====== Passing Searches Through Urls ======


You can pass search variables through a url link. To search a specific field use the name of the HTML input tag within the source of the search form as the name of variable passed and its value as the term you want to search that term for.

To do a basic search for your whole site

<code html>
http://example.com/index.php?a=19&b[search_text]=searching+for+something&b[search_titles]=1&b[search_descriptions]=1
</code>

where "searching for something" is what you are searching for. Any values passed by URL must be urlencoded. Unless there are special characters the only thing you should need to do is replace " " (spaces) with "+" (plus signs)((The reason for this is to make sure it is formatted correctly for the URL.  This is not something specific to the software, it is just how a URL works for any website.  For example, if you do a search in http://google.com and include a space in the search, look in the address bar, the part that contains your search terms will have replaced the spaces with plus.)).

To search a specific category (and its subcategories):

<code html>
http://example.com/index.php?a=19&b[search_text]=searching+for+something&c=###&b[subcategories_also]=1
</code>

where ### is the category id number for the category you wish to search.

For basic text searches of fields...
<code html>
http://www.yoursite.com/index.php?a=19&b[optional_field_1]=ford&b[optional_field_2]=green
</code>

For range searches on number only site wide fields...
<code html>
http://example.com/index.php?a=19&b[optional_field_1_lower]=1970&b[optional_field_1_higher]=1975
</code>

The secret to creating these searches is duplicating the form in the variables it submits and the names used for those variables.

<tip c n>Note that URL's cannot have any spaces (ie " ") within them.  If there is a space any data after the space within the url will be ignored.</tip>