Change + to an & in search string - php

Question

I'm pretty new to PHP and have this script that I am using to search a database I have for jobs. The problem is when the query arrives to this script it looks something like this search-result.php?query=engineer+sydney ... However, I need search for both words together and appear like this search-result.php?query=engineer&sydney with the & instead of the +
Is this something I should be trying to do from the search form or within the search script itself? I've added the search script below and the form below that.
Any help would be great!
<div class="joblist">
<?php
$query = $_GET['query'];
$query = sanitise($query);
// gets value sent over search form
$min_length = 3;
// you can set minimum length of the query if you want
if(strlen($query) >= $min_length){ // if query length is more or equal minimum length then
$query = htmlspecialchars($query);
// changes characters used in html to their equivalents, for example: < to >
$query = mysql_real_escape_string($query);
// makes sure nobody uses SQL injection
$raw_results = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM job_jobs
WHERE (`description` LIKE '%".$query."%') OR (`summary` LIKE '%".$query."%') OR (`title` LIKE '%".$query."%') OR (`location` LIKE '%".$query."%') ") or die(mysql_error());
// * means that it selects all fields, you can also write: `id`, `title`, `text`
// articles is the name of our table
// '%$query%' is what we're looking for, % means anything, for example if $query is Hello
// it will match "hello", "Hello man", "gogohello", if you want exact match use `title`='$query'
// or if you want to match just full word so "gogohello" is out use '% $query %' ...OR ... '$query %' ... OR ... '% $query'
if(mysql_num_rows($raw_results) > 0){ // if one or more rows are returned do following
while($results = mysql_fetch_array($raw_results)){
// $results = mysql_fetch_array($raw_results) puts data from database into array, while it's valid it does the loop
echo "<h3 style='padding:0;margin:0;'><a href='job-view.php?query=".$results['jid']."'>".$results['title']. "</a></h3>";
echo "<i style='color:#999;'>Posted on: " . date("jS M Y", strtotime($results['dateposted']))."</i><br/>" . $results['summary'] . "<br/>";
echo "Salary: " . $results['rate'] . " | Work Type: " . $results['worktype'] . " | Location: " . $results['location'];
echo "<br/><br/>";
// posts results gotten from database(title and text) you can also show id ($results['id'])
}
}
else{ // if there is no matching rows do following
echo "<h3>No Results</h3>Your search returned no results. Please try again.";
}
}
else{ // if query length is less than minimum
echo "<h3>Error</h3>The minimum length is $min_length characters. Please try again.";
}
?>
</div>
<nav class="widget-search">
<h3>Search for a Job</h3>
<form action="search-result.php" method="GET">
<button class="search-btn-widget"></button>
<input class="search-field" type="text" name="query" onblur="if(this.value=='')this.value='eg. Civil Engineer Perth';" onfocus="if(this.value=='eg. Civil Engineer Perth')this.value='';" value="eg. Civil Engineer Perth" />
</form>
</nav>

Answer 1

whenever you send data using GET method it forms a NAME=VALUE pair.and the '+' you are seeing is whitespace which some browser use % or some may use + also.
query=engineer+sydney
----^name-------^value
$query = $_GET['query'];
$query =str_replace(" ","&",$query);
now what you can do is fetch the query value and replace the whitespace with '&' or whatever sign you want

Answer 2

$result = str_replace('+','&',$_GET["query"]);
echo $result;
Thanks

Answer 3

break your query variable with space
$arr_query = explode(" ",$query);
now make a dynamic where
$where = ""
$i=0;
foreach($arr_query as $val)
{
$i+=1;
if($i==1)
{
$where .= " WHERE (`description` LIKE '%".$val."%') OR (`summary` LIKE '%".$val."%') OR (`title` LIKE '%".$val."%') OR (`location` LIKE '%".$val."%') ";
}
else
{
$where .= " AND (`description` LIKE '%".$val."%') OR (`summary` LIKE '%".$val."%') OR (`title` LIKE '%".$val."%') OR (`location` LIKE '%".$val."%') ";
}
}
now you can use this $where in you query as follows.
$raw_results = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM job_jobs $where ") or die(mysql_error());