PHP - Page Not Loaded - Free Air Guitar For Help

when the user clicks the submit button from a html form, it needs to go back two pages with that loaded page refreshed. for the javascript i only have history.go(-2);  with php, I have tried cookies and sessions which i discovered that neither will work because the loaded page is not refreshed. I could do a html body onload but that would break the w3c validator. what are my options?

Good evening,

I am currently doing a web application which requires pulling out of data from the database. I am still a novice in the programming industry, and is still seeking help from my colleagues and of course forum sites like phpdn. I have an existing code which my friend provided me. I have already done some modifications with the code. I have a problem though with the code, it executes database query upon loading of the page. I do understand how the code works, however, I am not able to modify the code to disallow the execution of query upon loading of page. Here is the code:

<?PHP
include("dbconnection.php");

$query = "SELECT * FROM records";

if(isset($_POST["btnSearch"]))

{
                $query .= " WHERE last_name LIKE '%".$_POST["search"]."%' OR first_name LIKE '%".$_POST["search"]."%'OR territory LIKE '%".$_POST["search"]."%'OR job_title LIKE '%".$_POST["search"]."%'OR title LIKE '%".$_POST["search"]."%'OR employer LIKE '%".$_POST["search"]."%' " ;
}

$result = mysql_query($query, $connection) or die(mysql_error());
?>


I do know that this php code, the way it is written, is supposed to do that - to select data from my database (This code was provided by a friend). But my requirement for the project is actually to give it a search engine and display the information based from the search query. I have a search engine already together with the code, and it works pretty well. What I must do is to disallow the pulling of data from the first load, but just pull data if the search engine is used.

Here's the whole code:

<link href="add_client.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">

<?PHP
include("dbconnection.php");

$query = "SELECT * FROM records";

if(isset($_POST["btnSearch"]))

{
                $query .= " WHERE last_name LIKE '%".$_POST["search"]."%' OR first_name LIKE '%".$_POST["search"]."%'OR territory LIKE '%".$_POST["search"]."%'OR job_title LIKE '%".$_POST["search"]."%'OR title LIKE '%".$_POST["search"]."%'OR employer LIKE '%".$_POST["search"]."%' " ;
}

$result = mysql_query($query, $connection) or die(mysql_error());
?>

<table width="760" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
  <tr>
    <td><table width="760" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
      <tr>
        <td width="199" align="center" valign="top"><a href="login.html"><img src="asia.gif" alt="" width="152" height="58" border="0" /></a>        <script type="text/javascript" src="menu.js"></script></td>
        <td width="176" align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="main.php"><img src="Home.jpg" width="104" height="20" border="0"/></a></td>
        <td width="130" align="right" valign="bottom"><img src="View.jpg" width="104" height="20" border="0"/></td>
        <td width="146" align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="add_client.php"><img src="Add.jpg" width="104" height="20" border="0"/></a></td>
        <td width="109" align="right" valign="bottom">&nbsp;</td>
        </tr>

    </table></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td><table width="760" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
      <tr>
        <td width="200" height="3"  bgcolor="#1B1C78"><img src="images/topspacerblue.gif" alt="" width="1" height="3" /></td>
        <td width="560"  bgcolor="#0076CC"><img src="images/topspacerlblue.gif" alt="" width="1" height="3" /></td>

      </tr>
    </table></td>

  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td height="553" align="center" valign="top" bgcolor="#F3FAFE"><br />

      <form name="form" action="view_client.php" method="post">
      <table width="351" border="0">
          <tr>
            <td width="137" align="left" valign="middle">SEARCH RECORD:</td>
            <td width="144" align="center" valign="middle"><input type="text" name="search" /></td>
            <td width="56" align="left" valign="middle"><input type="submit" name="btnSearch" value="Search" /></td>
          </tr>
        </table>
        <br />
        <table width="680" border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1" bordercolor="38619E" >
          <tr>
            <th width="100" align="center" bgcolor="#E0E8F3">Territory</th>
            <th width="110" align="center" bgcolor="#E0E8F3">Employer</th>
            <th width="110" align="center" bgcolor="#E0E8F3">Job Title</th>
            <th width="50" align="center" bgcolor="#E0E8F3">Title</th>
            <th width="110" align="center" bgcolor="#E0E8F3">First Name</th>
            <th width="110" align="center" bgcolor="#E0E8F3">Last Name</th>
            <th width="70" align="center" valign="middle" bgcolor="#E0E8F3">&nbsp;</th>
          </tr>
          <?php
  if($result)
  {
          for($i=0; $i<mysql_num_rows($result); $i++)
          {
                  $id = trim(mysql_result($result, $i, "id"));
                  $territory = trim(mysql_result($result, $i, "territory"));
                  $employer = trim(mysql_result($result, $i, "employer"));
                  $job_title = trim(mysql_result($result, $i, "job_title"));
                  $title = trim(mysql_result($result, $i, "title"));
                  $first_name = trim(mysql_result($result, $i, "first_name"));
                  $last_name = trim(mysql_result($result, $i, "last_name"));
                                 
                  echo "<tr>";
                  echo "<td>".$territory."</td>";
                  echo "<td>".$employer."</td>";
                  echo "<td>".$job_title."</td>";
                  echo "<td>".$title."</td>";
                  echo "<td>".$first_name."</td>";
                  echo "<td>".$last_name."</td>";
                  echo "<td><a href='admin_edit.php?id=".$id."'>edit</a> | <a href='admin_delete.php?id=".$id."'>del</a> </td>";
                  echo "</tr>";
          }
  }
  ?>
        </table>
<br />
   </form>
    <p>&nbsp;</p></td>

  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td height="38"><table width="760" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
      <tr>
        <td width="200" height="35" align="center"  bgcolor="#1B1C78" class=white><img src="images/topspacerblue.gif" alt="" width="1" height="3" />&nbsp;<a href="disclaimer.html"><font color="#FFFFFF">Legal Disclaimer</font></a> </td>

        <td width="560" align="center"  bgcolor="#0076CC"  class=white><img src="images/topspacerlblue.gif" alt="" width="1" height="3" />&nbsp;Copyright &copy; 2006 - 2010 Limited. All rights reserved.
</td>
      </tr>

    </table></td>
  </tr>
</table>


Immediate response is well appreciated. Thank you very much!

Ok, just another noob problem here while working with PHP + MySQL:

I have a php page containing a form which I use to pull the data from mysql database. When the user chooses  a value/values from the dropdown lists and clicks submit, the page reloads and displaying the quarry results according to user's selection.

When user first loads the php page with form, it shows no data unless he clicks submit.

Question: How to show a default quarry value on first page load before user even get to use the form? In other words, I want the user to see the default quarry data pulled from DB on page load before he uses the form to refine the results...

I am not sure if its possible, but truly hope so I would appreciate any advice or pointer in the right direction.

Please let me know if you need the exact code I am using for my form page.

I'm restarting this under a new subject b/c I learned some things after I initially posted and the subject heading is no longer accurate.

What would cause this behavior - when I populate session vars from a MYSQL query, they stick, if I populate them from an MSSQL query, they drop.

It doesn't matter if I get to the next page using a header redirect or a form submit.  I have two session vars I'm loading from a MYSQL query and they remain, the two loaded from MSSQL disappear. 

I have confirmed that all four session vars are loading ok initially and I can echo them out to the page, but when the application moves to next page via redirect or form submit, the two vars loaded from MSSQL are empty. 

Any ideas?

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Please tell me any known or good script.
thanks