How can I successfully implement a "Remember This Action" routine? - php

Question

I am really having a difficult time getting started with this task.
I have 2 forms on same page.
The first form provides a search box for users to enter one of several search filters like Address, Zip Code, Streets, landlots, even the state name.
If the search produces several results, the user can then click on Advanced Search link.
This Advanced Search contains several checkboxes that allow users to check one or more boxes to narrow their search results.
This works great.
The issue now is to give the user the ability to "save" their search results perhaps using cookies so that next time the user loads this page, the search result
s/he saved last time will become his/her default search page until they change it or until they remove the cookies which wipes out this last Action.
This is more like remembering user's last action when s/he searched this page last time.
My thinking so far, first of all, is to store the SQL query in a Session variable in the php code.
Then, when the user clicks on "Remember This Action" button that I am going to create", I could just have my php code save that session variable value in a cookie.
In other words, I would do something like this:
$tsql = "SELECT Name, FeatType,
MinX, MinY, MaxX, MaxY
FROM mytable
ORDER BY ListOrder, Name DESC";
Session("LastAction") = $tsql
And then have the "Remember This Action" button post to an my php page that simply does:
Cookies("LastAction") = Session("LastAction")
Cookies("LastAction").Expires = Date() + 365 ' expires in one year
Finally, I can provide a "Repeat Last Action" button on our pages and all it does is
$tsql = Request.Cookies("LastAction")
$stmt = sqlsrv_query( $conn, $tsql);
One of the many issues that I am having is that I can't even get beyond this query:
$tsql = "SELECT Name, FeatType,
MinX, MinY, MaxX, MaxY
FROM mytable
ORDER BY ListOrder, Name DESC";
Session("LastAction") = $tsql
I keep getting "invalid" error on
Session("LastAction") = $tsql
Obviously, I am very, very weak on php but working hard to come to speed.
Your assistance is greatly appreciated
I have made some baby steps here.
I am able to get this syntactically correct:
$_SESSION["LastAction"] = $tsql;
I am also able to set the correct
setcookie('LastAction',$_SESSION["LastAction"],time() + (86400 * 365)); // 86400 = 1 year
Now, what is the equivalence of this line in php?
$tsql = Request.Cookies("LastAction")
Above was my best stab at it but I don't think it is correct.
I am basically trying to put a "Remember Last Action" buttonn on another page.
Then use:
$tsql = Request.Cookies("LastAction")
to grab values from another page into this page.

Answer 1

What you are doing here is, basically, saving an SQL query to a cookie (user-editable data).
setcookie('LastAction',$_SESSION["LastAction"] /*We're saving the value, not the session. */,time() + (86400 * 365)); // 86400 = 1 year
Regardless, instead of fooling around with resurrecting sessions based on a sessid saved in a cookie, I'd recommend saving the search flags into a cookie as a serialized array, and then just do your run-off-the-mill search using that data when you need to reuse it.
Basically, you can do:
$saved_search = serialize($search_opts);
setcookie('SavedSearch',$_SESSION["LastAction"],time() + (86400 * 365));
And to reverse the process,
$saved_search = $_COOKIE['SavedSearch'];
$search_opts = unserialize($saved_search);
You will need to figure out from your own code where to snag the $search_opts and how to use them later to run a search, as I do not see the code that makes that part tick.