Question

I have a bit of a problem. I have a navbar

|  home  |  view  |  view(active)  |  view(deleted)  | 

When I click on view, I am taken to view.php which just retrieves all database records with:

SELECT * FROM inventory  

In my inventory table, I have a column called status that has a value of either y or n. (y for active, n for not active (or deleted)).

When I click on the view(active) and view(deleted) links I want to execute different queries, such as these:

SELECT * FROM inventory WHERE status LIKE 'y' (for retrieval of active records)  
SELECT * FROM inventory WHERE status LIKE 'n' (for retrieval of deleted records)  

It works fine if I attach ?view=y to the end of my view.php link. The form action of my form references itself (view.php) except with the view type attached to it: ?view=y or ?view=n and then having conditionals determine which mysql query to execute. However, I would like to handle this situation with POST and it’s not working. I don’t want any values in my URL. Works just fine with $_GET though.

Thanks.

CODE (view.php conditionals for queries)

    if ($_POST['view'] == "y") {
        $result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM inventory WHERE status LIKE 'y'"); }
    else if ($_POST['view'] == "n")  {
        $result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM inventory WHERE status LIKE 'n'"); }
    else if ($_POST['submit'] == "search") {
        $result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM inventory WHERE descrip LIKE '%$searchString%'"); }
    else {
        $result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM inventory"); }

CODE (my navigation bar)

<div id="navigation">
    <a href="add.php"><input type="button" value="ADD" /></a>
    <a href="view.php"><input type="button" value="VIEW" /></a>
    <a href="view.php?view=y"><input type="button" value="view active" /></a>
    <a href="view.php?view=n"><input type="button" value="view deleted" /></a>
    <div><br />
        <form action="view.php" method="POST">
            <input type="text" name="searchDescription" id="search" placeholder="search for text in description" value="<?php echo $_POST['searchDescription']; ?>"/>
            <input type="submit" value="SEARCH" name="submit" id="searchDescriptionButton" />
        </form>
    </div>
</div>

Answer 1

You can use hidden input types to pass POST parameters to your php script. There are a lot of more elegant solutions, but here is one that requires minimum code change.

Add <input type="hidden" name="view" id="viewvalue"> in your form, and have your buttons call a javascript function that sets the value to y or n and submits the form.

<script>
function setView(wanted)
{
   document.getElementById("viewvalue").value = wanted;
   document.getElementById("viewform").submit();
}
</script>

Note that this function assumes that you have given the id viewform to your form.

Then change the links in your buttons’ a href to javascript:setView('y') and javascript:setView('n), and you should be set.

EDIT : Since you cannot use javascript, here is what it should look like

<div id="navigation">
<a href="add.php"><input type="button" value="ADD" /></a>
<a href="view.php"><input type="button" value="VIEW" /></a>
<form name="viewactiveform" action="view.php" method="POST">
    <input type="hidden" name="view" value="y">
    <input type="submit" value="view active" />
</form>
<form name="viewdeletedform" action="view.php" method="POST">
    <input type="hidden" name="view" value="n">
    <input type="submit" value="view deleted" />
</form>
<div><br />
    <form action="view.php" method="POST">
        <input type="text" name="searchDescription" id="search" placeholder="search for text in description" value="<?php echo $_POST['searchDescription']; ?>"/>
        <input type="submit" value="SEARCH" name="submit" id="searchDescriptionButton" />
    </form>
</div>