Script posting to self acting crazy

88guy

I'm trying to develop a search engine for a web site, and, I don't know much about PHP. I found two web tutorials and I tried to combine elements of both of them. What is happening is this: when I display the php page - which is designed to post to itself - (1) it prints an "else" statement that no matches were found (at the top of the page), before doing the search, and (2) after you do the search the form is displayed beneath the results...... Argh - I don't know enough to figure out why this is happening. YOu can see what it does, for the moment anyway, here:

http://guymerritt.net/new.php

Here's the code:

<?php
include_once("connect.php");


$searchquery = $_POST['searchquery'];
if(isset($_POST['searchquery']) && $_POST['searchquery'] != "")


$query="SELECT body, url, page_title FROM words WHERE page_title LIKE '%$searchquery%' OR url LIKE '%$searchquery%'  OR body LIKE '%$searchquery%'";


$result=mysql_query($query);

if ($result && mysql_num_rows($result)) {
    $numrows = mysql_num_rows($result);
    $rowcount > 0;



print  "<h2>Your search matched $numrows result(s)</h2><BR />";
        print "<a href='new.php'>Return to Main</a><P>";


    while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    print "<table width=800 border=1 cellpadding=0 leftmargin=0 cellspacing=0>
        <TD class=pad width=12% style='font-family: arial; font-size: 14px;'>$rowcount:</span> </td>";
         while(list($var, $val) = each($row)) {
         print "<TD style='font-family: arial; font-size: 14px;'> $val </TD>";

        }
        ++$rowcount;
         print "</table>";
    }
}
else
print "No matches";

?>




<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<h2>Search the Exercise Tables</h2>
<form action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>" method="post">
Search For:
  <input name="searchquery" type="text" size="44" maxlength="90">


<input name="myBtn" type="submit">
<br />
</form>
<div>
<?php echo $search_output; ?>
<P>

<span style="font-family: arial; font-size 22px;">Search for <b>"DBMS"</b> to see non-working hyperlink...<br>
Search <b>"mysql"</b> to see other output values, formatting, etc......<P>


</div>
</body>
</html>

Wow - I am exhausted from messing with this. Could anyone please tell me why this is acting this way...?

Weedpacket

The short answer to all of your questions is: "because you are telling it to" (which is a bit of a vacuous statement of course, because that's the point of programming). Your program describes step by step exactly the process you've described.

First of all, formatting the source code more consistently (seeing as it's intended to be readable by humans, it's surely not too much to ask that it be easily readable by humans):

<?php
include_once("connect.php");


$searchquery = $_POST['searchquery'];
if(isset($_POST['searchquery']) && $_POST['searchquery'] != "")
	$query="SELECT body, url, page_title
FROM words
WHERE page_title LIKE '%$searchquery%'
OR url LIKE '%$searchquery%'
OR body LIKE '%$searchquery%'";


$result=mysql_query($query);

if ($result && mysql_num_rows($result)) {
	$numrows = mysql_num_rows($result);
	$rowcount > 0;

print  "<h2>Your search matched $numrows result(s)</h2><BR />";
print "<a href='new.php'>Return to Main</a><P>";

while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
	print "<table width=800 border=1 cellpadding=0 leftmargin=0 cellspacing=0>
<TD class=pad width=12% style='font-family: arial; font-size: 14px;'>$rowcount:</span> </td>";

	while(list($var, $val) = each($row)) {
		print "<TD style='font-family: arial; font-size: 14px;'> $val </TD>";
	}
	++$rowcount;
	print "</table>";
}
}
else
	print "No matches";

?>

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<h2>Search the Exercise Tables</h2>
<form action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>" method="post">
Search For:
  <input name="searchquery" type="text" size="44" maxlength="90">


<input name="myBtn" type="submit">
<br />
</form>
<div>
<?php echo $search_output; ?>
<P> 
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size 22px;">Search for <b>"DBMS"</b> to see non-working hyperlink...<br>
Search <b>"mysql"</b> to see other output values, formatting, etc......<P>


</div>
</body>
</html>

Step by step.

Get and prepare the database connection (I presume).
Get the submitted value of "searchquery" from the form.
If a value for $searchquery was supplied, and it's not an empty string, do the next step.(Otherwise, don't do the next step).
Create a string named $query with an SQL query in it (don't forget to shove $searchquery in there, but don't bother checking whether it might cause the whole database to blow up in the process)
Whether the previous step was carried out or not (i.e. whether the $query string was created or not), send $query to the database.
If results come back from the database, do steps 7 through 16 inclusive. If they don't, skip down to step 17.
Count the number of rows returned.
See if there were more than zero. Don't do this for any reason, don't use the result, just do it for fun.
Write some output telling the user how many rows were returned; give them a link to go back to "Main" (i.e., "new.php").
For each row in the set of results, do steps 11 through 15 inclusive.
Write some output to start an HTML table.
For each (cf. [man]foreach[/man]) field in the row, do the next step; then go on to the following step.
Write some output to create an HTML table cell (don't bother putting it in a row)
Add one to the count of the number of rows (we never use this number, but CPU cycles are cheap)
Send output to end the table.
Skip the next step, because we only reach it by coming from step 6. Go on to step 18 instead.
Write output to say "No Matches".
Write output to start an HTML page (even though we've already been writing plenty of output already)
Write output to display a form.
Write output to display the value of a mythical $search_output variable.
Write some output to finish off the page.

Reading through that, one can see a number of things wrong with it and thinking about those problems suggests ways they can be fixed.