search.php not grabbing results from form - php

Question

I'm finding it very hard to return database results with php pdo pagination in wordpress. I have a form on another page that sends the search data to search4.php where I want to display matching rows and have previous|next links. I get no results, and If I echo $search, it just says 'search'
Here is the relevant code so far:
//html form on another page
<form method="POST" action="<?www.example.com/search4 ?>">
Search:
<input type="text" name="search"
<input type="submit" name="search" value="search" /></form>
//search4.php relevant code
if(isset($_REQUEST["search"]) && $_REQUEST["search"] != "")
{
$search = htmlspecialchars($_REQUEST["search"]);
$pagination->param = "&search=$search";
echo $search;
$pagination->rowCount("SELECT * FROM stories WHERE stories.category LIKE
'%$search%' OR stories.genre = LIKE '%$search%'");
$pagination->config(3, 8);
$sql = "SELECT * FROM stories WHERE stories.category LIKE '%$search%' OR
stories.genre = LIKE '%$search%' ORDER BY SID ASC LIMIT $pagination-
>start_row, $pagination->max_rows";
$query = $connection->prepare($sql);
$query->execute();
$model = array();
while($rows = $query->fetch())
{
...etc

Answer 1

You <input type=text> and your <input type=submit> has the same name... So button value is overriding your text value... that why is always "search".
change it to:
<input type="text" name="search_text"/>
<input type="submit" name="search_button" value="search" />
Now, on your search4.php you can access your search text using $_REQUEST["search_text"]
PD: You can remove the name attribute on the submit button too.