Trouble with a search engine query to my database

pcghost

I am working on my final project for my e-commerce course. I am supposed to design a online bookstore storefront with a shopping cart (no prob at this point) and a simple search engine. I am setting up the search engine as follows.

A form on the main page containing a text input that submits $string to the script.

The script then runs the following on the string to see if there are any matches.

<?php
include('connect.php');
$recordset = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM book WHERE book_title LIKE '".$POST['string']."' OR book_author LIKE '".$POST['string']."' OR book_description LIKE '".$_POST['string']."'")or die(mysql_error());
while($row_recordset == mysql_fetch_array($recordset)) {
echo "<tr><td>".$row_recordset['book_link_sml']."</td><td>".$row_recordset['book_title']."</td><td> By:".$row_recordset['book_author']."</td></tr>";
} else {
echo "Your search returned 0 results. Please try a different search term.";
}
?>

Is it wrong to use multiple LIKE statements in a where clause? When I pass 'Sid' or 'Sid Meier' to the script it returns nothing, yet one of the book authors in my table is Sid Meier, and he is mentioned in the description of several other books.

I get the feeling that I am approaching this wrong. Can a PhP guru help me get back on the right track here?

ether_us

Ok, the first problem is that you need to use a wildcard in your like. So in front of your strings you should at least use a %, so it should look like this in SQL: WHERE book_title LIKE '%title%'

The next problem might be the "or die(mysql_error())" statement. I'm not positive what mysql_query will return if there are 0 rows found. The right way to check would be to do this immediately following $recordset = mysql_query()....

if (mysql_num_rows($recordset) > 0) {

while ($recordset.....)

} else {
echo "Your search returned 0 results."
}

Now the problem that will DEFINATELY kill your script is the use of this line:

while($row_recordset == mysql_fetch_array($recordset))

The "==" is comparing $row_recordset to the output of the function for mysql_fetch_array, you want to assign it. So use a single = sign.

Also make sure your connect.inc is selecting the correct database to use with mysql_select_db.

Hope this helps ya out!

pcghost

That helps a lot. Thanks for the tips. I am getting pretty close to getting this working.🙂