Creating a database search engine

[kaozdragon]

i've looked online and so far i've only gotten scripts of the search engines where they do full-text searches or the ones that retrieve one variable in the database and retrieve it.  i've been able to squeeze in 2 variables but when i do more, it starts to mess up.  just wondering if there was a better way of doing this, rather than setting all empty variables to an abiguous number that will match all comps.  so to recap, i have 2 questions.

1.  how do you filter out more than 1 variable in a mysql database search?

2.  is there a better way to do this than what i'm doing?

 

<?php
include("connect.php");
include("head.php");

//get variables
$brand = ("[^a-z0-9A-Z]", "",$_POST["brand"]);
$hddcap = ("[^a-z0-9A-Z]", "",$_POST["hddcap"]);

//if hddcap does not exist, makes it 0
if (!$hddcap)
{$hddcap = 0;}

echo "<center>Results</center><BR>";

//print results

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM computers WHERE brand LIKE '%$brand%' && hddcap>'%$hddcap%' ORDER BY series, model");
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
echo "<a href='computer.php?id=" . $row['id'] . "'>" . $row['brand'] . "'s " . $row

['series'] . " " . $row['model'] . "</a><br>";
}
include("foot.php");
?>

[Oldiesmann]

I don't have much experience with searching and such, so I'm not sure if there's a better way to do that, but there's a minor typo in the query...

 

It should be hddcap LIKE '%$hddcap%' (or hddcap>'$hddcap' if the variable is 0 - otherwise you'll get anything where hddcap has a 0 in it).

 

I'm assuming you meant to put preg_replace after the = in those two "get variables" lines...