Combination of field search using PHP & MYSQL

Question

I am working on an assignment using PHP & MYSQL.

one of the tasks is to search on any combination of the fields. That includes Dropdown boxes populated from the

Answer 1

Instead of all those conditionals about whether to add AND when concatenating to the query, use an array and implode.

$fields = array('sport' => 'sport',
                'gender' => 'gender', 
                'fname' => 'firstName',
                'lname' => 'lastName',
                'country' => 'country');
$wheres = array();
foreach ($fields as $postfield => $dbfield) {
    if ($_POST[$postfield] != 'showAll') {
        $wheres[] = "$dbfield = '" . mysql_real_escape_string($_POST[$postfield]) . "'";
    }
}
$selectString = "SELECT t2ath.lastName, t2ath.firstName, t2ath.image, t2ath.sport, t2ath.gender, t2ath.country, t2country.flag 
                 FROM t2ath LEFT JOIN t2country
                 ON t2ath.country = t2country.name";
if (count($wheres) > 0) {
    $selectString .= " WHERE " . implode(" AND ", $wheres);
}
$result = mysql_query($selectString);

To see how to do it similarly using PDO prepared statements, see my answer here: What code approach would let users apply three optional variables in PHP/MySQL?