List boxes

caspar007

I am using a list box to search a length in my database. I wish to search
5 - 10 meters
11 - 15 meters
16 - 20 meters

and so on.

What do I put as the value in my list box?

EG:<select name="length_m" id="length_m">
<option value="" selected>5 - 10 meters
</select>

On the results output page i have the following SQL query
SELECT *
FROM motorhomes
WHERE make = 'colmake' AND length_m >= 'collength_m' OR length_m <= 'collength_m'

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Brendan_Nolan

Put

<option value="5to10" selected>5 - 10 meters

and then in your PHP put

if ($length_m == "5to10"){
  $collenght_m_min  = 5;
  $collenght_m_max  = 10;
} else if ($length_m == "10to20"){
  $collenght_m_min  = 10;
  $collenght_m_max  = 20;
}

And your SQL...

SELECT * 
FROM motorhomes 
WHERE make = 'colmake' AND length_m >= '$collength_m_min' AND length_m <= '$collength_m_max'

As an alternative to doing the if statements in PHP, you could have two dropdown boxes, one named "collength_m_min" and the other "collength_m_max"

AstroTeg

A take off on Brendan's method would be to use one drop down box and define your value="5to10" (I'd lean towards value="5-10" or something like that - but its whatever you want to do).

On the PHP side, instead of checking each possible solution for the drop down box and then assigning the min and max value, you might use explode() and list() to retrieve the min/max value automatically:

list($min, $max) = explode('to', $length_m);

What ends up happening is "5to10" gets split on the word "to" and stores the first value "5" in $min and the 2nd value "10" in $max. This allows you to adjust your HTML form at any time and not have to go back and update your PHP or SQL code.

caspar007

Thanks AstroTeg and Brendan,

I used the explode method and it works great...

Thank you both