Re: Returning Results

I would advise making your "search.php" a function. This offers a lot of other flexibility. On your searchform.php page just have an if() function to determine if any search parameters were passed. If there are parameters, perform the search. If there are results, display them, otherwise display the search form with a message that there were no results found. Basically you are merging everything into one file and having a couple of conditional display areas. And if you use GET instead of POST in your form, the user can bookmark the resulting page. On Tuesday, August 19, 2003, at 01:54 PM, Hutchins, Richard wrote:

OK, I'll apologize in advance if this is a little off topic, but I think it'll be close enough. I have a form (searchform.php) that collects data for a search (e.g., firstname, lastname). That form submits to a separate PHP script (search.php) that queries a database to find matching rows and returns the information in an array ($results). All pretty standard stuff and it all works. I know I "while()" the information in the resulting array ($results) to draw a table showing all of the results. But what that would require is the form (searchform.php) to collect the data and submit to the search.php script where HTML and PHP code combine in one file to perform the query and draw the results. I know how to do this and have done it in the past. However, this instance has a wrinkle to it. When the searchform.php form submits to search.php, I want to perform the query, but return the user (and the $results array) to searchform.php to display the results. I want to stress that I can get the information from the database with no problem. I'm just stuck on how to get the results back to the page that called the search.php script in the first place. Is turning search.php into a function and "return"-ing the results the only way to accomplish this? Because the only other idea I can come up with is using a header("Location:http://searchform.php?rs=$results"); statement and that doesn't seem to work (and logically, I can see why). I'm not asking for a total solution here because I can handle the whole solution myself. However I would appreciate a bump in the right direction in regards to how to architect the application logic. Thanks in advance, Rich Rich Hutchins -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php -- Brent Baisley Systems Architect Landover Associates, Inc. Search & Advisory Services for Advanced Technology Environments p: 212.759.6400/800.759.0577