref=' . $ref);

Alternatively, you can enclose the string in double quotes and then reference the variable directly in the string with curly brackets:

$url=urlencode("http://mywebsite.com?ref={$ref}");

The PHP manual is very useful when you want to learn the PHP language. Read about strings here: http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php