How to search a database, then have the option to sort by year, color etc?

[gigabyt3r]

Title says it all, i'm stumped by this one.

 

Thanks in advance

[joel24]

say you had a table called people:

id, name, suburb, postcode, age

 

and you were trying to find people in a suburb...?

your form would have

 

suburb: _______ [text input]

order by: ______ [drop down with options: name, postcode, age -- must correspond to the SQL columns]

 

then your php would be

$suburb = $_POST['suburb'];
$orderBy = $_POST['orderBy'];

$sql = @mysql_query("SELECT * FROM people WHERE suburb = '$suburb' ORDER BY $orderBy");

 

or if you wanted more leniancy with teh search you could use LIKE... i.e.

 

$sql = @mysql_query("SELECT * FROM people WHERE suburb LIKE '%$suburb%' ORDER BY $orderBy");

 

the %'s are wildcards...