How to put submitted formdata in URL?

Need Help
1

Hi,

I would like the following, but am not sure if at all possible. And IF possible: how?

Say I have a webshop and I want users to be able to search products. I made a simple form for this:

<?php
echo $this->Form->create('search', ['url' => ['controller' => 'Products','action' => 'search']]);
    echo $this->Form->control('search',['label'=>false]);
    echo $this->Form->button('submit');;
    echo $this->Form->end();

This form is in the navbar/header of every page of the website. The search term is submitted to the ‘search’ action in the ‘ProductsController’: all works fine.

But the URL where the users are redirected to is (no surprise):
https://mysite.com/products/search
(with a page with the correct results)

What I would like, is (lets presume the user searches for ‘ipad’) the URL to be:
https://mysite.com/products/search/ipad

So: The user types something (like ‘ipad’) in that searchform (anywhere on the site). And on submit, he/she is immideatly sent/redirected to
https://mysite.com/products/search/ipad

The reason I would like this, is because I want users to be able to copy a link and send that to a friend. And whan the friend opens that link, they are directly on the page with the search resluts.
To be clear: I have no issues with this last part (I have allready made a method that ‘takes’ that param from the URL and displays the correct page).
My only question/issue is: How to put that param directly in the URL on submit form.

THANKS!

2

You can use the FriendsOfCake/search plugin which includes a PRG component that do exactly that.

3

Hi Raul,
Thanks! I have seen that plugin and that would probably work. But… I would like to know how to achieve this without this plugin. Because I probably want to use this ‘trick’ (put a submitted formfield in the URL) in some other controllers (not only on search functions, but also others).
And I simply want to learn & understand how ths works.

From your answer, I understand that it IS possible? thats allready something.
Am I correct is asuming that PRG is the term that is used for this technique? Because if so, I will hopefully find some pointers when searching on discource.cakephp or Google

4

You can see and follow the source code of the plugin, like here (using the code for cake 3.x)

And yes, PRG is a pattern known for that use case.

5

In route
$routes->connect('/search/*', ['controller' => 'Products', 'action' => 'search']);

In bootstrap

$siteName =  'http://localhost/' . '/project_name/';
define('SITE_URL', $siteName);

In view page

    echo $this->Form->create('search', ['url' => [SITE_URL.'search']]);
    echo $this->Form->control('search',['label'=>false]);
    echo $this->Form->button('submit');;
    echo $this->Form->end();

Try this

6

Shouldn’t this be possible by simply changing the form-type to GET instead of the default POST?
Secret data of course should never be submitted using GET! :slight_smile:

See: https://book.cakephp.org/4/en/views/helpers/form.html#options-for-form-creation

Also, the controller function will need changes when using GET-form instead of POST-form.

Best regards,
D.