AJAX changes content of the string being sent

Question

This is driving me crazy!

I have something like this in JS:

xmlhttp.open("POST", "/note.php", true);
xmlhttp.setRequestHeader("Content-type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8");
console.log(" >>>> " + note  + " " + noteHTML);
xmlhttp.send("what=edit&note=" + note + "&noteHTML=" + noteHTML + "&noteIdx=" + noteIdx);

Output in console:

 >>>> C++ C++

This code sends most of the text correctly through, aka in note.php I get the same content than the content on the JS side, but for whatever reasons it does something very strange to the string C++. When note or noteHTML which are strings are set to C++ then what arrives on the PHP side (in note.php) is C and not C++!! This doesn't make ANY sense to me. Maybe there is something wrong with the encoding I chose. I tried html and plain/text but for whatever reason I don't even get anything at all on the php side so I gave up with looking into this direction any further. Any idea why?

else if ($_POST['what'] == "edit")
{
    printArray($_POST);
}

Output in browser:

what => edit note => C noteHTML => C noteIdx => 17no

WHY?

But isn't that supposed to be taken care of by the encoding itself? — user18490, Jan 27 '17 at 16:24
`+` repesents spaces in a url, so `?abc=a+b+c` is in `$_GET` a field `abc` with the content `a b c`. — JustOnUnderMillions, Jan 27 '17 at 16:26
You are sending a `post` why not sending the data as post parameters too? — JustOnUnderMillions, Jan 27 '17 at 16:28
@JustOnUnderMillions: can you explain please? What do you mean by sending the data as post parameters? PS: I tried `encodeURI(noteHTML)` and it doesn't make a difference. — user18490, Jan 27 '17 at 16:28
http://stackoverflow.com/a/4276396/4916265 `abc=encodeURIComponent('a+b+c');` — JustOnUnderMillions, Jan 27 '17 at 16:30
Ok that one worked maybe you can make that an answer and I accept it? More points to get? ) Thx — user18490, Jan 27 '17 at 16:34
To whoever down voted that, not cool and no reason. This is a valid question and can help many people in the future. And I searched before asking. Couldn't find any help on that precise question/problem. — user18490, Jan 27 '17 at 16:36

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:45

You have to change it like this (use encodeURIComponent() on each element):

xmlhttp.open("POST", "/note.php", true);
xmlhttp.setRequestHeader("Content-type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8");
console.log(" >>>> " + note  + " " + noteHTML);
xmlhttp.send("what=edit&note=" + encodeURIComponent(note) + "&noteHTML=" + encodeURIComponent(noteHTML) + "&noteIdx=" + encodeURIComponent(noteIdx));

https://stackoverflow.com/a/4276396/4916265

AJAX changes content of the string being sent

1 Answers1