Passing Form Data into An Array

tomandhannah

I have information being passed to a script through a form. It is a query for a search engine.

So, let's say the user wants to search for the words 'yellow' AND 'string' and inputs these individual words in the text field. Using a script to convert the boolean options properly, this data would be passed to search.php as:

search.php?q=yellow+string

It would search for both the words yellow and string.

What I need to do is take this information and put it into an array. So, I need to strip out all of the boolean language (+ - , AND OR) and put the left over data into an array:
$querydata = array('yellow', 'string');

How can I convert $q = "yellow+string"; into this array?

BuzzLY

First of all... you can get to the query by using $GET['q'] (For better readability, you may want to change your URL to "search.php?query=yellow+string" and use $GET['query']). Then, simply use explode() to separate the elements into an array:

$query = $_GET['q'];
$searchvalues = explode(" ", $query);

Is that what you are looking for?

tomandhannah

Of course, of course... explode() works very nicely... and I don't even need:
$query=$_GET['q'];

It works just fine without it.

BuzzLY

Originally posted by tomandhannah
Of course, of course... explode() works very nicely... and I don't even need:
$query=$_GET['q'];

It works just fine without it.

That is because you have register_globals = ON in your php.ini file. However, it's good programming practice to assign your variables anyway. It makes your code more portable (in case you want to share it -- remember, this is an Open Source community 🙂), and it will also prevent problems down the road when you turn off register_globals. OFF is the recommended setting for these reasons, plus security.

For more information, read this.

laserlight

I had the impression that the "without it" refers to the assignment, i.e. using:

$searchvalues = explode(" ", $_GET['q']);