You say there are "six available search fields", so let's consider a realistic example -- a set of parameters like: firstname, lastname, street, city, state, zip, phone. In order to run a dynamic search on any combination of values in those parameters, you could do something like this: 
my @param_names = qw(firstname lastname street city state zip phone);

# if column names in the table are different from param names in the f
+orm,
# you'll need a second array for the column names:
my @table_names = qw(fname lname street city st zip phone);

my @query_values;
my @where_clauses;

for my $i ( 0..$#param_names ) {
    $_ = param( $param_name[$i] );
    s/^\s+//;  # remove any leading and trailing whitespace
    s/\s+$//;
    if (length()) { # anything left?
        push @query_values, $_;  # hold onto the value
        push @where_clauses, "$table_names[$i] = ?"; 
              # use a placeholder in the sql statement
    }
}

if ( @where_clauses ) {
    my $sql = "select fname,lname,street,id,and_so_on from the_table w
+here ".
        join( " and ", @where_clauses );

    my $sth = $dbh->prepare( $sql );
    $sth->execute( @query_values );

    # do what you want with the query results (fetch_whatever)
    # ...
}
else {
    # no parameters were filled in, so what should you do?
    #  - tell the client to try again, or
    #  - query for and deliver the full table contents?
}

[download]
That will handle searches for exact matches to specific fields. If you want to support more flexible matches, you could provide a button for the client to pick "equals" vs. "like" for each parameter, and adjust the where_clause condition and query_value string accordingly (e.g., if the "like" button was chosen, use "like" instead of "=" in the where_clause string, and add "%" at the beginning and end of the query_value string).

You might need to do other things with the param value strings before moving them into the query_value array (e.g. uri_unescape), in order for the query to work as intended.

In reply to Re: Build SQL on the fly from WEB search form by graff
in thread Build SQL on the fly from WEB search form by data67

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