code igniter / php - concatenating two POST variables to form a new variable

Question

I have a form where a user submits his member name, first and last. I want to combine these two and send them to the database as a member ID using code igniter's url_title functionality. In other words just making sure that it's all lower case, underscores, URL safe, etc. This is the code in my model, but in the database I'm getting a value of zero for the memberID:

$v_membername = $this->input->post('f_membername');
$v_memberlast = $this->input->post('f_memberlast');
$v_memberid = $v_membername + "_" + $v_memberlast;
$v_memberid = url_title($v_memberid, 'underscore');

$data = array(
    'member_name' => $v_membername,
    'member_last' => $v_memberlast,
    'member_id' => $v_memberid
);

$this->db->insert('members', $data);

Any idea what I'm doing wrong here? membername and memberlast submit to the DB just fine.

Answer 1

PHP uses . to concat strings, not +.

$v_memberid = $v_membername . "_" . $v_memberlast;

Answer 2

You can use:

$v_memberid = $_POST['f_membername'].'_'.$_POST['f_memberlast'];