PHP and MySQL

January 6, 2005 12:25 PM

I'm developing a form Adobe Acrobat which, when submitting, calls a php script, which performs an INSERT into a MySQL database, then comes back with a "Thank you" web page. The script is called just fine and the INSERT works, but the browser hangs on the Thank You page. [more inside]

After much pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth, I've discovered that changing the http headers from

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> to

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">

makes everything hunky dory. But I'm not sure why, or what ramifications making the change would have. What's wrong with iso-8859-1, dammit?

posted by jpoulos to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Does this happen in all browsers or just specific one(s)?
posted by savetheclocktower at 3:24 PM on January 6, 2005

When I have to debug this kinda stuff, I usually use a proxy called Achilles. It ain't too fancy, but basically Achilles sits in between the browser and the network. You can use it to log all the data going in and out of explorer or mozilla or whatever.

I'd pay close attention to what's going on with the headers during a successful transaction. You can log the data and see what's up during the failed one. My gues is that you probably need to take a good look at php's header() command.

I don't know much about submitting online from pdf's, but I bet a bunch of the browsers out there have a hard time transitioning from pdf display back to html.
posted by ph00dz at 5:00 AM on January 7, 2005

On this page, there's a section at the bottom that talks about character encoding. My knowledge of HTTP and its behaviour is pretty basic, but perhaps there's a mismatch between what the browser is requesting and what it's receiving wrt character encoding.
posted by bachelor#3 at 9:35 AM on January 7, 2005