line of code help

volodia

Hello,

I got these codes recently from this site. It performs a seach on a database.
Could someone explain some line of codes, please.
They are followed with the "//??" comment

thanks

// Search
<?php
if ($search) // perform search only if a string was entered.
{
mysql_connect() or die ("Problem connecting to seachsample");
// connect to mysql
$srch="%".$search."%";
// ?? What does this means

$query = "select * from seachsample WHERE IDno LIKE '$srch' || Name LIKE '$srch' || Link LIKE '$srch' || Category LIKE '$srch' || address LIKE '$srch' || section LIKE '$srch'|| keywords LIKE '$srch'|| phone LIKE '$srch'|| email LIKE '$srch'";

$result = mysql_db_query("test_database", $query);
// ?? what does this do ?

if ($result)
{
echo "Here are the results:<br>
<table width=100% align=center border=0>
<tr>
<td align='left' bgcolor='White' valign='middle'><h4>Business Details</h1></td>
<td align='right' bgcolor='White' valign='middle'><h4>Category</h1></td>
</tr>
</table>";

while ($r = mysql_fetch_array($result)) { // Begin while
// ?? what does this means
$idno = $r["IDno"];
// ??what does $r["IDno"] means??

$name = $r["Name"];
$link = $r["Link"];
$category = $r["Category"];
$address = $r["address"];
$phone = $r["phone"];
$email = $r["email"];
$section = $r["section"];
$keywords = $r["keywords"];
echo "<table width=100% align=center border=0>
<tr>
<td align=left>$name</td>
<td rowspan='6' valign='top' align='right'>$category</td>
</tr>
<tr><td align=left>$address</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align=left>$phone</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align=left>$email</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align=left>$link</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align=left>Business ID Number: $idno</td>
</tr>
<tr><td colspan='2'><hr color='white'></td>
</tr>";
} // end while
echo "</table>";
} else { echo "problems...."; }
} else {
echo "Search box was empty. <br> Go back and try again.";
}
?>

//And the coding on the form to search is:

Anon

$srch=\"%\".$search.\"%\";

This means assign to the variable $srch (the first part) a string containing a percentage sign, the contents of $search (which came from the form, the input type=text name=\'search\' that is listed at the bottom, what the user types in) and another percentage sign. The %\'s are wildcards in sql queries (meaning match anything with this string anywhere in it).

$result = mysql_db_query(\"test_database\", $query);

This queries the database with the name \"test_database\" with the SQL query that is held in $query (defined directly before this statement).

while ($r = mysql_fetch_array($result))

And this says \"while we still have more rows in the result set that we queried from the database (with the command above, identified by the $result variable) fetch an associative array of the current record and put it in the variable $r, then move to the next record (implicit).\" That is about the best way I can explain that command 🙂

And finally, the line:

$idno = $r[\"IDno\"];

This is again from the database. When we did $r = mysql_fetch_array($result), it created an associative array $r with the contents of that specific row from the database. The content of $r[\"IDno\"] is the value of the field IDno in the database.

I hope that helps -

Chris King

Anon

The explaination is really helpfull