error from mysql.inc.php

[bauigel]

With current git-master I get an error from mysql.

Notice: Only variable references should be returned by reference in /include/db/mysqli.inc.php on line 101.

[bauigel]

ChatGPT offers two solutions for this

function serendipity_db_escape_string($string) {
    global $serendipity;

    if ($string === null) {
        return '';
    }

    return mysqli_real_escape_string($serendipity['dbConn'], $string);
}

or using mysqli_real_escape_string instead of mysql_escape_string

function serendipity_db_escape_string($string) {
    global $serendipity;

    return mysqli_real_escape_string($serendipity['dbConn'], $string ?? '');
}

For my test I used the second solution and it works for me.

[onli]

@bauigel The error you quote does not fit to the proposed fixes. The error message speaks about a reference, but the two patches add null treatment handling to serendipity_db_escape_string, which is not on line 101 and not called there. I'm unsure how to continue :/

Ignoring the error message mismatch: It might be useful to let serendipity_db_escape_string return an empty string if it is given a null, but it also might hide bugs. Just yesterday I ran into that, when writing the test cases for #865 at one point the null warning helped.

Could you have a second look at the error message - is it really gone, and really with this change?

[bauigel]

Ah, sorry my fault. The "solution" is for another problem I had.

The error on line 101 should be fixed by removing the & from line 61:

function serendipity_db_query(...

[onli]

Interestingly, I did not get the quoted error message, but a similar one when removing the & - in the functions that called the serendipity_db_query as $somevar =& serendipity_db_query(...) . I have to admit I'm not sure about the context here, but I opened a PR with a fix that seemed to work for me. We'll see.