Question

I have a problem with my search on my site I don’t understand why it give me this error

this is my form code

<form action="index.php?cat=search_results&learn_id=1" method="post">
      <div id="topSearchBodyStyle">
        <input type="text" name="search" class="topSearchTextBackground" />
      </div>
      <div id="topSearchButtonStyle">
        <input type="submit" name="submit" class="topSearchButtonBackground" value="" />
      </div>
    </form>

and this is the page which have the php code

<?php 

    $getSearch = $_POST['search'];
    trim($getSearch);

    if(!get_magic_quotes_gpc()) {
        $getSearch = addslashes($getSearch);
        }

    $connectToDb = "select * from tutorials where tutorial_title like '%.$getSearch.%'"; 
    $searchResults = $db->query($connectToDb) or die($db->error);
    if ($searchResults){
        $numResultas = $searchResults ->num_rows;
        echo "<p>Found : " . $numResultas . "</p>";
        while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($searchResults)) {

            echo $row['tutorial_title'];    
        }
    }else{
        echo "cant connect";
        }
?>

any idea why it give me this note about “Undefined index: search”
and why the results come “0”

Answer 1

From the code example you’ve given, I don’t see a reason you are getting Undefined index: search, however, are you sure that $_POST['search'] is actually set? If this is part of some framework or other project, I have seen some that unset $_POST and $_GET and you have to access them another way.

Is it possible that undefined index error is coming from a different line in your code?

If you are getting a value through $_POST['search'], the reason you are getting 0 results is because you have an error in your SQL statement.

Should be: "select * from tutorials where tutorial_title like '%".$getSearch."%'"

Finally, you should be using mysql_real_escape_string instead of addslashes, or better yet prepared statements.