CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phphtmlforms
turbonerd
turbonerd

Reputation: 1306

Is there any way to stop a GET method form from sending empty variables?

I'm using the following form as part of an Advanced Search page on my WordPress install.

<form action="/advanced-search/" method="get">

The form is working correctly, but producing URLs like:

/advanced-search/page/3/?act=s&f=cichlidae&g&s&c&r&tmin&tmax&hmin&hmax&pHmin&pHmax&cmin&cmax&sF&sM&aL&aD&aH

Is there any way to stop the form from sending those empty variables? In the above example only f was searched for (value cichlidae). As such I'd prefer it to produce a URL like this:

/advanced-search/?act=s&f=cichlidae (plus the /page/3/ if necessary).

I can't use $_POST because I can't get the WordPress paged variable to work with $_POST values.

Thanks in advance,

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1950

Answers (3)

hohner
hohner

Reputation: 11588

Why don't you use jQuery's serialize method to collect all the form values in a string?

$('form').submit(function() {
   var string = $(this).serialize();
   window.location.href = '/advanced-search/'+string;
});

It loops through all of your form elements, collects their values and converts it into a readable string format for use in URLs.

Upvotes: 2

netcoder
netcoder

Reputation: 67695

No, there is no way (without JavaScript that is). If there was, this would be browser-specific, since it's the browser that decides what to do with the form data.

Also, this:

foo.php?a=

...and this:

foo.php

...is semantically different. In the former, a is passed with an empty string ("") while the in latter, a is not passed at all (null).

Also, Wordpress is correct here, since the form is a search form, thus it is retrieving data and should use GET; and not creating data as POST should do.

A way to change this (without JavaScript) is to use a gateway script that removes empty parameters from the URL and redirect.

Per example:

$newGET = array();
foreach ($_GET as $key => $value) {
    if ($value !== '') $newGET[$key] = $value;
}

header('Location: some/url?'.http_build_query($newGET));
exit;

Upvotes: 1

Amber
Amber

Reputation: 526623

Not built-in to a form, no - if the field exists, it'll be sent.

You could use Javascript to submit the form instead, and thus omit empty fields.

Upvotes: 1

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