Empty search field produces all items in DB

jgsketch

Hello,
I have a search on my site. It searches products in a catalog database. If you hit submit without anything in the search filed it comes back with all products in my catalog. Is there a way to stop this with a IF statement or something else. Any help will be great. Thanks.

Here is my search code.

<?php 

$sql="SELECT * FROM products WHERE name LIKE '%$searchstring%' ";
$search_result = mysql_query ($sql) or die('Error executing sql: '.$sql.'<br />MySQL Reported:'.mysql_error());

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array ($search_result)) 
{ 
echo "<a href=\"" . $row["url"] . "\"><img src=\"" . $row["imagefile"] . "\" border=0 alt=\"" . $row["name"] . "\"></a><BR>";
echo "<b>" . $row["name"] . "</b><br>";
echo $row["description"] . "<br>";
echo "<b>Price: $</b>";
echo "<b>" . $row["price"] . "</b><br><hr /><br>";
}
?>

Jeremy

TodManPlaa

well, if you're going to use an IF then you need to test for there being a value in the searchstring $searchstring.

eg:

if ($searchstring!=""){
    /*the search string is not empty so do something*/
}else{
    /*the search string is empty so do something else*/
}

Insert the SQL and routine into the above and that should be a start.

cheers

jgsketch

Thanks for the help. I decided to put in a IF statement, and it works great. One more quick question if any one is interested in helping with. It a design issue. I have a template.php which has my search form on it. It then goes to a search.php file for the query. I am trying to get the results to return to the template in a specific spot on the html page. Is there some way to call the output back to that page? If not then I'll have to redesign my site using a header and footer template files. But I would like to not redesign my site. Any help would be great, if not, I have planned on posting this in a diff. forum topic. Thanks again.

Jeremy