View Problem

Retrieve a string containing ampersands from the variables in a url

My PHP script first does a query to obtain customer info for a form. The form has first name and last name fields among others. The customer has put entries such as "Ron & Jean" in the first name field in the database. Then the edit form script is called with variables such as

"http://myserver.com/custinfo/edit.php?mode=view&fname=Ron & Jean&lname=Smith".

The script variable for first name $_REQUEST['firstname'] never gets beyond the "Ron" value because of the ampersand in the data.

I have tried various functions like urldecode but all to no avail. I even tried encoding the url before the view screen is painted so that the url looks like "http://myserver/custinfo/edit.php?mode=view&fname="Ronxxnbsp;xxamp;xxnbsp;Jean"&lname=SMITH". (sorry I had to add the xx to replace the ampersand or it didn't display meaningful url contents the browser sees.)

Of course this fails for the same reasons. What is a better approach?
DiskEdit
erlang
% encode ampersand in your string using %XX where XX is hex code for ampersand
% optionally encode spaces for completeness sake to keep URL solid
URL = "http://myserver.com/custinfo/edit.php?mode=view&fname=Ron%20%26%20Jean&lname=Smith",
{_, Query} = string:tokens(URL, "?"),
KeyValuePairs = string:tokens(Query, "&"),...
ExpandDiskEdit
clojure
(->> {"mode" "view"
"fname" "Ron & Jean"
"lname" "Smith"}
(map #(str (URLEncoder/encode (first %) "UTF-8")
"="
(URLEncoder/encode (second %) "UTF-8")))
(reduce (fn [url e] (str url "&" e))
"http://myserver.com/custinfo/edit.php"))
DiskEdit
groovy
// Given the nature of the question text, I am assuming the question
// is how to produce a application/x-www-form-urlencoded compliant string

def basename = 'http://somedomain.com/somebase/'
def parameter = 'Bart & Lisa'
// equivalent to php
println basename + URLEncoder.encode(parameter)
// recommended approach is to specify encoding
println basename + URLEncoder.encode(parameter, "UTF-8")

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