Youjoomla Support Forums - Help with code please

I'm trying to run a report from a MySQL database, based on a number of parameters, which is working fine if you want to return one specific result. I want to return a range of results in which any fields left blank return all results. The report code I have is pretty simple:

PHP Code:


		
			
//define strings

$StartDate=$_GET['requiredStartDate'];

$EndDate=$_GET['requiredEndDate'];

$Analyst=$_GET['Analyst'];

$Assist=$_GET['Assist'];

$Incident=$_GET['Incident'];

$Process=$_GET['Process'];

$Service=$_GET['Service'];



//define query

$query = "SELECT Date, Incident, Analyst, Assist, Process, Service

FROM data

where Date between ('$StartDate')  and ('$EndDate')

and Incident LIKE ('$Incident')

and Process LIKE ('$Process')

and Service LIKE ('$Service')

and Assist LIKE ('$Assist')

and Analyst LIKE ('$Analyst')

Order by date";



//run query and error reporting

$result = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error());

there's a bit more to the file but only to add the results to a table and echo them to HTML.

I've worked around the problem by having the HTML form return a wildcard when a field is blank (well, added default values and some overly complicated javascript) so it now works but it's still a bit of a hack and slash job. I just don't know enough PHP to get it to work on the server side code. I did try using an IFNULL statement on a query running between the string definition and the current query but that returned no erorrs and did nothing what-so-ever!