Correctly building this query?

phigga

hi all,

i've got a form page with 8 fields that a user can enter. The form will be used to search for a person in my MySQL database. The only requirement of the form is that one filed be filled in. My problem is in building the query that this form will use.

After the WHERE clause, I know i'll need to take all the values they filled in and separate them by an AND. Just not sure of the best way to do this. (Actually, I've got an idea, but I'm convinced there's a cleaner way to do it).

Gracias,

-Phil

dnszero

$query = "select * from yourtable where ";

if ($value1 != "") {
$query = $query . "something='$value1' ";
}
if ($value2 != "") {
$query = $query . "AND somethingelse='$value2' ";
}
.....and so on

Of course, you'll want to use a loop if you start adding many more fields.

phigga

Don't think this would work......

For instance, if $value1 was empty, but $value2 wasn't, my query would look like this:

select * from yourtable where AND somethingelse='$value2'

i've currently got a way working, but i'd rather not post it here (not that i'm embarrased, but the whole process involves much more information than i've given). If anyone's really psyched to see what i've done, let me know, and i'll post it (and a 10 page long explanation :-))

-Phil