> I'm in process of creating a online whitepages directory for
> a small town phone company and I am having a little difficulty
> in refining my selection. My search form has two fields; last
> and first name. I would like to be able to have more of a wild
> card approach and some refinement when a user enters both a
> first and last name. I am unsure how to go about this, should
> I restructure my query, or make changes to my PHP. here is the
> query I am currently using. and the site is located at
> http://whitepages.maadtelco.com/ any assistance/direction is certainly
> appreciated.
>
> <snip>
> $query = "select * from whitepages WHERE last_name LIKE '$last_name' ORDER
> BY last_name" or die("Nothing to see here");
> </snip>


$query = "SELECT * FROM whitepages WHERE last_name LIKE '%$last_name%' ORDER
BY last_name" or die("Nothing to see here");

Question, why are you 'die'ing on a variable assigntment? Wouldn't you want
to 'die' on the actualy db_query()?

Note the added '%', this is assuming you are using MySQL, though they are
generally the same, I believe, with other DB's.  The % is essentially
wildcard of any amount.  So, if the last_name was BOB

it would find

BOBBY
BOBBER
ADOBOB

$query = "SELECT * FROM whitepages WHERE last_name LIKE '%$last_name%'
$andor first_name LIKE '%$first_name' ORDER
BY last_name" or die("Nothing to see here");

In this query, we are including the First Name.  In this, we are also using
the $andor variable, which you can define as AND, or OR, or allow the user
to define it by using a radio box or the like when making the search.  I
suggest setting a default of OR for the variable $andor.

Jason Lotito
www.NewbieNetwork.net
Where those who can, teach;
and those who can, learn.


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