Question

I have a search box where users can search for other users in a few types of ways, firstname, lastname, username or email within a drop down. This drop down shows the top 8 results and then I show a link at the bottom saying find more results with the bit of text they may have inputted into the search.

So for instance if I type in JOHN but only type ‘JO’ of his name this is the value $_GET[‘t’] should send through to the searchresults page. So I got as far as the link. But I just don’t know what the query should be

Show more results link

<a href='include/searchresults.php?ref=".$_GET['t']."'>Show More Results for ".$_GET['t']."</a>

SEARCHRUSULTS.PHP

    if(isset($_GET['t'])){
$_GET['t'] = str_replace(" ", "", $_GET['t']);
$_GET['t'] = str_replace("%", "", $_GET['t']);

$_GET['t'] = mysqli_real_escape_string($mysqli,$_GET['t']);

if(strlen($_GET['t'])>1){

$sql="SELECT * FROM users WHERE username LIKE '%".$_GET['t']."%' OR first LIKE '%".$_GET['t']."%' OR last LIKE '%".$_GET['t']."%' OR email LIKE '%".$_GET['t']."%' ORDER BY first ASC";
$query=mysqli_query($mysqli,$sql);
$count = mysqli_num_rows($query); 

    if($count<=0){
        echo "No results found";
    }else{
    echo "<table width='100%'>";
        while($user_data=mysqli_fetch_array($query)){}

Answer 1

Try something like this, using MATCH insted of LIKE is much faster.

$keyword=mysql_real_escape_string($_GET['t']);
$rowsperpage=8;
$sql="SELECT * FROM users WHERE MATCH (first, last, email) AGAINST ('+$keyword*' IN BOOLEAN MODE)   ORDER by first LIMIT $rowsperpage"; 
$query=mysqli_query($mysqli,$sql);
$count = mysqli_num_rows($query); 

and set $rowsperpage as you like.

For more result page do something like this

$rowsperpage=mysql_real_escape_string($_GET['rpp']);
<a href='include/searchresults.php?t=$keyword&rpp=$rowsperpage'>Show More Results for "$keyword"</a>