Search Field on Index-Home page

[AShain]

Not sure what you need to help me here.
I will just start off with what I want to
accomplish, then give you a general idea
as to what my site consits of.

I would like the person viewing my site, to
be able to type in a single word into a search
field, to pull up the products available meeting
that word's criteria. The search field will be
located on the index/main page.

I have a online store, there are 9 categories.
Under each category, there are several items,
example, "Creams" has 9 or so items within.

I want them to be able to type in "creams", click
"search", then have the items listed for them to
chose from. They will click the item to be
directed to my "showitem.php" page.

Here's a basic overview of my online store.

seestore.php

This page lists the 9 categories. When the viewer
clicks one of these categories, the page
reconstructs, to show the products listed under
the clicked category. When you click a product,
it re-directs them to another page....

seeitem.php

This page lists the individual item, picture,
description, price, and has an "add to cart" button.

Could the search just utilize the existing tables?
😕

I'm pulling my hair out, looking for help.
Any suggestions, very much appreciated!
Allie

[jasonmills58]

Yes, the search can use the same tables. Are you pulling all this data from a SQL database? If so, you just append a WHERE clause to your query.

Name your text box with some thing like:
<td class="formContent"><input name="search" type="text"></td>

Run a check to see if "search" is populated, and have the form action call your SQL query however you like. then append your SQL query with

[[check for "search" data, if it exists, add the where clause]]
$where_clause = " WHERE product_name LIKE ".$search
$data = mysql_query( "SELECT * FROM products ".$where_clause)

DISCLAIMER::: I'm pretty new too, so I'm sure my syntax is full of holes. This is untested. But maybe some kindly, more experienced member will come and help us with this...

[TTT]

$where_clause = " WHERE product_name LIKE '%".$search."%'";

[jasonmills58]

Thanks TTT, I knew i was forgetting something.

[AShain]

I'm so excited!! 😃

I've posted this on two other boards, and no one has been able to help. I have another issue I can't figure out, that the other two boards couldn't help with, I'll ask about it after I get this one resolved. I so happy!

My data is stored in MySQL. I need just a tad more help with the script, if you don't mind. I am so new, but I've managed to create everything else.

Here's my categories table:

CREATE TABLE store_categories (

 id         INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT,
 cat_title    VARCHAR(50) UNIQUE,
 cat_desc    	TEXT

);

When the items under the categories are clicked, it uses this
table:

CREATE TABLE store_items (

 id         INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT,
 cat_id       INT NOT NULL,
 item_title   VARCHAR(75),
 item_price   FLOAT(8,2),
 item_desc    TEXT,
 item_image   VARCHAR(50)

);

Lastly, here's the script for my seestore.php, which lists the categories, then products below the category when the category is clicked:

<?php
//connect to database
$conn = mysql_connect("localhost", "xxxxxx", "xxxxxx") 
or die (mysql_error());
mysql_select_db("xxxxxx",$conn) or die (mysql_error());

$display_block = "<h1><font color=#808080 face=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif>PPS Healthcare-Product Categories</h1>
<P>Select a category to see items available in that category.</p>";

//show categories first
$get_cats = "select id, cat_title, cat_desc from
     store_categories order by cat_title";
$get_cats_res = mysql_query($get_cats) or die(mysql_error());

if (mysql_num_rows($get_cats_res) < 1) {
     $display_block = "<P><em><font color=#808080 face=Arial,
	 Helvetica, sans-serif>Sorry, no categories to browse.</em></p>";
} else {

 while ($cats = mysql_fetch_array($get_cats_res)) {
    $cat_id = $cats[id];
	$cat_title = strtoupper(stripslashes($cats[cat_title]));
	$cat_desc = stripslashes($cats[cat_desc]);

	$display_block .= "<p><strong><a
	href=\"$_SERVER[PHP_SELF]?cat_id=$cat_id\">$cat_title</a></strong>
	<br>$cat_desc</p>";

	if ($_GET[cat_id] == $cat_id) {
	  //get items
	  $get_items = "select id, item_title, item_price
	  from store_items where cat_id = $cat_id
	   order by item_title";
	  $get_items_res = mysql_query($get_items) or die(mysql_error());

	  if (mysql_num_rows($get_items_res) < 1) {
	  $display_block = "<P><em><strong>Sorry, no items in 
	   this category.</strong></em></p>";
	 } else {

	     $display_block .= "<ul>";

		 while ($items = mysql_fetch_array($get_items_res)) {
		    $item_id = $items[id];
			$item_title = stripslashes($items[item_title]);
			$item_price = $items[item_price];

			$display_block .= "<li><a
			href=\"showitem.php?item_id=$item_id\">$item_title</a>
			</strong> (\$$item_price)";
		}

		$display_block .= "</ul>";
	}
  }
   }
} 		  

?>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>P.P.S. Healthcare.com</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>
<body>
<p align="center"><font color="#FFFFFF"> </font></p>
<p align="left"><font color="#FFFFFF"><img src="http://www.ppshealthcare.com/webgraphics/logo.gif" width="250" height="110" /> <img src="http://www.ppshealthcare.com/webgraphics/ppscredit.gif" width="100" height="14"> <font color="#000000" size="1" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">PPS
Healthcare Gladly Accepts Most Major Credit Cards Online</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font color="#FFFFFF"><img src="http://www.ppshealthcare.com/webgraphics/greybar.gif" width="500" height="5"></font></p>
<p align="center"><font size="1" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><a href="http://www.ppshealthcare.com/about.html"> About
      PPS</a> | <a href="http://www.ppshealthcare.com/contact.html">Contact PPS</a> | <a href="http://www.ppshealthcare.com/productline.html">Product
      Line</a> | <a href="http://www.ppshealthcare.com/showproducts.php">Order
      Online</a> |<a href="http://www.ppshealthcare.com/faq.html"> F.A.Q.</a> |<a href="http://www.ppshealthcare.com"> Home</a></font></p>
<p align="center"><font color="#FFFFFF"><img src="http://www.ppshealthcare.com/webgraphics/order.gif" width="140" height="35" /></font></p>

<?php print $display_block; ?>

Would I perform the index page in this manner, using <?php print $display_form; ?> ?? :p It's probably not that simple, eh?

Anyways, thanks so much for the help!!
Allie

[AShain]

Still needing a little help with this. The reply I got made it sound so simple, but I'm lost. The script I provided is not the same page where the search form would be located. I want the search form on the index page which contains no PHP script at this time. Where/how would I implement the search form script, can anyone help me?

Thanks!
Allie