Searching problem with PHP & Postgres

[smti]

Hi Folks,

 

I am having a problem with a search function I am writing. Here is the situation:

 

I have text box named "search_for" where users can enter the term they want to find in a particular record. Users must then select from a drop down what field in the database they would like to check the term for.

 

Users can select the following fields in the database to search:

1. ticketid

2. name

3. username

4. building

 

Searching for a particular ticket ID appears to work fine, however, searching for anything else in any one of the other database fields produces an error. For example, if I search for "Columbia" and select building from the drop down I get the error: Error in SQL query: ERROR: column "Columbia" does not exist.

 

 

Here is my search query code (and code to show result:

 

include ("../../../../includes/connection.inc.php");

// execute query
$sql = "SELECT ticketid, opendate, name, status FROM tickets where $in_what=$search_for order by ticketid asc";
$result = pg_query($dbh, $sql);
if (!$result) {
     die("Error in SQL query: " . pg_last_error());
}
  
// iterate over result set
// print each row
//while ($row = pg_fetch_array($result)) {
    $count=0;
echo '<tbody>';	
// keeps getting the next row until there are no more to get
	  while ($row = pg_fetch_array($result)) {
// Print out the contents of each row into a table
$classStr = $count++ % 2 ? '' : "class='alt'";
		echo "<tr $classStr>
		<td> $row[0]</td>
		<td> $row[1]</td>
		<td> $row[2]</td>
		<td> $row[3]</td>";

		//Grab ID and put in variable.
		$id=$row['ticketid'];
  
  

		echo "<td><a href='viewticket.php?id=$id'><img src='images/icons/view.png' alt='View Record'></a></td>
	</tr>";
}
echo '</tbody>';	

  // close connection
pg_close($dbh);

}

 

Why can I locate records using the ticketid field, but not the others? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thank You,

 

smti

[btherl]

Can you add "echo $sql;" and show me the output please?  I suspect you need single quotes around the $search_for, otherwise it'll be interpreted as a column name.  You won't get the same problem for numbers because column names can't be numbers.