Operation Manual

586
USING DREAMWEAVER
Building applications visually
Last updated 3/28/2012
6 To include only some of the table’s columns in the recordset, click Selected and select the desired columns by
Control-clicking (Windows) or Command-clicking (Macintosh) them in the list.
You should include only the columns containing information you want to display on the results page.
Leave the Recordset dialog box open for now. You’ll use it next to retrieve the parameters sent by the search page and
create a recordset filter to exclude records that don’t meet the parameters.
Create the recordset filter
1 From the first pop-up menu in the Filter area, select a column in the database table in which to search for a match.
For example, if the value sent by the search page is a city name, select the column in your table that contains city names.
2 From the pop-up menu beside the first menu, select the equal sign (it should be the default).
3 From the third pop-up menu, select Form Variable if the form on your search page uses the POST method, or URL
Parameter if it uses the
GET method.
The search page uses either a form variable or a URL parameter to pass information to the results page.
4 In the fourth box, enter the name of the form object that accepts the search parameter on the search page.
The name of the object doubles as the name of the form variable or URL parameter. You can get the name by switching
to the search page, clicking the form object on the form to select it, and checking the object’s name in the Property
inspector.
For example, suppose you want to create a recordset that includes only adventure trips to a specific country. Assume
you have a column in the table called
TRIPLOCATION. Also assume the HTML form on your search page uses the GET
method and contains a menu object called Location that displays a list of countries. The following example shows how
your Filter section should look:
5 (Optional) Click Test, enter a test value, and click OK to connect to the database and create an instance of the
recordset.
The test value simulates the value that would otherwise have been returned from the search page. Click OK to close
the test recordset.
6 If you’re satisfied with the recordset, click OK.
A server-side script is inserted on your page that checks each record in the database table when it runs on the server.
If the specified field in a record meets the filtering condition, the record is included in a recordset. The script builds a
recordset that contains only the search results.
The next step is to display the recordset on the results page. For more information, see Display the search results” on
page 588.
Build an advanced results page
If the search page submits more than one search parameter to the server, you must write a SQL query for the results
page and use the search parameters in SQL variables.