Best way to delete a recod?

badgoat

Hello!

I have a script which displays people associated with an event. Right now I can delete them from the event by clicking a DELETE link just fine, which opens a new window and confirms the deletion.

<a href="delete_attendee.php?a_id='.$row['a_id'].'" target="_new"> Delete</a>

and the code to delete the attendee on the confirm page:

$query="delete from i_attendees where a_id='".$_GET['a_id']."'";

	 $result=mssql_query($query);
	 mssql_close($connect);
	 if ($result)
	 	{echo 'Attendee Deleted';}
	 else
	    {echo "Could not delete";}
	 ?>

When I close the confirmation window the record is still displayed and requires a refresh to show that it has been deleted. Is there a better, more efficient way I can be doing this, where I can click a delete link and it all stays on one page and refreshes automatically?

Kudose

You would include the delete portion in the same page as the link. So it just seems like the page refreshes, but it really removed the record too.

Also, I would LIMIT your delete SQL.

i.e. DELETE FROM table WHERE id='value' LIMIT 1;

badgoat

Hi Kudose,

This might seem like a really basic, dumb question.. How do I link the page to itself when I click the DELETE link? I'm so used to html where everything goes somewhere else.

And thank you for the LIMIT 1 tip! I'll be sure to add that in ASAP.

Kudose

Here's a basic scenario:

Change the link to something like this (assuming the page with the link is called mypage.php):

<a href="mypage.php?action=delete&id=<?php echo $row['a_id']; ?>">Delete</a>

Add your delete code before you fetch records:

/** This is the section to delete the record choosen */
if(isset($_GET['action']) && $_GET['action'] == 'delete'){
  /** do some error checking to prevent SQL injection attacks */
  /** i.e. */
  if(!is_numeric($_GET['id'])) die('Error: ID choosen to delete is non-numeric!');
  /** Do the delete query */
}

/** Query the database and pull records here */

/** HTML is down here ... where you are showing your records */

Mjozwiak

Define you if as a vairible on the posted page.
such as
$id = $_GET['id'];
$sql="Delete from TABLE where id = '$id'";
mysql_query($sql) or die(mysql_error());

yeah and limit it,

ahundiak

And then once you delete the record simply redirect back to the original page with a clean url. In effect it's a refresh. Look for the header() function in the manual for an example.