Retrive number from database and pass it on as a search parameter - database

Question

When someone search for a particular CITY in my real estate website, I need to retrieve the matching cityID from a .csv database and pass the retrieved cityID to my vendor website as one of the search parameters, like http;//www.vendor.com?cityID=9999
The list of cityID and the cityName is in a file called myproperty.csv
Below are the current html codes that i have now.
<form action="vendor.com" method="get" target="_blank">
<label>Please enter city name:-</label>
<input type="text" id="cityName" name="cityName">
<!-- Please help me to add some codes here -->
<input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>
Can someone please help me with the codes to achieve the objective above?
I have searched high and low for answers, still nothing works. Please help. Thanks in advance for all your help
Hafiz

Answer 1

I assume you run your site on a PHP enabled web server, don't you? In that case here's one solution for you, which uses PHP to read the csv file line by line and create an html dropdown for the user to select the city by name.
Also, if you don't have PHP running on your server it is possible to do the same using JavaScript, if you need that rather than PHP let me know.
That's probably the most simple solution, you can get further by implementing a javascript autocomplete function if you want to use a text input rather than a list of cities in a dropdown.
<form action="vendor.com" method="get" target="_blank">
Please select city:
<?php
// Set filename to read from
$csvFile = 'dummy.csv';
// Open file handle
$fp = fopen($csvFile, "r");
// In case the file don't exist, exit
if (!is_resource($fp)){
die("Cannot open $csvFile");
}
?>
<select name="city">
<?php //Let's read the csvfile line by line: ?>
<?php while($line = fgetcsv($fp)): ?>
<?php // Assuming that the csvfile's structure is the following: city_id,city_name, we create the dropdown options: ?>
<option value="<?php echo $line[0];?>"><?php echo $line[1]?></option>
<?php endwhile; ?>
</select>
<input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>
And now here's the JavaScript solution (the code uses the JQUERY framework so you'll have to include it in your html tag:
<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.3/jquery.min.js"></script>
You'll also need a hidden form input to contain the matched city id, so here's the extended html markup for your form:
<form action="vendor.com" method="get" target="_blank" id="myForm">
Please enter city name:-
<input type="hidden" id="cityId" name="cityId">
<input type="text" id="cityName" name="cityName">
<input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>
And your JavaScript to do the job:
<script>
$(function(){
//Ajax call to get csv file contents
$.ajax({
type: "GET",
url: "dummy.csv",
dataType: "text",
success: function(data) {process_csv(data);}
});
//Event handler for form submission
$('#myForm').submit(function(){
//Let's get the value of the text input (city name)
var city_name = $('#cityName').val().toLowerCase();
//If the city name exists in our map, let's set the matched city id to the hidden input field called cityId
if (city_ids[city_name] > 0)
{
$('#cityId').val(city_ids[city_name]);
return true;
}
//Otherwise we can't find the city id in our database, so we can't post the form either...
alert('No such city name in database!');
return false;
});
});
//global variable to contain map of city names and id's
var city_ids = {};
//Function to parse csv file and set city map
function process_csv(text) {
var lines = text.split(/\r\n|\n/);
for (var i=0; i<lines.length; i++) {
var data = lines[i].split(',');
city_ids[data[1].toLowerCase()] = data[0];
}
}
</script>