Question

I’m a total newbie and want to start with php. I know some javascript already.

I want to be able to type some text in a form and convert it to a query e.g.
In my website there’s this search box, I type in ‘example’ click submit and it gives me this=

http://www.externalsite.com/search?s=example&x=0
and pastes it to the address bar, you know like a search engine.

Any guidance will be appreciated.

Answer 1

Well, as you are doing PHP, you should point your form to submit to a PHP file. Then to retrieve the data, use $_GET or $_POST depending your form is posting or getting (as I can see from your exemple its a GET) so something like this :

HTML :

<form method="get" action="search.php">
  <input type="text" name="q" id="q" value="" />

  <input type="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>

On the PHP side :

<?php
  $query = $_GET['q'];

  header('Location: google.com/search?q=' . $query . '%20term');

  die();
?>