Drop Down Search Submission

ChevyAdmin · #1 07-15-2008, 03:54 PM

Hello Everyone,

I'm looking for a way to make a search form page on my website that when items are selected from a series of dropdown menus, those values then would be submitted to the sites search engine.

I have a bunch of PDF files on my site and they all contain common information. They're invoices for vehicles, and what I'd like to do is be able to search for specific invoices based on year, make, model, color, etc. and have those options preset in the drop down fields. I've seen where you can add those values in BV, but am not sure how to tie it all together so that each option gets added to the next, then gets submitted to the sites search engine page. The PDF's are currently indexed correctly so that I can type in what I'm looking for and the correct items show up in the results pane, but you have to know what your looking for. If for example I searched for 2008 Chevrolet Cobalt, all of the PDF's will show up that match my search criteria, but you still have to filter through the multiple files for the colors that are available. Instead of hand typing all of the information in each time you needed to look up an invoice, I thought a drop down might be possible. Perhaps with some sort of EXACT Tag that would only pull the PDF's with the search criteria selected.

Here's what I've got so far. I didn't want to get too far ahead of myself if it wasn't possible. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
<title>Untitled Page</title>
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Created by BlueVoda">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div id="bv_Form1" style="position:absolute;left:68px;top:62px;width: 592px;height:377px;z-index:9" align="left">
<form name="SearchForm" method="POST" action="" enctype="multipart/form-data" id="Form1">
<select name="Year" size="1" id="Combobox1" style="position:absolute;left:67px;top:68px;width: 67px;font-family:Arial;font-size:16px;z-index:0">
<option value="2007">2007</option>
<option value="2008">2008</option>
<option value="2009">2009</option>
<option value="2010">2010</option>
</select>
<div id="bv_Text1" style="position:absolute;left:78px;top:48px;width: 41px;height:16px;z-index:1" align="left">
<font style="font-size:13px" color="#000000" face="Arial"> Year</font></div>
<select name="Make_Select" size="1" id="Combobox2" style="position:absolute;left:145px;top:69px;width :150px;font-family:Arial;font-size:16px;z-index:2">
<option value="Cadillac">Cadillac</option>
<option value="Chevrolet">Chevrolet</option>
<option value="GMC">GMC</option>
<option value="Saturn">Saturn</option>
<option value="Chevrolet Truck">Chevrolet Truck</option>
<option value="Cadillac Truck">Cadillac Truck</option>
</select>
<div id="bv_Text2" style="position:absolute;left:194px;top:48px;width :54px;height:16px;z-index:3" align="left">
<font style="font-size:13px" color="#000000" face="Arial">Make</font></div>
<select name="Model_select" size="1" id="Combobox3" style="position:absolute;left:301px;top:68px;width :150px;font-family:Arial;font-size:16px;z-index:4">
<option value="CTS">CTS</option>
<option value="DTS">DTS</option>
<option value="ESCALADE">ESCALADE</option>
<option value="ESCALADE ESV">ESCALADE ESV</option>
<option value="ESCALADE EXT">ESCALADE EXT</option>
<option value="COBALT">COBALT</option>
<option value="CORVETTE">CORVETTE</option>
<option value="IMPALA">IMPALA</option>
<option value="MALIBU">MALIBU</option>
<option value="AVALANCHE">AVALANCHE</option>
<option value="COLORADO">COLORADO</option>
<option value="EQUINOX">EQUINOX</option>
<option value="EXPRESS CARGO">EXPRESS CARGO</option>
<option value="SILVERADO 1500">SILVERADO 1500</option>
</select>
<div id="bv_Text3" style="position:absolute;left:323px;top:47px;width :54px;height:16px;z-index:5" align="left">
<font style="font-size:13px" color="#000000" face="Arial">Model</font></div>
<input type="submit" id="Button1"" name="Button1" value="Submit" style="position:absolute;left:227px;top:114px;widt h:75px;height:24px;z-index:6">
<div id="bv_Text4" style="position:absolute;left:114px;top:9px;width: 301px;height:27px;z-index:7" align="left">
<font style="font-size:24px" color="#000000" face="Arial">Vehicle Inventory Search</font></div>
<hr size="4" width="536" id="Line1" style="position:absolute;left:39px;top:39px;width: 536px;height:4px;z-index:8">
</form>
</div>
</body>
</html>

navaldesign · #2 07-15-2008, 11:54 PM

It actually depends on your seach engine form but, theoretically, it would be enough to name all the dropdown with the same name, which would be the same name of the search form (the original one) with the addition of a [] at the end of the name. In the receiving page (where the search form submits, you need a small piece of code to combine the values of all dropdowns in one search phrase.

Alternatively: use javascript to combine the values of the dropdowns and use them as value to be submitted by the search form to the search script.

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