Question

Been searching all over for this but cant find an answer so thought I would ask here.

I have 5 drop down ‘option box’ lists whose data is populated from a database. The database information is about a user selecting a computer manufacture from the first drop down list, a computer type from the second, a computer colour from the third and finally a minimum and maximum price from the fourth and fifth drop down lists.

These user selected variables are then posted to a php ‘search’ page and a query is run on them. My question is, if (for example) a user only selected a computer ‘manufacture’ and ‘make’ and left all the other option boxes blank, how would I run this on my SQL search? Would I need to set then ‘non set’ variables as wildcards?

Any help would be appreciated!

Answer 1

You can build your query dynamically, something like this:

$sql = "SELECT ... FROM ... WHERE 1=1 ";
if ($manufacturer != "") {
  $sql .= " AND manufacturer = ...";
}
if ($computerType != "") {
  $sql .= " AND computerType = ...";
}
// etc...