Extra Credit: Adding a Search Bar to Every Page

I assume you have something like

<form method="get" action=[what goes here?]>
   <input type="text" name="s" value="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($search_term) ?>">
   <input type="submit" value="Go">
</form>

in your header.php (or footer.php), right? To put the search term into the search page URL, you just need to append /?s=your_term to the end of the search page's URL. You can do that like this:

<form method="get" action=<?php echo BASE_URL . "search/?s=" . $search_term; ?>>
   <input type="text" name="s" value="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($search_term) ?>">
   <input type="submit" value="Go">
</form>

Hi LIz

Ben's example code would work just fine . If i were you I would have the search box in the header and may be floated to right. Then just point the form's action to your search page passing in the get variable eg yourform?s=textbox value where s is the get variable you will access on your search page.

$_GET is a PHP method that lets you retrieve the parameters that were passed in the URL. For example, the search/index.php page uses $_GET["s"] to get the "s" parameter from the URL. If your URL is http://localhost/shirts4mike/search/index.php?s=blue then $_GET["s"] gives you the value "blue".

All of that logic is already taken care of in the code behind the search/index.php page. The search page has this code:

$search_term = "";
if (isset($_GET["s"]))
{
    $search_term = trim($_GET["s"]);
    if ($search_term != "")
    {
        require_once(ROOT_PATH . "inc/products.php");
        $products = get_products_search($search_term);
    }
}

That code gets the s parameter from the URL, grabs the matching products from the products array, and populates $products with those products. So all you need to do to make it work for the search bar is to have the form that is part of the search bar go to the appropriate URL (http://localhost/shirts4mike/search/index.php or whatever) and append the s parameter to the end of the URL. That's what action=<?php echo BASE_URL . "search/?s=" . $search_term; ?> does.

Since the file is the default index.php file, it can be left out of the URL. The URL http://localhost/shirts4mike/search/?s=blue will give you the same results as http://localhost/shirts4mike/search/index.php?s=blue

I never got what you wrote, so it must have gotten lost. Oh well. And don't worry that it doesn't make perfect sense the first time through. No one understand everything completely the first time through anything new. It's like math class in school. I understood what the teacher was doing in class, but I was completely lost when I had to do it myself.

You can't use $_GET to go somewhere. $_GET doesn't actually do anything on your page; it's just a function that lets you get parameters that were passed into the URL for your page. When you see the ? in a URL, such as http://localhost/shirts4mike/search/index.php?s=blue, each thing after the ? is a GET parameter along with its value. In the URL http://localhost/shirts4mike/search/index.php?s=blue, you have one parameter called "s" with a value of "blue". You can also have multiple parameters separated by an ampersand, such as http://localhost/shirts4mike/search/index.php?s=blue&something=red&somethingelse=5. In that example, you have a parameter called "s" that has the value "blue", a parameter called "something" that has the value "red", and a parameter called "somethingelse" that has the value "5".

When you submit a form, it can either be submitted using a GET or a POST. Doing a GET will put each parameter in the URL, as we've been doing. Using POST means that your parameters get submitted in the request, but you won't see them in the URL. PHP has a corresponding $_POST method that will let you get parameters that were submitted using POST.

One of the main differences with GET and POST is that you can bookmark a page that uses GET since the parameters are in the URL. For example, you could bookmark http://localhost/shirts4mike/search/index.php?s=blue and that page would show you all the blue shirts when you go to it from your bookmarks. You can't bookmark the results of a POST because the data exists only for that request. You've probably been on some web page and refreshed it and the browser said something like "are you sure you want to resubmit this form", right? That's because the form was submitted using a POST.

I hope that explains things a little better.