Problems with recordset paging and dynamic menu displaying all the options

Question

Hi hope someone can help on this - I've posted the code on the FoEd Backend Blight - with no takers/success yet -
I've created a jobs page using DWCS3 which has a dynamic drop down menu filtering the 'countries' that jobs are located in.  When I introduce a recordset page only those countries associated with the jobs on that particular page are shown in the dynamic menu above, not all of the countries listed in the database. When I get to the second page of results - again - only those jobs' countries are shown in the menu (and not the previous pages/next pages as well).
I'd clearly like a user to be able to select from the menu of countries available for all the jobs in the database, and not just those on the page.  Any ideas?
On a similar strain - my country menu/filter is wrapped up in a form above the list of jobs.  On loading the page, only the search and menus appear.  No jobs are shown until I hit submit.  Is there a way to have all the jobs display on first load, and then for the search/menu filter to work on the displayed jobs. I've tried altering the variables on the search to 1 from -1, and other options but I can't seem to get a page of content on first load.
I'd really appreciate any pointers on the above, as this would help solve the final stage of my project. The full post and code can be seen on the friendsofed website under backend blight.
Many thanks in advance.
Matt

Answer 1

I'm still stuck on getting the page to load with some actual content, however.  I'm just getting the search box and country filter displaying on first load.
Pages 584-6 explain why you get nothing when a page first loads. Dreamweaver sets the default value to -1. The problem with trying to change the default value even to an empty string or % is that Dreamweaver's security function, GetSQLValueString() changes an empty string to NULL and wraps % in quotes, so neither will work.
One way to display all records when the page first loads is to create another recordset that selects all records. Wrap the code in a conditional statement that checks whether the $_GET array contains any values:
if (!$_GET) {
  // recordset to retrieve all records here
This means that you need two repeat regions to display the results. Wrap both of them in conditional statements:
if (isset($fullRecordsetName)) {
  // display the full recordset
} elseif (isset($searchResultsRecordsetName)) {
  // display the search results
You also need to wrap the mysql_free_result() statements in conditional statements at the end of the page:
if (isset($fullRecordsetName)) mysql_free_result($fullRecordsetName);
if (isset($searchResultsRecordsetName)) mysql_free_result($searchResultsRecordsetName);
Another way to do it is to use just one recordset, but split the SQL query into two sections:
$query_RecordsetName = "SELECT * FROM myTable";
if (isset($_GET['searchTerm')) {
$query_RecordsetName .= sprintf(" WHERE searchTerm LIKE %s",
     GetSQLValueString("%" . $colname_RecordsetName . "%", "text"));
This uses the combined concatenation operator to add the WHERE clause to the query only if $_GET['searchTerm'] has been set. Notice that you need a space before the "WHERE".