WAMP - PHP/MySQL - Why is my POST call getting mangled - php

Question

EDIT: Mangling is fixed - primary issue appears to be the php/mysql connection
In an attempt to learn how to use a MySQL db on a webpage, I'm following a basic tutorial for connecting to a MySQL instance via PHP (all managed through WAMP2)
The tutorial: http://www.freewebmasterhelp.com/tutorials/phpmysql/4 uses a PHP_SELF method (that I understand is now depreciated).
I've tried a few other suggestions that I've found doted around, but I can't find resolution to the following error I see in the apache log:
(20024)The given path is misformatted or contained invalid characters: Cannot map POST /%3C$SEARCH.PHP%3E HTTP/1.1 to file, referer: http://localhost/search.php
This error prevents the HTML page from being returned, and I get a 403 error in my browser
It appears that this line of HTML/PHP is the culprit:
<form name="search" method="post" action="<?=$PHP_SELF?>">
I have seen suggestions that say to either turn on short_open_tag (a bad idea according to some), change the
<form method="post" action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>">
I can't get any of these methods to work, and wondered if anyone could let me know what dumb thing I've missed this time...
The whole php file I am using is:
<?php
// // This is only displayed if they have submitted the form
if ($searching =="yes")
{
echo "<h2>Results</h2><p>";
//If they did not enter a search term we give them an error
if ($find == "")
{
echo "<p>You forgot to enter a search term";
exit;
}
include("dbinfo.php");
mysql_connect($host,$username,$password);
mysql_select_db("database") or die(mysql_error());
// We preform a bit of filtering
$find = strtoupper($find);
$find = strip_tags($find);
$find = trim ($find);
//Now we search for our search term, in the field the user specified
$data = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM main WHERE upper($field) LIKE'%$find%'");
//And we display the results
while($result = mysql_fetch_array( $data ))
{
echo $result['Item1'];
echo " ";
echo $result['Item2'];
echo "<br>";
echo "<br>";
}
//This counts the number or results - and if there wasn't any it gives them a little message explaining that
$anymatches=mysql_num_rows($data);
if ($anymatches == 0)
{
echo "Sorry, but we can not find an entry to match your query<br><br>";
}
//And we remind them what they searched for
echo "<b>Searched For:</b> " .$find;
}
?>
<h2>Search</h2>
<form name="search" method="post" action="<?=$PHP_SELF?>">
Seach for: <input type="text" name="find" /> in
<Select NAME="field">
<Option VALUE="item1">Item1</option>
<Option VALUE="item2">Item2</option>
</Select>
<input type="hidden" name="searching" value="yes" />
<input type="submit" name="search" value="Search" />
</form>

Answer 1

Avoid shortags, they are out of date, make sure to be using:
<form method="post" action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>">
What does the form's html look like when you load the page?
EDIT:
After reviewing my answer I'd like to rephrase it a bit, as they are not "out of date" per say, but they generally do cause problems (for those that don't know how to set up php fully), so for beginners I'd suggest avoiding them.

Answer 2

I'm sure this is probably bad design, but I've always just hard-coded the script name in cases like that (so, just action="search.php").

Answer 3

The $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] variable contains the full path of your php script, for example:
/your_server_path/your_file_name.php
Obviously, when launched, your script can't find the file because it's looking for something like
/your_server_path/your_server_path/your_file_name.php
Try to do something like this:
<form method="post" action="<?='http://localhost'.$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']?>">