If statements not working

MalindaB

I am new and am following along a php tutorial. I follow the directions exactly, but my if statements don't work. I have a simple search form and the tutorial is showing how to write the php script that will eliminate a person from clicking the submit button without putting in criteria. The simple if statement is

if(!LastName){
echo "No search term given.";
exit;
}

When I save and go to the form and enter no criteria and hit the submit button everything in the database comes back.

The query looks like this:
$query = "select FirstName,LastName,CellPhone from contact WHERE LastName LIKE '%".$LastName."%'";
$result = mysql_query($query);
while ($record = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
while(list($fieldname,$fieldvalue) = each($record)){
echo $fieldname.": ".$fieldvalue." ";
}
echo " ";
}

I hope someone can help with this, because I can't continue the tutorial until I get this issue resolved. This was not the only if statement that didn't work, but I thought if this one gets resolved then maybe the others will work also. I thought it could be a configuration setting in PHP.

NogDog

if(empty($_GET['Lastname'])) {
   echo "No search term given.";
   exit;
}

Change $_GET to $_POST if your form is using method="post".

See http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.variables.external.php for more info.

MalindaB

MalindaB wrote:
I am new and am following along a php tutorial. I follow the directions exactly, but my if statements don't work. I have a simple search form and the tutorial is showing how to write the php script that will eliminate a person from clicking the submit button without putting in criteria. The simple if statement is

if(!LastName){
echo "No search term given.";
exit;
}

When I save and go to the form and enter no criteria and hit the submit button everything in the database comes back.

The query looks like this:
$query = "select FirstName,LastName,CellPhone from contact WHERE LastName LIKE '%".$LastName."%'";
$result = mysql_query($query);
while ($record = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
while(list($fieldname,$fieldvalue) = each($record)){
echo $fieldname.": ".$fieldvalue." ";
}
echo " ";
}

I hope someone can help with this, because I can't continue the tutorial until I get this issue resolved. This was not the only if statement that didn't work, but I thought if this one gets resolved then maybe the others will work also. I thought it could be a configuration setting in PHP.

NogDog,

I tried your suggestion, but what happens is I get the "No search term given." even if I do input a search. So I am getting all or nothing.

Can you help with that?

NogDog

Make sure the index to $GET/$POST exactly matches the name of the form field being referenced, including capitalization. For instance, I typed it as $GET['Lastname'], but from the variable name you used I suspect the "n" should be capitalized: $GET['LastName']. Just make sure it matches whatever you used for the "name=" attribute of the input field in the form (and remember to change it to $_POST['LastName'] if you used the post method in your form).

MalindaB

NogDog,

It is exact. But it still doesn't work. Could you see if you see a problem with the code below.

Thank you.

<html>
<head>
<Title>Search Results</Title>
</head>

<body>
<h2>Search Results</h2>

<?php

$link = " <A HREF='searchbyname.html'>Click here to go back to the search page.</a>";

$LastName = trim($LastName);
if(empty($_POST['LastName'])){
echo "No search term given.";
echo $link;
exit;
}

//if(!LastName){
// echo "No search term given.";
// exit;
//}

$con = mysql_connect("localhost","user","mypassword");
mysql_select_db("mycontacts",$con);

$query = "select FirstName,LastName,CellPhone from contact WHERE LastName LIKE '%".$LastName."%'";
$result = mysql_query($query);
if(mysql_num_rows($result)==0){
echo "Sorry, no matching result.";
echo $link;
exit;
}

while ($record = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
while(list($fieldname,$fieldvalue) = each($record)){
echo $fieldname.": ".$fieldvalue." ";
}
echo " ";
}

?>
</body>
</html>

MalindaB

Well no one has responded with help from my last post, and on another computer I went through the whole process of installing Apache, PHP, and MySQL and followed very carefully all instructions on how to install and configure each program to work together.

I started the online tutorial again and I follow the code exactly the way it is presented to me, but it works for them (the instructor), but not for me. How am I suppose to learn this stuff if nothing ever works right? Sorry for the pitty party, but I don't know where to go from here.

NogDog

Show us the form page that you are using to call this script. If testing locally on your PC, make sure you are accessing that form as a URL (e.g.: "http://localhost/form.html") so that you are running the pages through the web server and not via the local file system. Lastly, when posting PHP code, use the

 [url=http://phpbuilder.com/board/misc.php?do=bbcode]bbcode tags[/url] around your code, which will encourage others to take the time to read it.

MalindaB

bpat1434

Probably because you're using php5 and they are/were using php4. Register Globals is turned "on" many times in php4 and other servers, while in php5 it defaults to off. So you need to use:

$LastName = trim($_POST['LastName']);

Instead of what you have.