Searching with 3 values

[poscribes]

I am trying to get 3 form submitted values into a select statement and return results.

The first value is selected from a drop down menu such (tape_id, creation_date, etc.) and the second and third values are text input boxes for the corresponding start of range value and end of range value.(i.e 1 and 100 or 2003-01-01 and 2004-01-01).

The code below appears to execute but returns an empty result when there are plenty of records to pull from; obvioulsy there is a syntax issue here but I am not sure where exactly.

$query = "select * from tapes where ".$rangetype." between '%".$startrange."%' and '%".$endrange."%' order by tape_id";
$result = mysql_query($query);

Any help greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[Weedpacket]

 $result = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error().": $query");

What are all those % signs for?

[poscribes]

Thanks Weedpacket,

Not sure where the % came from but I removed them and turned on the error echoing and got the following message:

You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'ID = between 5000 and 16000 order by tape_id' at line 1: select * from tapes where Tape ID = between 5000 and 16000 order by tape_id.

This error was fairly obviously in that the 'Tape ID' identified above was not a valid database field and all that was required here was a check of the option value for the $rangetype in the form.

This fixed the tape_id and now the search for tape_id's works fine, but the date-related searches do not. Is there a field type other than text that I should be using to perform multi-format ranges (i.e. some text/number or date-related)?

I guess part of it is working but now I'm stumped again.

Any thoughts appreciated.

Thanks.