form variables

_mt

Hi All,
My first newbie question here!

Basically i can't figure out how PHP interacts with forms.

What i want to do is get a string out of a text field, and then append it a url on the form submission.

E.G. searchresults.php?search="text%20field%20 data"

Or something like that.

Thanks in advance.
-Matt

thmnetwork

well I'm not sure why you'd want to append it to the URL, since you can use post and thus don't really need an external variable.
But if I'm just not reading you correctly:

say the text field is called "search":

<?
header("Location: http://dsfsd.com/script.php?search=". $search);
exit;
?>

that part of the code will redirect them to the script and put search in as an extrenal variable.

_mt

Well, it doesn't need to be an external variable, i just need to get it into another page so that I can use it in a SELECT query.

How does POST work? (or how would it work using form submit)

thmnetwork

HTML uses GET as default but you can just put method=post in the form tag like so

and then in script.php3 if the text field was called "searchquery" just put $searchquery right in the script just like if you had introduced it as an extrenal variable, it can be a little more secure that way and saves sometime.

_mt

Great, thanks a lot! I was kind of expecting it to be at least a little more complicated than that! 🙂

-Matt

thmnetwork

no prob rob

just_nobody

it doesn't always work like that, depends on how your php is set..

you can also use $GET["searchquery"] if the text field was called "searchquery".
I have to use my method... so if the first doesn't work, use the $GET[""] 😉

thmnetwork

mine should work though cause that's how I've done it for the past year and a half, and it requires a lot less typing...

just_nobody

well yeah it works, didn't say it didn't... but it depends on the settings of php... my php isn't set right for your method, I was just trying to help, nothing more...

thmnetwork

yeah I was just saying that incase anyone was reading and thought that you might being saying it didn't work.

just_nobody

lolz ok
so if anyone reads this, try thmnetwork's method first, it is shorter 🙂, if it doesn't try the $_GET[""] acuse then your php isn't set right.