However if nonsense is typed in - ie. the record is not in the database, all I get is an internal sever error.

Check your server's error logs.

I see a couple of problems. The zero'th problem is that you aren't showing us any code that takes data from a form and injects it into a WHERE clause. How can you expect to us to diagnose a problem when you're not showing us the right code?

Another problem is that you're waiting far too long to print a response header. Do that right up top, before you start opening up database connections and firing off queries.

And I don't think 

  print p (end_html);

[download]
is doing what you expect it to do.

In reply to Re: MySQL/DBI: Error if entry is not in the database by dws
in thread MySQL/DBI: Error if entry is not in the database by basm101

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