Hi,
I do not have a problem with specific code but rather code design/technique. I am not able to articulate the problem very well but here goes.
I am building a [mostly] object oriented PHP store as a personal project to improve my PHP skills. However I'm running into some problems concerning my sorting, pagination and filtering facilities. I've tried to use $_GET to store the following:
Page being viewed by the user
Category (e.g. fruit or vegetables)
Sort method (e.g price ascending, descending etc.)
When the user clicks on a link to another page for example, I must append the page number to the URL, something like "index.php?page=2" but the other $_GET parameters are lost unless I do something like:
<a href=\"index.php?cat=".$_GET['cat']."&sort=".$_GET['sort']."&page=".($this->pageNum+1)."\">Next-> </a>
This means whenever there is a link or form submission I must find a way to carry over all those parameters to ensure the page and category are remembered, otherwise the user is returned to page 1 and the main category. It's a mess and has become too confusing with the introduction of other pages.
Clearly, I'm doing it all wrong. $_GET parameters alone are not a good solution here, at least how I'm using them. So I ask of you, what's the correct way to store information such as page number, sorting method and category? Must I use $_SESSIONS and if so how? Thanks.