PHP page name appending at the start of anchor link

Question

I am currently working on home.php where I have the following anchor link echo'd:

<a href='#?id=$thought_id' class='toggle-comment' data-id='$thought_id' style='padding-left: 5px;'> Comments ($num_of_comments) </a>

Now, when I hover over the Comments anchor, I get the id of the thought fine. It's just that when I hover over the link, or when I click the link, the url reads:

http://localhost/home.php#?id=210

So, 210 is the ID of the thought the comments anchor is assigned to, which works. But I do not understand why the file name is appending to the anchor link when it hasn't been defined to do so.

Even when I put <a href='#'> The URL still reads http://localhost/home.php#

Possible duplicate of [HREF="" automatically adds to current page URL (in PHP). Can't figure it out](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8764288/href-automatically-adds-to-current-page-url-in-php-cant-figure-it-out) — A.L, Mar 30 '16 at 22:32

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 30 '16 at 22:29

0

Your browser is going to show you the full, canonical URL (including the anchor) when you hover over a link. It's the same link that will be copied to your clipboard if you right-click it and choose "Copy Link Location".

answered Mar 30 '16 at 22:29

David White

1,763
2
16
27

Can you please explain in your answer what is a canonical URL? You described what it displayed but you didn't explained why. – A.L Mar 31 '16 at 22:31
When you use the "Copy Link Location" function, what you want is a complete URL of the page (and possibly anchor location) of the link. So if you're on `http://www.example.com/index.html` , then even if the HTML code is ``, the link you want copied to your clipboard is `http://www.example.com/index.html#foo`. That's the canonical URL, and that's what will be copied to your clipboard. And that's also what will be displayed on the status bar. It doesn't **have** to be that way, but all major web browsers have decided that it's probably a very good idea. – David White Mar 31 '16 at 23:23
I don't see how it explains why the user has the link `/home.php#?id=210` and not just `/#?id=210 `, sorry. – A.L Mar 31 '16 at 23:29
He is working on the server "localhost" on the file "home.php" and pointing to an anchor named "#?id=210" . So the full URL is `http://localhost/home.php#?id=$thought_id` . If he was working on the index page of the server (for example `index.html`), then it would be `http://localhost/index.html#?id=$thought_id`. And since index.html is the index page, that can be shortened to `http://localhost/#?id=$thought_id` – David White Mar 31 '16 at 23:42
@DavidWhite - Sorry for the late reply. I think I understand what you're conveying, but I am unable to understand one thing, I have the exact same anchor link (and connected code) on `profile_page.php` and `hearted_thoughts.php`. The anchor link on these pages work, they do not append the current page URL to to content within the href, then why does this only occur on `home.php`? – Freddy Apr 02 '16 at 12:11

PHP page name appending at the start of anchor link

1 Answers1