A script to convert text in a form to query? - search

Question

I'm a total newbie and want to start with php. I know some javascript already.
I want to be able to type some text in a form and convert it to a query e.g.
In my website there's this search box, I type in 'example' click submit and it gives me this=
http://www.externalsite.com/search?s=example&x=0
and pastes it to the address bar, you know like a search engine.
Any guidance will be appreciated.

Answer 1

Well, as you are doing PHP, you should point your form to submit to a PHP file. Then to retrieve the data, use $_GET or $_POST depending your form is posting or getting (as I can see from your exemple its a GET) so something like this :
HTML :
<form method="get" action="search.php">
<input type="text" name="q" id="q" value="" />
<input type="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>
On the PHP side :
<?php
$query = $_GET['q'];
header('Location: google.com/search?q=' . $query . '%20term');
die();
?>

Answer 2

Basically you're typing your search term into a form, which then posts (via GET) to a search page, which queries its database for records matching that string. A simple example of this follows:
index.php
<form method="get" action="search.php">
<p><input type="text" name="terms" /></p>
<p><input type="submit" value="Search" /></p>
</form>
When you submit that, it will direct you to search.php?terms=[terms here]. Our code found within search.php follows:
search.php
mysql_connect($host, $user, $pass) or die(mysql_error());
$terms = $_GET["terms"]; // you'll want to sanitize this data before using
$query = "SELECT col1, col2, col3
FROM tablename
WHERE col1 LIKE '%{$terms}%'";
$result = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error());
if (mysql_num_rows($result) > 0) {
print "We've found results.";
} else {
print "No results found.";
}
This is a very simple example (don't copy/paste this into production). Essentially you're pulling the submitted value(s) into a query, and then showing any results. This should be enough to get you started, but feel free to visit us here if/when you have more specific questions in the future.
Best of luck!