Search with query sent via GET parameters like wordpress

Category:Approaches

Advantages: you can bookmark your searches, and they show up in your history, etc. (I guess this is why wordpress uses it, or maybe its just convenient, whatever).

After typing in the searchbox the words "search terms" and click the search button you will go to an url like this: http://www.myserver.com/my_controller/my_function/?s=search+terms

Codeigniter removes the contents of $_GET for security reasons (I guess).

Use $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] to get the full text of the url and explode to extract what you need:

[code] $array = explode('?s=', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']); [/code]

Then usldecode it and addslashes for security (you can xss_clean it too)

[code] $searchStr = isset($array[1]) ? addslashes($this->input->xss_clean(urldecode(trim($arr[1])))) : ''; [/code]

You can figure out the rest yourself.

[code] function search() {

$this->load->helper('url');   //required for base_url()

$array = explode('?s=',  $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
$searchStr = isset($array[1]) ? addslashes($this->input->xss_clean(urldecode(trim($arr[1])))) : '';

echo '<form method="get" action="'. base_url() . 'my_controller/my_function/">'
."Search for phrase:<br />" 
."&lt;input type='text' name='s' value='$searchStr'&gt;"
. "<br />"
.'&lt;input type="submit" Search&gt;';


/*
rest of code goes here
... find data in database and display it
*/

} [/code]