About search/results pages

In most cases, you need at least two pages to add this feature to your web application. The first page is a page containing an HTML form in which users enter search parameters. Although this page doesn’t do any actual searching, it is referred to as "the search page."

The second page you need is the results page, which performs most of the work. The result’s page does the following tasks:

• Reads the search parameters submitted by the search page
• Connects to the database and search for records
• Builds a recordset with the records found
• Displays the contents of the recordset

Optionally, you can add a detail page. A detail page gives users more information about a particular record on the results page.

If you use ASP.NET, you can combine both the search page and the results page into one page.

If you have only one search parameter, Dreamweaver lets you add search capabilities to your web application without using SQL queries and variables. Simply design your pages and complete a few dialog boxes. If you have more than one search parameter, you need to write a SQL statement and define multiple variables for it.

Dreamweaver inserts the SQL query in your page. When the page runs on the server, each record in the database table is checked. If the specified field in a record meets your SQL query conditions, the record is included in a recordset. The SQL query in effect builds a recordset containing only the search results.

For example, field sales staff might have information about customers in a certain area have incomes above a certain level. In a form on a search page, the sales associate enters a geographical area and a minimum income level, and then clicks the Submit button to send the two values to a server. On the server, the values are passed to the results page’s SQL statement, which then creates a recordset containing only customers in the specified area with incomes above the specified level.

Related topics

• Building search/results pages (ColdFusion, ASP, JSP, PHP)
• Building a database search page (ASP.NET)