how to make drop down list in a search bar

[chauhanRohit]

Hi, guys this is my first post here thanks for reading it,  i was working on a search bar , the search works fine and   i would

like to add a few more functionalities to it.

 

1.make the search result as dropdown list from the search bar.

2.make the results from the dropdown list links.

 

can any one know how this can be achieved.

 

this is the code.

<?php
mysql_connect("localhost","root","") or die("could not connect");
mysql_select_db("test") or die("could not find database");
$output = '';

//collect
if (isset($_POST['searchVal']) && trim($_POST['searchVal'])!='') {

	$searchq = $_POST['searchVal'];
	$searchq = preg_replace("#[^0-9a-z]#i","",$searchq);
	
	$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM authors WHERE fname LIKE '%$searchq%' OR lname LIKE '%$searchq%'") or die("could not search");
	$count = mysql_num_rows($query);
	if($count == 0){
		 $output = 'there was no search result!';
		}else{
			while($row = mysql_fetch_array($query)){
			   $firstname = $row['fname'];
			   $lastname  = $row['lname'];
			  
			    $output .= '<div> '.$firstname.' '.$lastname.' </div>';
		   }
		
	   }
	}
echo($output);	

?>

at present the results are displayed normally on the page.

 

plz help

 

[jairathnem]

Her's how I would acheive it:

 

make the search result output JSON, use JQuery to perform POST request on a defined confition (for ex: entered string length >3), parse JSON and display in dropdown.

 

you can make use of autocomplete() jquery function.

[chauhanRohit]

sorry i did not mention this , but i am new to php and can you please help me with the code.

plz.

[jairathnem]

sorry i did not mention this , but i am new to php and can you please help me with the code.

plz.

what have you tried so far?

[chauhanRohit]

well  i  made a search bar that displays  the results from the database. and  the code is the function that searches the database.  

 

please see the code , where should i add the <tr> , <td> tags so that each output is displayed in different rows and each one is a link.

 

now  the results are displayed as a single element within div.

Edited February 27, 2014 by chauhanRohit

[jairathnem]

write a php to output JSON.

Example : 

<?php
require 'connection.php';




$term = $_GET['term'];
$sql = "SELECT * FROM `table_name` WHERE `element` like '$term%'";
$sth = mysql_query($sql) or die(mysql_error());
$rows = array();
while($r = mysql_fetch_assoc($sth)) {
    $rows = $r;
}
print json_encode($rows);


?>

and in Autocomplete call this php and parse the returned value.

 

NOTE: the php isnt secure. It is just an example. Donot deploy the same code.