Please help search query

[berniez]

Hi all, total newbie on this site, and after reading a trying certain explanations I am still at a loss. I have seen numerous threads on this already and am able to get everything working except the query string. I generally let dreamweaver do things for my as I am still coming to grips with hand coding, but now I need help. I have a dropdown box that lists 3 fields in my database(price, berth,new_or_used) I need a person to select 1 from the dropdown list and then enter a text in a textbox to narrow the search on the chosen field. I have that part working and also if I use $_post I can print the name of the field and the textbox on the search result page, but here is where I am stuck, I cannot seem to get the query string right so that I can list the results. Any help will be appreciated.

[buddylee17]

I cannot seem to get the query string right so that I can list the results.

Generally, the query string is considered to be the url plus all the $_GET variables that you tack onto it. What is the problem?

[gurucs]

Are you referring to constructing the SQL query string based on user's selection of which field you want to search in?

[berniez]

Are you referring to constructing the SQL query string based on user's selection of which field you want to search in?

Yes thanks, i know it gets passed along the url, i just can't seem to work out the sql query for the selection by choosing a field from the dropdown list then a text box search. having trouble building SQL.

[architact]

Can you show your code or at least auery?

[gurucs]

Say $query_type holds one of these values (price, berth,new_or_used), and $search_string contains the search text.

It would be something along the line of:

SELECT * FROM [table name] WHERE $query_type = "$search_string";  // exact match

You can also do pattern match using LIKE:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/string-comparison-functions.html

Hope that helps,
Steve