something.php?category=sports

[Anon]

How does this work and what purpose does it serve to have something.php?category=sports. I'm referring to the ?category=sports part. Is it some sort of array? Is category a defined constant?

[Anon]

No it is a way of passing a variable to a page and I assume display some data based ont the varaible. Let me explain, I have a site which holds information in a database for all the cities in my county. I have one page called city.php, I use this one page to display all information about any city. So I have a bunch of links on the main page and they all point to city.php?city=Monterey for instance each city is named at the end of the link. Now on city.php I use the variable $city which in this case equals Monterey to query my db and retrieve all information about Monterey. I hope that helped

[Anon]

This is a standard representation of the passing of information from one page to another when the 'get' method is used with a form. The ? starts the passing of information and the following indicates field=content. As pointed out in the other reply, this is often used with calls/pulls involving a database. Hope this is helpful!

phil wrote:

How does this work and what purpose does it serve to have something.php?category=sports. I'm referring to the ?category=sports part. Is it some sort of array? Is category a defined constant?

[Anon]

Please don't confuse this method solely with forms and the GET method, while Shaun is correct in that when a form uses the GET method the variables appear int the query string. There are also dozens of other uses for this kind of thing. It doesn't always have to be a form, you can use it to pass any kind of variable to another page

[Anon]

Louie is right. You can pass vars by appending them to any href you want. That's something I do fairly often.

--ph

[Anon]

Sorry if my reply was unclear... In fact my aim was to point out that there were many uses for this structure, beyond the use of databases that was first mentioned, and that the use of forms with put was an example of this. As has been pointed out, there are many ways to use this structure. Cheers!

[Anon]

Thank for all the help guys =). One question though: Since you are passing different variables to the same exact page (i.e. something.php?category=swimming, something.php?category=biking), would you just run a loop on something.php to determine which variable has been passed and then show the appropriate information that corresponds with that particular variable?

[Anon]

Thank for all the help guys =). One question though: Since you are passing different variables to the same exact page (i.e. something.php?category=swimming, something.php?category=biking), would you just run a loop on something.php to determine which variable has been passed and then show the appropriate information that corresponds with that particular variable?

[Anon]

Thank for all the help guys =). One question though: Since you are passing different variables to the same exact page (i.e. something.php?category=swimming, something.php?category=biking), would you just run a loop on something.php to determine which variable has been passed and then show the appropriate information that corresponds with that particular variable?

[Anon]

You could do it that way, but it would be more efficient, and more in keeping with PHP's design, if the string were used in a database query to, for example, return information for the 'sports' category, based on the data stored in the db.

-Adrian
www.ah-pook.com