Forms - I don't want to send empty variables

maUru

Say I have a form that sends 3 variables in a form with method GET. Name, Email and Age.

If someone doesn't put their email, the url comes out like this:

http://www.domain.com/index.php?name=bob&email=&age=10

I don't want the email to come up, is this possible? I've seen it at www.yahoo.com with advanced preferences, but how do they do it?

The reason is that with many (20 or so variables) in a search would clutter up the url even if only one variable is set.

Please help.

Thanks.

daynah

You should verify if the variable $name is set.

You can do this after the user submit, check the variables.

if(!isset($name))

output an error message.

You may want to use:

if(!isset($_POST['name']))

for compatibility with php 4.2.2. 🙂

maUru

I don't think you understand my problem.

At the moment I have a variable checker for the SQL query as so:

if ($make != "") { $where .= " AND makes.Smallname = '$make'"; }

If no value is entered, it lists all the makes, otherwise it will only list the makes the form sent as variable $make.

So far so good.

Now, say I have 10 variables for the search, ranging from speed of machine, to color to size. My form sends off this url if no options are set:

http://www.domain.com/search.php?make=&speed=&size=&color=

...which is cluttering up the url, imagine 10 variables, the url string would be massive.

I want the form to add the variable to the url string only if some value is set. Is this possible?

The reason is, if a user selects make to be acme, and no other options, the url he gets would be http://www.domain.com/search.php?make=acme and nothing else.

KevinMG

how about something like this?

$url_var_string = "";

if(isset($make)){
$url_var_string .= "make=acme&"
}

if(isset($model)){
$url_var_string .= "model=dumb_example&"
}

$full_url = "http://www.whatever.com/".$url_var_string;

maUru

I thought of that, but didn't like the idea of extra code which ultimately creates a new url. Guess I'll have to use it in the end 🙁.

Anyone got a simple idea?

maUru

Anyone know a function that sets the url in php?

MrAlaska

Why are you using the 'GET' method? Especially with a lot of variables, you might even run out of room in the URL. I think 'GET' limits you to 255 characters or something like that. Change your method to 'POST' if you want to keep the URL clean.

maUru

POST won't work for me because I want to let users save the url for future reference. For example:

http://www.domain.com/make=acme&speed=390

So if they bookmark it, the url will take them straight to the older page, but without looking cluttered.

MrAlaska

I see.

In that case, you can send them to an intermediate page that buids the URL the way you want, then redirect them. The middle page would output nothing, so it would be transparent to the user, or you could even send them back to the search page if they didn't submit the right data.

$redirect="[the url you built from the form elements]";
Header("Location: $redirect");

devarticles

why dont you use javascript to check the form values BEFORE they are sent, then use php as a backup mesure if javascript is disabled on there computer

maUru

I've seen it been done directly on www.yahoo.com advanced search, so there has to be a way 🙁.