Searching for not equal

[JayNo]

I'm having trouble searching for things from my database.

I have a drop down list of clients, eg..
- all clients <initially selected>
- Asahi
- Budweiser
- Corona
- Heineken

if the user doesn't select anything I want to search for everything in the database. If a client is selected i want it to search for data from only that client. The only problem is that there is about 20 other fields that have areas like this.

Anyone have an idea as to how to set up a search function to do this.

My code right now looks like this:

[code]$client = $_POST['client'];
if ($client == 'All'){
  $clientCompare = '!=';
} else {
  $clientCompare = '=';
}
mysql_select_db($mysqldatabase, $mysqlconnection);
$testQuery = " SELECT * FROM tbl_test1 WHERE col_clientName $clientCompare $client
";
$testResult = mysql_query($testQuery) or die('Error, query failed');[/code]

Obviously, i will need other conditions for the other form data, but just testing right now.

Thanks.

[wickning1]

Why make MySQL evaluate a condition that doesn't have semantic meaning? I always do it something like this:

[code]$client = $_POST['client'];
if ($client != 'All') $whereclause .= 'col_clientName=' . $client;
// add more conditions

if ($whereclause) $whereclause = "WHERE " . $whereclause;
mysql_select_db($mysqldatabase, $mysqlconnection);
$testQuery = "SELECT * FROM tbl_test1 $whereclause";
$testResult = mysql_query($testQuery) or die('Error, query failed');[/code]