What does .php question mark = mean?

Question

I know this is a dumb question, but I can't figure out what this means. When I see .php?=. Also wondering how will go about using that.

Thanks for any help.

Read up on $_GET variables: http://php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.get.php — Karl, Sep 23 '13 at 10:34
Related, but not a dupe: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3737139/reference-what-does-this-symbol-mean-in-php — David Thomas, Sep 23 '13 at 10:37
@DavidThomas is it really related? i think that article is about comparison... — Timothy Groote, Sep 23 '13 at 10:38
Simply `.php?=` means nothing. It could make sense only if in php code there is a strange "handmade" check of url and get — Luca Rainone, Sep 23 '13 at 10:39
It's related only in the sense that this is a beginner question, and I'd anticipate future questions asking 'what is `&&`?' And so forth; hence my 'not a dupe' (attempt at) classification. — David Thomas, Sep 23 '13 at 10:40
@David Thomas Future questions like what's && won't be coming for me as I already know what that is. I try to find answer for this question with out asking, but was not able to find the answer. — user2756684, Sep 23 '13 at 10:53
No problem, 'beginner' questions are still welcome, and we're not averse to teaching those newer than ourselves; it is difficult to search for syntax, since the literal characters are often used for specific purposes in searches and database queries. — David Thomas, Sep 23 '13 at 11:01

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 23 '13 at 10:36

3

It marks the start of a query string,which can be accessed with GET.

http://somesite.com/index.php?foo=1

$_GET['foo'] will be 1

answered Sep 23 '13 at 10:36

Mihai

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 23 '13 at 10:36

The question mark is supposed to mark the start of the portion of a GET request where you can pass it variables (known as the query string). This is not just for PHP.

Example :

if you send the following :

http://www.myserver.com/file.php?something=12&another=blah

to a php file that looks like this :

<?php 

print($_GET["something"]);
print($_GET["another"]);

?>

the result will be this :

12blah

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 23 '13 at 10:37

This is not

.php?=

There must be a variable name before =.

Like this:

.php?x=.

This is variable passed from URL to script. You can read this variable from PHP code like this:

$_GET['x']

More information here: http://php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.get.php

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Dec 22 '20 at 13:34

suppose I have file1.php open and in it, I want to create a statement, which passes values to another page, file2.php. This is usually done through an html link or button. I will do it through a link in the below example.

In file1.php, I will include some code that does that:

<a href="edit.php?attribute=value> Link name</a>

This creates a "Link name" hyperlink that, when clicked, passes values by "GET" function into "edit.php".

I will catch the same in file2.php using the following statement in file2.php:

$variable=$_GET['attribute']

P.S. If you didn't understand anything, try forgetting every worry you have and now read the answer again.

What does .php question mark = mean?

4 Answers4