Question

I want to build an algorithm to search and filter data from my database. I have three dropdown lists on my page:

• Categories

• Products

• Brands

MySQL database table has fields:

id, title, description, category, product, brand

My goal is to search according to selected items from my dropdown lists. What is the best way to do it? Should I send the form results into one function, compute it there and send into the view?

Could you show me some ways to connect these 3 parameters?

I’m coding it in PHP with CodeIgniter.

Answer 1

This is the generic approach

WHERE 
(description=@description_parameter or @description_parameter is null) and
(category=@category_parameter or @category_parameter  is null) and
(product=@product_parameter or @product_parameter is null) and
(brand=@brand_parameter or @brand_parameter is null)