How can you direct search results to a div anywhere on the page?

Answer 1

You would want to do this with an AJAX request. The Javascript on the client's browser would send a request to the server, and place the response in the appropriate div. For example, using the jQuery library, it could be done like this:

<div id="results></div>

<input type="text" id="searchstring"></input>

<button type="submit" onclick="dosearch(); return false;">Search</button>

<script type="text/javascript">

function dosearch(){

$.post('search.php', {'q' : $('#searchstring').val()}, function(answer){

$('#results').html(answer);

});

}

</script>

This takes the text out of the "searchstring" text field, posts it to "search.php", and replaces the contents of the "results" div with the resulting output. In the "search.php" file, you can read the search string from the posting - that would be $_POST['q'] - and simply output whatever results you want to display in that div.