[RESOLVED] "search" database and display results on website

rlgriffo

Hi, I am a complete newbie to PHP & mysql.

I have created a database for my website...i want to be able to search the database for a keyword eg "hairdresser" and for it to return all the entries which include this keyword. I don't want people to see a search box or anything, i just want the results to be sitting there for them when they open that page.

I have learnt what i know so far (not much) from online tutorials, however i cant seem to find any information on how to display the data i have in my table in this manner.

If anyone could help me, provide me with some code or direct me to a online tutorial or something i would really appreciate it.

bradgrafelman

If they aren't entering keywords in a search box, where are the keywords coming from? Are you going to generate a list of them or something?

Either way, once you pass the keyword to a PHP script (e.g. via the URL; myscript.php?term=hairdresser), you could do something like:

$term = (isset($_GET['term']) ? $_GET['term'] : '');

$query = "SELECT col1, col2 FROM myTable WHERE search_col LIKE '&#37;" . mysql_real_escape_string($term) . "%'";

rlgriffo

Hi,

thanks for the reply

Basically I have a database of businesses for a town. I want people to be able to select "hairdressers" from a list of industries which links to a page with all of the hairdressers in the town listed - so because i am unsure on how php works, the way i thought it might happen is i have a mysql table of all the businesses, mechanics, hairdressers, butchers etc all mixed in together - but people are usually only after a particular type of business, so i thought i would just "ask" the database to send me all the rows which mention the word "hairdresser" on the hairdresser page, and then for the butcher page ask the database to send me all the rows with the word "butcher" in it.

I want the "butcher/hairdresser/mechanic" pages to look like each entry has been entered one by one and are not being drawn from anywhere. So it just looks like a plain html page.

Maybe that is not the correct way of doing things - i wouldnt know, it is just me trying to figure out how to separate this information.

I hope this makes my needs a bit clearer?

THANK YOU so much for your time!