Need help creating a simple search form

[joesliva]

Hi,
I'm a newbie to PHP so forgive me if this is very simple. I've tried and tried to get this to work on my own to no avail.

I have a MySQL db with a table named 'example'. It has three columns or fields: 'name', 'birth' and 'death'.

I want to create an HTML form that has a search box and a drop down list that let's the user choose which field he/she will search on. i.e. They can choose to search for the name of a person, the year a person died or the year a person was born.

Can someone please point me to an example of how this would work? I was able to create a simple page that displayed the whole database listings with this code:

<?php include("dbconnect.php"); ?>

<h2>View Whole Database</h2>

<?php

$result = mysql_query("select * from "example");
if ($result)
{
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
print "<b>Name:</b>";
print $row["name"];
print "<br>\n";
print "<b>Birth:</b>";
print $row["birth"];
print "<br>\n";
print "<b>Death:</b>";
print $row["death"];
print "<br>\n";
print "<br>\n";
print "<br>\n";
}
mysql_free_result($result);
}
?>

But I have no idea how to create a frontend search form that would allow the user to "choose", from a dropdown list, which field he would like to search.

Thanks,
Joe

[Anon]

Yeah, I can point you to the write direction, but you'll have to do all the walking.

1. You have to use <select><option> tags to create drop down list.

2. Go to www.php.net and read mysql functions. There are some that determine field names of a particular table.
   
   This will assure that if you delete or add field it will be in your drop down menu.

3. Searchine among the fields you need to examine LIKE statement or full text search. See mysql manual at www.mysql.com

Other than that you should be set,

Di