Valid link with GET parameters

Question

How can i place valid link with get parameters into my page?

When i run validator, it gives error:

Line 37, Column 37: reference to entity "p" for which no system identifier could be generated
<li><a href="index.php?c=tutorials&p=cat&cid=1" >LINK</a></li>

**Related:** *(Same question tagged as 'HTML')* [Do I encode ampersands in ?](http://stackoverflow.com/q/3705591/1497596) — DavidRR, Sep 05 '14 at 15:42
@DavidRR Not the same question... similar, but different question. He's asking whether ampersands should be encoded. I'm asking why is it wrong in validator ( didn't know about ampersand encoding, so I didn't know I have to search something about encoding ) — kravemir, Sep 21 '14 at 16:59

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 01 '11 at 20:16

from here http://css-discuss.incutio.com/wiki/Code_Validation

The most common error by far looks something like this: reference to entity "BV_Engine" for which no system identifier could be generated. What that means is simply that you've got a URL with an & sign in it that you forgot to escape.

For example: <a href="script.cgi?id=4&BV_Engine=20">

The & sign in this URL should be &. In fact ALL & signs in an HTML document should be escaped in this way to avoid causing confusion to HTML parsers. For the above example, replacing it with

<a href="script.cgi?id=4&amp;BV_Engine=20">

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 01 '11 at 20:15

2

Escape your ampersands:

<li><a href="index.php?c=tutorials&amp;p=cat&amp;cid=1" >LINK</a></li>

answered Feb 01 '11 at 20:15

Ben Saufley

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score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 01 '11 at 20:16

1

You have to use & instead of plain &. Its an html entity.

<li><a href="index.php?c=tutorials&amp;p=cat&amp;cid=1" >LINK</a></li>

answered Feb 01 '11 at 20:16

ludesign

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Yes, indeed it is as we have posted the same thing at the same time. – ludesign Feb 01 '11 at 20:22

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:29

To be compatible with XHTML (and XML in general), the ampersand must be escaped. To do so requires the use of an SGML/XML entity.

There are three different entities that can be used to represent the ampersand:

Named entity: & (This is one of the five predefined entities defined in the XML specification.)
Decimal numeric character reference: &
Hexadecimal numeric character reference: &

So, the value of your example href attribute could be represented in one of these three ways:

href="index.php?c=tutorials&amp;p=cat&amp;cid=1"
href="index.php?c=tutorials&#38;p=cat&#38;cid=1"
href="index.php?c=tutorials&#x26;p=cat&#x26;cid=1"

Of course, it would be valid to mix the above entities like this:

href="index.php?c=tutorials&amp;p=cat&#38;cid=1"
                           ^^^^^     ^^^^^

...but most would argue for taking a consistent approach throughout a document (and even an entire web site).

Of the three entities that can be used to represent the ampersand, I believe that & is used most commonly in XHTML.

Final note: One of the above entities should also be used when authoring HTML, however browsers today do not require that the ampersand be escaped.

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 23 '11 at 16:58

0

Yes, as the others have posted above, you need to escape your amparsands as & rather than &.

<li><a href="index.php?c=tutorials&amp;p=cat&amp;cid=1">LINK</a></li>

should work.

answered Mar 23 '11 at 16:58

Kevin Ji

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Valid link with GET parameters

5 Answers5