question about CodeIgniter urls - forms

Question

I am using an application (a blog) written using the CodeIgniter framework and would like to search my blog from my browsers location bar by adding a string to the end of my blogs url like this:
http://mysite.com/blog/index.php/search...
As you can see in the example above I am not really sure how to format the rest of the url after the search part so I am hoping someone here might be able to point me in the right direction.
This is what the form looks like for the search box if that helps at all.
form class="searchform" action="http://mysite.com/blog/index.php/search" method="post">
<input id="searchtext" class="search_input" type="text" value="" name="searchtext">
<input type="submit" value="Search" name="Search">
</form>
Thx,
Mark

Answer 1

Since your form is posting to http://mysite.com/blog/index.php/search, I'm assuming this 'search' controller's default function is the one your are attempting to submit your data to. I think that the easiest way to do this would be to just grab the post data inside of the controller method you're posting to. Example:
function search()
{
$search_params = $this->input->post('search_text');
}
Then you would have whatever the user input stored as $search_params, and you can take actions from there. Am I misunderstanding what you're asking?

Answer 2

It seems like you're kind of discussing two different approaches. If you wanted to make a request to
mysite.com/blog/index.php/search&q=what_I_am_looking_for
This is going to call the search controllers default method (which is index by default). If you wanted to use the URL to pass parameters like that you would go to your function in the search controller and do:
print_r($this->input->get('q'));
This will print out "what_am_I_looking_for".
An easier approach in my opinion would be to:
1. Create a view called "search_view" with the HTML content you pasted above, and have the form "action" http://www.mysite.com/blog/index.php/test/search
Create a controller called "Test" that looks like the following:
class Test extends CI_Controller {
function search()
{
$search = $this->input->post('searchtext');
print_r($search);
}
public function display_search()
{
$this->load->view('search_view');
}
}
Visit http://www.mysite.com/blog/index.php/test/display_search in your browser. This should present you with the form you placed in search_view.php. Once the form is submitted, you should be sent to the search function and print out the variable $search, which will have whatever text you submitted on that form.
If this isn't what you were looking for then I am afraid I do not understand your question.