I have a html file that will ask user
1.what type of graph they would like to view (either bar, line or pie graph)
2.what they would like to view (either sales by category or sales by product)

My question is how am i going to code the php file?Should i put everything about bar, line, pie in a file and use whatever info provided by the user to generate it. or should i code every combination(bar and sales by category, line and sales by category and etc) in different file and link to it according to the option choosen?

could anyone give me suggestion?

At the risk of being too high-level, you should generate your database query based on the user input (category or product), and generate the graph chosen by the user.

[code]
<?pseudo-php

// assume that 'graph_by' and 'graph_type' are submitted via GET

if($_GET['graph_by'] == 'category')
{
   $query = "SELECT stuff by category";

   $data = data returned by your select query,
           and in the form that JPGraph expects.
}
else if ($_GET['graph_by'] == 'product')
{
   same as above, only the query returns data by product
}

// now just select the type of graph you want JPGraph to generate
// based on $_GET['graph_type']

?>


Take care,

Nik
http://www.bigaction.org/

Thanks! I follow your advice. But i would like to go a different page for different $_GET['graph_type']. For example
if ($_GET['graph_type']=='barGraph')
      go to page1
else if ($_GET['graph_type']=='lineGraph)
       go to page2
else if ($_GET['graph_type']=='pieGraph)
       go to page3
How am i going to direct user to that particular page without using the <a href="page1.php"> and so on?

There are a couple of ways of doing that:

You can include the page directly from the script with the include command. If you want to redirect to a new page you can do that with the header() function.

if ($_GET['graph_type']=='barGraph')
      # go to page1
      header("Location: http://www.somesite.com/some_path/some_page.php");

else if ($_GET['graph_type']=='lineGraph)
      # go to page2
      include("some_page2.php");

else if ($_GET['graph_type']=='pieGraph)
      # go to page3
      include("some_page3.php");

Including a page will bring it into the current script's execution, if the included page contains PHP, which must be delimited with <?php ?>, its variables and the variables of the currently executing script will be as one, mingled and contained in the same namespace and any output from the included file will follow output from the script including it, if any. If you redirect using header() an entirely new request will be made.

http://www.php.net/header
http://www.php.net/include

: )
Rich


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Smiling Souls
http://www.smilingsouls.net
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