Question

I am using an eCommerce engine script that uses a different search method.

Instead of a URL using GET like this:

http://search.com/searchc?q=the+query

It uses

http://search.com/searchc/the+query

How can I make a form to POST or GET to that, because this form makes the URL

http://search.com/searchc/?q=the+query


<form action="/searchc/" method="post">
    <input type="text" id="q" name="q">
    <input type="submit" value="go">
</form>

Also tried this (get or post do not work for both of these)

<form action="/searchc/" method="post">
    <input type="text" id="" name="">
    <input type="submit" value="go">
</form>

Answer 1

The reliable way has two components: Client-side JavaScript manipulation, which turns form submission to a request as needed, and (as backup for non-JS situations) a simple server-side redirect utility which receives a request from the form and redirects it as modified.

Something like this (for the GET case):

<form action="http://www.example.com/redirect"
  onsubmit="location.href = document.getElementById('f1').value + 
  document.getElementById('q').value; return false">
<input type="text" id="q" name="f2">
<input type="submit" value="go">
<input type=hidden id=f1 name=f1 value="http://search.com/search/">
</form>

Here http://www.example.com/redirect is some server-side form handler that just reads the form fields and picks up fields named f1, f2,…, concatenates them into a single string, and redirects using it as a URL. As a CGI script, this would be

use CGI qw(:standard);
$dest = '';
$i = 1;
while(param('f'.$i)) {
   $dest .= param('f'.$i++); }
print "Location: $dest\n\n";