How to pass user name and timestamp in url

As you say, it is simply a string concatenation problem. The username and time is readily available in the WordPress application. Exactly how this is done will depend on how and where the url is generated in the first place. In PHP, it’s a matter of assembling the data elements and stringing them together.

You mentioned pressing a button, which can involve javascript. Options for passing information from PHP to javascript are limited. You can echo out a <script> block, or use wp_localize_script(). Then again, just string the data elements together.

I’m a little surprised you don’t want to do something more like ...Configurator.aspx?user=John%20Harris&time=1366405018&cid=c06b50fe-..., but do whatever works for you.

hello @bcworlz: Here is what I have so far: I am afraid this is a little over my head. After reading and attempting maybe 100 cmbinations of coding attempts I have resorted to a form asking the user to enter a value, I pass the value to the PHP and output the url like this:

<?php
$id = $_POST['id'];
$date = date("Y-m-d");
$time = time();
//$user = global $display_name;
if(empty($id)){
	echo "Please press the back arrow and fill in the text box, $date, $time, ";
//	echo "test $user";
} else{
	header("Location: https://iaddic.info/webs/cis/config/Configurator.aspx?cid=$date-$id-$time&mid=c06b50fe-e087-40b0-8434-d763fabd1515&src=C");
}
?>

the page button code looks like this:

[raw]
<form action="shelterconfig.php" method="post"><input type="text" name="id" />
<input type="submit" /></form>[/raw]

I never could seem to get the user data after following maybe 10 different examples. It would always give me a 301 error…always!

So now…is a pointer could be had to get username that would be great otherwise i’ll next need to ask for help in creating a filter that only allows the user to enter numbers and letter…i tried that a bunch of time with no success.

Thanks for your feedback.

301 is not so much an error as a warning that your server is redirecting the user to a different page. This happens anytime you send a “Location: $url” header. There’s nothing you can do about it if you stick with this method.

Possible alternatives. One is to let your server make the request and process the results, then relay them to the user. PHP offers a few HTTP request options, I prefer cURL if it is available on your server.

Another is to have javascript or jQuery make a request directly from the user’s browser. Which of these is better, or if they are appropriate at all, will depend on what results from a request to iaddic.info.

You can easily get the logged in username from the WP system. See Function Reference/wp get current user. In the first example, you can see that after running $current_user = wp_get_current_User();, the username would be available as an object property with $current_user->user_login. You will also see all sorts of user info is available this way. You can insert the username value into a PHP double quoted string by enclosing the object property in curly braces like so:
$url = "$url?cid=$date-{$current_user->user_login}-$code&mid=$whatever";

The best way to filter user input is often by only accepting values that match a particular regular expression (regexp). Unfortunately, constructing a regexp that properly allows all good input and rejects all bad input is not always that easy.