Question

I’ve just created a very simple search function in PHP, but am having a few issues. The search function sends a query to the database, and prints results, but it doesn’t print the results I want. It’s supposed to print those records that are like the user input, but it just prints every record.

My Form is as follows:

<form action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>" method="post">
     <input  type="text" name="name"> 
     <input  type="submit" name="submit" value="Search"> 
</form>

And the PHP code to make it search is:

if(isset($_POST['submit'])) 
    { 
     require ('mysqli_connect.php');
     include ('config.php');

    $term = $_POST['term'];
        $q = "SELECT  name, producer, jamtypes, user FROM Jam WHERE name LIKE '%" . $term .  "%'";
        $sql = @mysqli_query ($dbc, $q);

     while ($row = mysqli_fetch_array($sql)){

        echo "<br />";
         echo 'Name: '.$row['name'];
         echo '<br/> Producer: '.$row['producer'];
         echo '<br/> Created By: '.$row['user'];
         echo '<br/> Category: '.$row['jamtypes'];
         echo '<br/>';

        }
  }

Thanks guys

Answer 1

Your form field is name, not term, so your PHP should be

$term = $_POST['name'];

Because $term is blank due to having an incorrect value your query returns all results. (Your query looks like SELECT name, producer, jamtypes, user FROM Jam WHERE name LIKE '%&')

FYI, having error_reporting turned on and reporting notices would have told you this. Always develop with error reporting on and displaying all errors.