I want to have an order by date, name, email etc on a site ,but I don't even know where to start. When somebody goes to the results page I want them to be able to click on say name and then the results are displayed in order of names.
At the moment it's set up to automatically display by date added using:

$sql_order = " ORDER BY date DESC";

but I don't know how to change this so the user can select how they're ordered.

I've tried:

$sql_order = " ORDER BY '. $_GET['orderby'] . ' DESC";

$result = mysql_query ($sql_select . $sql_from . $sql_where . $sql_order . $sql_limit);

Order by: <a href='?orderby=name'>name</a> <a href='?orderby=email'>email</a>

but get an error saying:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_ENCAPSED_AND_WHITESPACE, expecting T_STRING or T_VARIABLE or T_NUM_STRING in /home/west/public_html/search.php on line 74

line 74 is:

$sql_order = " ORDER BY '. $_GET['orderby'] . ' DESC";

I'd be grateful if anybody could give me any pointers
Thanks

$sql_order = " ORDER BY '. $_GET['orderby'] . ' DESC";

You started with a double quote ( " ), but then used single-quotes in the middle. It's confused because " ORDER BY ' isn't a valid string. You need to use all double quotes or all single quotes throughout.

Thanks, I stopped getting that error and the page now loads. Although no results are shown at all. All it says is:

Warning: mysql_fetch_assoc(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/west/public_html/search.php on line 121

Warning: implode() [function.implode]: Argument to implode must be an array. in /home/west/public_html/search.php on line 121

Warning: mysql_error(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /home/west/public_html/search.php on line 128

Line 121 is:

PHP Code:

$results = implode(mysql_fetch_assoc(mysql_query ("SELECT COUNT(*) " . $sql_from . $sql_where . $sql_order))); 


and that is used to display 5 results at a time and line 128 is: the error that's shown if there was a problem with the query

PHP Code:

    echo("<p>Doh! Error performing query: " . mysql_error($result) . "</p>"); 


The same thing happened whether I used single or double quotes although when you link on one of the 'order by' options the error disappears, and they work

Okay I moved

$sql_order = ' ORDER BY '. $_GET['orderby'] .' DESC';

to lower down the error's gone, but it then it stops working completely

Originally Posted by thehappyappy

Okay I moved

$sql_order = ' ORDER BY '. $_GET['orderby'] .' DESC';

to lower down the error's gone, but it then it stops working completely

There is SQL-injection: don't trust $_GET['orderby'].
(more about SQL-injections: http://www.webmaster-talk.com/php-fo...injection.html)

Can you show more php code?

I changed

$sql_order = ' ORDER BY '. $_GET['orderby'] .' DESC';

to

$orderby = $_GET['orderby'] ? $_GET['orderby'] : 'date';

$orderdir = ( isset ( $_GET['orderdir'] ) &&  $_GET['orderdir'] == 'ASC' ) ? 'ASC' : 'DESC'; 

$sql_order = " ORDER BY `" . $orderby . "` " . $orderdir;

and it now works fine. Thanks