Problems retrieving data when "any" is a pulldown option

[Big_Lebowski]

I'm converting a form and searchable MySQL database over to PHP and my current problem involves data sorting.

The form consists of 6 pulldown fields, all of which have an "any" option. The problem is that whenever "any" is selected in one of the pulldowns, it doesn't return any results at all, let alone all of the available records for that category. Sorting and displaying the results works just fine whenever any isn't a selected option.

Is there a simple fix to this or do I have to assign the value any to a variable and go from there?

thanks to anyone that can help...

[TheDefender]

It's probably a pretty easy fix, but we can't help you unless you post some code... specifically, how one of the dropdowns is structured, and what the query code looks like.

[Pig]

You need to build the query string based off whether something is selected, NOT just fill in the blank with a variable name.

Go through each field and see if it is set to any. If it is, ignore it. Otherwise tack it on to the end of the WHERE clause. Once your string is complete, run the query.

[Big_Lebowski]

Well my drop down is pretty simple - here's one of them, along with the form code it sits in:

<form action="view_results.php" method="post">

<select name="type">
<option value="any">Any</option>
<option value="House">House</option>
<option value="Apartment">Apartment</option>
</select>

<input type="submit" value="Search">
</form>

and then my query on view_results.php looks like this (obviously the query deals with multiple fields I didn't put above):

$query = "SELECT * FROM Region, City, Living_Space WHERE Region.Name = '$region' AND Region.ID = Living_Space.Region AND City.Name = '$city' AND City.ID = Living_Space.City AND Living_Space.Dogs = '$dogs' AND Living_Space.Cats = '$cats' AND Living_Space.Other_Pets = '$other_pets' AND Living_Space.Status = 'Visible' AND Living_Space.Expiration_Date > Current_Date ORDER by Living_Space.Name";

I haven't had time to try Pig's suggestion yet but I'll get to it next.

thanks!

[TheDefender]

Maybe I am missing something here, but I don't see where you are using the $type variable in your query at all...