Dot "." in option value foobars save options function

Question

My theme options save routine is below. I'm finding that if the $value['id'] being passed from my options array has a period in it, the data does not get passed and the options appear to break at that point. Should I opt for another character or is there a workaround for using the period character in an option name?

For example, this works fine:

 "id" => "myTheme_color|sidebar",

but this does not (no data is passed for the value):

 "id" => "myTheme_color.sidebar",

The save function is:

function mytheme_add_admin(){
global $themename, $shortname, $options; 
if ( $_GET['page'] == basename(__FILE__) )
{
    if ( 'save' == $_REQUEST['action'] ) 
    {
        foreach ($options as $value) 
        {
            update_option( $value['id'], stripslashes($_REQUEST[$value['id']]) ); 
        }
        foreach ($options as $value) 
        {
            if( isset( $_REQUEST[ $value['id'] ] ) ) 
            {
                update_option( $value['id'], stripslashes($_REQUEST[ $value['id'] ])  ); 
            echo $value['id'].": ".$_REQUEST[$value['id']]."<br>";
            echo $value['id'].": ".stripslashes($_REQUEST[$value['id']])."<br>";
            } 
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

Dots and spaces are replaced by PHP for array indexes via POST and GET. That may cause your problem.

Answer 2

I am not sure what the issue is here, this test code works fine for me:

$options = array( 'test_option' => array('id' => 'myTheme_color.sidebar') );
$test = 'test';
var_dump($options);
foreach ($options as $value) {
    var_dump($value['id']);
    update_option( $value['id'], $test );
}

From quick look at source code the most likely point for update_option to fail is if SQL query to insert it fails.

My suggestions are to run $wpdb->print_error() after operation to check for failed query and hook into update_option_{$option} and updated_option actions to see if they are firing (source).