Question

I have a form which submits to a search page. I can handle the MOD_REWRITE stuff at the back end but want to know the best way to get the search result page in a nice format in the first place.

Is it best to receive the form submission, then redirect to a nicer url structure. In the following example the user searches for blah.

/search.html?searchterm=blah

Which redirects to

/search/blah/

Or can I (my preferred option) do this using javascript (or jQuery) somehow after the user clicks the submit button?

Answer 1

definitely you should read this tutorial:

• http://matthewjamestaylor.com/blog/how-to-post-forms-to-clean-rewritten-urls

basics:

1. mysql_real_escape_string() searched term
2. remove all non Alpha/Num chars
3. place the + between each matched word
4. SELECT MATCH AGAINST || IN BOLEAN MODE || LIKE

mod_rewrite

RewriteRule ^search/([^/\.]+)$ search.php?q=$1

PS: the PHP part in the link is a little bit outofdate, so, for example you should use preg_replace instead of ereg_replace, and you can also avoid the extra step of stripping spaces by doing it all in the first try; you may also check for stopwords and refine your regex as suggested ex.: foo-bar. there are other things to consider but for a novice is a good starting point.