WordPress MU

my situation: I'm saving specific data into a specific table to be used as bookmarks for users. I'm trying to save the category the article is in, into a database. Every other one works fine, it saves the name of the article, the date, the url, but no matter what I do I can't save the category.

I've tried: the_category and get_category_link
WHY WONT THIS WORK? I'VE LITERALLY SPENT THE LAST 5 HOURS TRYING TO FIGURE THIS OUT, as a last resort, i'm asking for help.

this is my form:

<form action="wp_process.php" method="post">

<input name="name" value="<?php the_title(); ?>" type="hidden" />

<input name="category" value="<?php get_category_link(','); ?>" type="hidden" />

<input name="posted_date" value="dealwithlater" type="hidden" />

<input name="added_date" value="<?php echo date("F j, Y, g:i a"); ?>" type="hidden" />

<input name="url" value="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" type="hidden" />

<input value="add" type="submit" /> </form>

I have had a similar problem with get_category_link. my example may help you:

$this_category = "Latest News"; $this_category_id = get_cat_id($this_category);

echo get_category_link($this_category_id);

this gave me an error on upgrade and changed it to this:

echo get_category_link("$this_category_id");

all is working fine now. for some reason the "" helped and normally shouldnt.

good luck!