Question

I have a PHP results page which starts off “first-pass” with ALL rows returned. It’s a search listing of all pizza places in the county.

SELECT * from pizzeria;

Then the user can drill down into more detail… the page also has a CSS dropdown menu where the user can pick a specific neighborhood (which carries a URL):

href="samepage.php?neighborhood=HELLSKITCHEN"

which then changes the query after I pick up the $_GET[]

SELECT * from pizzaria WHERE nbh=(the $_GET[] variable sent in the URL);

but I’d like the page to call itself and I have header("Cache-Control:no-cache"); at the top.

I’m trying to create a first-pass or first visit flag variable with the isnull() function:

if (is_null($firstpass)) {
    $query = SELECT all the records from the pizzaria table
} else {
    $query = SELECT only the records WHERE I $_GET[] the value from the reloaded URL
}

It seems though that the $firstpass variable doesn’t stick on reloads. Should I SESSION that variable? (though still have the problem of constantly resetting it)

Or maybe implement some other approach?

I know I can redirect to a separate second page and javascript back to this page to avoid “headers already sent”, but I want to avoid the round-trip back to the client.

Is there a known best practice on reloads with new info? Kinda new to PHP here. thanks

Answer 1

Maybe I didn’t understand well your problem but why wouldn’t you do :

if (!isset($_GET['example'])) {
    $query = 'SELECT * FROM pizzerias';
} else {
    $query = 'SELECT * FROM pizzerias WHERE pizzeria = \'.mysql_real_escape_string($_GET['example']).\' LIMIT 1';
}

at the first pass because, it seem that the $_GET variable is set only when the user choose a pizzeria?