which vars POST, which GET?

sneakyimp

OK...

i am working on a form. i'm going to query a list of colleges and output them with some other info.

the user can narrow down their list of colleges by selecting this info:

First Letter...click a link A through Z
Degrees Offered - bachelor, masters, etc....select a variety of checkboxes.
First, Previous, Next, Last - showing 20 records at once...click a link to go back and forth.

I know that when you POST data, it sort of screws up your ability to navigate back to a previous page...you get a prompt 'repost this data'?

As I write this , it seems that I should probably just do all vars through GET string...links for the next/previous stuff and First Letter and then make the form.

But a nagging little voice tells me maybe i should make the checkboxes post?? additionally, aggregating all the GET vars into a query string for each and every link seems like kind of a pain.

If anyone has general advice about this situation, I would appreciate it. I think I can figure it out but my brain is totally tired and I could use a little nudge.

Drakla

Well if they're clicking text links on the first page then that's most likely going to be a GET, from the first page on you could store stuff in a session, adding as you go along.

If the user backtracks then check for the value as you'd normally find it through GET, if it's there but different update the session value and start again. If it's not there, but in the session, use that value as the incoming chosen option for that page.

sneakyimp

Thanks for your input. I knew i could count on someone 😉.

I hear you about the sessions, but this is a single page--we're not aggregating a series of results here. Basically, people come to the page and the data results default to 'all data'. the user will proceed to filter down the results by clicking first letter filter, sorting, etc.

Additionally, I'd like people to be able to bookmark results and/or mail them to each other. I've only realized this as i work on it.

SO, i've basically resigned myself to a bunch of query string parsing code. my form is method=GET, and the various links all add additional parameters to the query string. i am parsing all the GET vars and aggregating a few varieties of the complete query string. for the first letter links, i've got a variant of everything but $GET['first_letter'], for the sort links, i've got a variant with everything but $GET['sort'] and $_GET['sort_order'], etc.

then when someone clicks on one of the filtering links, all those little get parameters are added up and passed along.

it's a pain but it's working. sadly, there's a whole stack of just plain old iterated logic. not much in the way of loops or whatever to make it more elegant. sigh. it's 3 am here. i trudge onward.