Errata

The report.html file saves the user's description of the aliens in a form field named "aliendescription". However, the report.php file tries to retrieve that information in variable $alien_description from $_POST['description'] whereas it *should* be $_POST['aliendescription'].

In the examples of the output from the PHP file execution, the description field is of course blank, because the description entered was not found by the PHP application. Oddly, this error has been corrected on page 22, but not pages 16 and 24.

You need to modify pages 16 and 24, substituting "aliendescription" for "description" in the PHP variable definition, and update the image of the PHP-generated confirmation on pages 13, 20 and 23 where the description field is blank.

Note from the Author or Editor:
On page 24, change
$alien_description = $_POST['description'];
to
$alien_description = $_POST['aliendescription'];

Also, images on 13, 20 and 23 where the Description field is blank need to have this value for the field:
little green men

Seventh Indian Reprint: July 2011 Edition. ISBN 13:978-81-8404-658-8

In the PHP script, "$alien_description = $_POST['description'];" should be "$alien_description = $_POST['aliendescription'];"

Note from the Author or Editor:
In the PHP script, 4th line in the gray box,
$alien_description = $_POST['description'];
should be
$alien_description = $_POST['aliendescription'];

each code example of the variable $fang_spotted = $_POST['fangspotted'] doesn't end with a semi-colon

it is however mentioned earlier on in the example with a semi-colon on the end, and also in the downloadable code example.

Note from the Author or Editor:
Each occurrence of the line of code $fang_spotted = $_POST['fangspotted'] on pages 24, 29, 30, 33, 35, and 36 is missing a semicolon at the end of the line. They should have a semicolon as follows:

$fang_spotted = $_POST['fangspotted'];

The answer to the second question should be "33". The problem states that there are 23 customers with a first name of Anne, and 11 customers with a last name of Parker.

Therefore the number of customers with a first name of Anne will already include 'Anne Parker', and the or clause will only bring in 10 more records, those Parkers whose first name is not 'Anne'.

Note from the Author or Editor:
The second Sharpen Solution answer should be 33, not 34. The customer Anne Parker would already be counted in the 23 customers with a first name of Anne, and shouldn't be counted again in the 11 customers with a last name of Parker. So the total number of customers matching teh WHERE clause is 33, not 34.

The connection variables on pages 256-257 don't match up. So what is shown in connectvars.php on 256 for DB_PASSWORD and DB_NAME is different than what is shown as being included in index.php on 257.

Note from the Author or Editor:
The DB_PASSWORD and DB_NAME connection vars should be the same on 256 and 257. The example code aligns with the values on 256 but the specific settings aren't critical in this case because these are purely hypothetical database connection examples. The main thing is that they should match up from 256 to 257.

Throughout Chapter 8, "SELECT topic_id FROM mismatch_topic ORDER BY category_id, topic_id" is used as the query to return the topic IDs. category_id does not exist in mismatch_topic. The column heading is category. Using category will make the query work.

Note from the Author or Editor:
Change "category_id" on 456 to read "category" instead.

This is probably just a typo, but the written in answer on the third line I believe should be 5, not 3. The data location being accessed does not mention a date as it should, but the state.

Note from the Author or Editor:
Under the second case statement (case 3:), the third link generated should have an answer of 5, not 3. This is because this link is to sort by date, which is controlled in the code by the values 5 (ascending date) and 6 (descending date).

It says to try out a few other variations, among one which is 707.827.7000, followed by how it should be noticed that the extra characters are removed. But the regex expression used does not remove the dots, only these characters: ( ) - \s.

Note from the Author or Editor:
The regular expression does not remove dots from a phone number, so "707.827.7000" would remain unaffected. You would need to alter the $pattern regular expression on the page to remove dots for this to work as explained.

Change the first phone number at the bottom of the page to use dashes instead of dots. So 707.827.7000 changes to 707-827-7000. If we want to keep them a bit more varied, you could also change the last number in that same list to use all spaces instead of the one dash. So 707 827-7000 would become 707 827 7000.

The download captcha for chapter 11 contains SHA(), while this should be SHA1(). It causes an error when trying to run.

Note from the Author or Editor:
On line 16 of the downloadable code for the captcha.php script, SHA should be sha1. The print version is OK.

The order of the arguments to the mysql_query() function are in the wrong order, and should be swapped. The correct form of the function is mysql_query(query, conn).

Note from the Author or Editor:
Should be changed as described in the errata submission.

While declaring the function, "function song(...", the second argument is "$length". I expected it to be $lyrics.

Note from the Author or Editor:
The second argument to the Song() function should be $lyrics, not $length. So the first line of the function code should look like this:

function Song($title, $lyrics) {