Question about linking...

tommychi

Lets say i have a page loaded and the url is:
http://website.com/script.php?id=1

From here, i want it to lets say sort by name everything that is displayed in the id=1 page. Functions for sorting out by name are all set up so all i need to do is add "&sort=name" to the end of "id=1" so the whole url would be:

http://website.com/script.php?id=1&sort=name

Now for it to sort, i would need to have a link somewhere so that it calls this url. What i need help with is, how would i link it so that it just adds "&sort=name" to the end of the whole http://website.com/script.php?id=1 url?

I tried something like: <a href="&sort=name">Click to sort</a>

But all that let me to was:
http://website.com/&sort=name instead of adding it to the
http://website.com/script.php?id=1.

Now your probably jus wonder why not i just link it to the full path, so its: <a href="script.php?id=1&sort=name">Click to sort</a>

Well the thing is, what if id was something different? the function wouldn't work out then and this would only allow me sort only the id=1 page. I have multiple id's and it would just be more convenient if i found out how to just add &sort=name.

I hope its not too confusin and if anyone can help this n00b... it will be greatly appreciated.

slick

With regard to the option you have tried already, you'd be re-creating the URL as

?id=$id

, not

?id=1

To append the sort parameter to the end of the URL, you can get the whole URL using

$page=$PHP_SELF."?".$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'];

See the user-contributed notes (especially chemanfit and ignacio) at http://ie.php.net/manual/en/ref.url.php

You can then append whatever other variables to the end of this string.

tommychi

hmm thanks for the help.. but what is all that $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'] stuff? Im sorry, im still quite new to php and don't really kno anythign about that kinda stuff. If you can explain it to me, ill be very thankful 😃

slick

$_SERVER is a built-in array whose values are set when HTTP requests are made to the hosting server. Read http://ie.php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.php for more info (there's so much in it, that I couldn't explain in one post on this forum!)

There are other similar arrays that you may have come across, such as $HTTP_POST_VARS (or $POST for short), $HTTP_COOKIE_VARS ($COOKIE for short) and $HTTP_GET_VARS ($_GET for short). They are all explained on that page.

If you've any more queries, let me know.

Slick

tommychi

it works !!!! man thanks alot for your help. Greatly appreciated.

I have the link now so its:
<a href="<?php echo $PHP_SELF.'?'.$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'].'&sort=name' ?>">Name<a>

However, one problem is, if i keep clicking it, it just keeps adding &sort=name to the url so then the url looks really really long. Is there a way so that it only displays it once?

slick

I don't think there's a function you can use directly. However, you can use regular expressions to search the URL for the string sort=name or whatever.

Alternatively, split the URL by '?' (which will give you the www.whatever.com/myscript.php part in the first element of the resulting array and the extra vars in the second.). Then split the second element by '&' to give you each appended variable. You can then check each element of this new array when you are recombining the URL.

Thirdly, on that link I gave you, you'll notice an array called $_GET (or $HTTP_GET_VARS). This array will contain all the variables that have been passed to the script in the URL string. Looping through that array while allow you to find whether the desired variable has been passed already. Read the user-contributed notes on http://ie.php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.php for details on how to use this method (this option is probably operationally fastest and stable).

Slick