Tuesday, September 24, 2019

What does the PHP error message "Notice: Use of undefined constant" mean?



PHP is writing this error in the logs: "Notice: Use of undefined constant".




Error in logs:



PHP Notice:  Use of undefined constant department - assumed 'department' (line 5)
PHP Notice: Use of undefined constant name - assumed 'name' (line 6)
PHP Notice: Use of undefined constant email - assumed 'email' (line 7)
PHP Notice: Use of undefined constant message - assumed 'message' (line 8)


Relevant lines of code:




$department = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST[department]);
$name = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST[name]);
$email = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST[email]);
$message = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST[message]);


What does it mean and why am I seeing it?


Answer



You should quote your array keys:




$department = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['department']);
$name = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['name']);
$email = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['email']);
$message = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['message']);


As is, it was looking for constants called department, name, email, message, etc. When it doesn't find such a constant, PHP (bizarrely) interprets it as a string ('department', etc). Obviously, this can easily break if you do defined such a constant later (though it's bad style to have lower-case constants).


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