help with searching database

[Anon]

hi. its obvious im new to php and mysql. i hope someone can help me out.
my searchform.htm has about 5 fields. should i be using "AND" or "OR" in my searchform.php script? im using "OR" right now and i get a lot of results. if i use "AND", i don't get any. is there a way the user could use just three fields, for example, and get only data having the three requested attributes?
thanks for you help.

[badman]

there are many ways of doing this, the most simple of this is as mentioned by you that is using OR and LIKE

eg: select name from names where name like"%a";
this will give you all the names ending in 'a'

other ways involve using regexp() (check out at php.net) to match the searched string in the table entries.

[Anon]

One of the ways to do so is that you can check whether there data in the textfields before making the query.

e.g.
$query.= (empty($textfield)) ? " " : " AND searchfield LIKE '$textfield' ";

You may use "AND" or "OR" in between.

[Anon]

thanks guys.