How can PHP developers ensure that a search query only searches within certain fields if those fields are filled out, ignoring them otherwise?

To ensure that a search query only searches within certain fields if those fields are filled out, developers can use conditional statements to check if the fields are empty or not. If a field is not empty, the search query will include that field in the search criteria; if it is empty, that field will be ignored. 

$searchQuery = "SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE 1=1";

if (!empty($_POST['field1'])) {
    $searchQuery .= " AND field1 = '" . $_POST['field1'] . "'";
}

if (!empty($_POST['field2'])) {
    $searchQuery .= " AND field2 = '" . $_POST['field2'] . "'";
}

// Continue adding similar conditional statements for other fields

// Execute the search query
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $searchQuery);

// Process the search results

Keywords

PHP search query fields conditional logic data validation

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