New Pagination issue

[jbearnolimits]

I had posted about pagination before but have since solved the issues in that thread. There is a new issue I would like to have a second pair of eyes to take a look at. I'm trying to figure out why pagination seems to be working on the first page of results showing the first 5 rows. But, the second page (which I have now fixed as far as passing the variable to it) returns 0 results even though there are a lot more. It doesn't tell me there are any errors. It just doesn't show any results. Below is the code.

<?php
if ($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST") {
 // collect value of input field
$Type=$_POST['Type'];
}
 if (isset($_GET["Type"])) { 
  $Type = $_GET["Type"]; 
 } 
$limit = 5; 
 // update the active page number
 if (isset($_GET["page"])) { 
  $page_number = $_GET["page"]; 
 } 
 else { 
  $page_number=1; 
 }
 // get the initial page number
 $initial_page = ($page_number-1) * $limit; 
$sql = "SELECT * FROM Contacts WHERE Type = '$Type' ORDER BY FirstName ASC LIMIT $initial_page, $limit";
$result = $conn->query($sql);
if ($result->num_rows > 0) {
 // output data of each row
 while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
 // collect value of input field
 $id = $row['id'];
 $FirstName = $row['FirstName'];
 $LastName = $row['LastName'];
 $Email = $row['Email'];
 $Phone = $row['Phone'];
 $HomeAddress = $row['HomeAddress'];
 $CreationDate = $row['CreationDate'];
?>

         <div class="OuterDatabaseRowType1">
<div class="InnerDatabaseRowType1ProfilID"><ul class="second"><li class="second"><a href="../Profile.php/?id=<?php echo "$id";?>">View Profile</a></li></ul></div>
<div class="InnerDatabaseRowType1Name"><?php echo "$FirstName $LastName";?></div>
<div class="InnerDatabaseRowType1Email"><?php echo "$Email";?></div>
<div class="InnerDatabaseRowType1Phone"><?php echo "$Phone";?></div>
<div class="InnerDatabaseRowType1HomeAddress"><?php echo "$HomeAddress";?></div>
<div class="InnerDatabaseRowType1CreationDate"><?php echo "$CreationDate";?></div>
</div>
<?php
 }
$sql = "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM Contacts WHERE Type = '$Type'"; 
 $result = mysqli_query($conn, $sql); 
  $row = mysqli_fetch_row($result);
 $total_rows = $row[0];  
 echo "</br>";
 // get the required number of pages
 $total_pages = ceil($total_rows / $limit); 
 $pageURL = "";  
 if($page_number>=2){ 
  echo "<a href='../Filter.php?Type=$Type?page=".($page_number-1)."'> Prev </a>"; 
 } 
 for ($i=1; $i<=$total_pages; $i++) { 
  if ($i == $page_number) { 
  $pageURL .= "<a class = 'active' href='../Filter.php?Type=$Type?page=" 
      .$i."'>".$i." </a>"; 
  }  
  else { 
  $pageURL .= "<a href='../Filter.php?Type=$Type?page=".$i."'> 
      ".$i." </a>"; 
  } 
 }; 
 echo $pageURL; 
 if($page_number<$total_pages){ 
  echo "<a href='../Filter.php?Type=$Type?page=".($page_number+1)."'> Next </a>"; 
 } 
?>
<div class="inline"> 
 <input id="page" type="number" min="1" max="<?php echo $total_pages;?>" 
 placeholder="<?php echo $page_number."/".$total_pages; ?>" required> 
 <button onClick="go2Page();">Go</button> <br><br> 
</div>
 <script> 
 function go2Page() 
 { 
 var page = document.getElementById("page").value; 
 page = ((page><?php echo $total_pages; ?>)?<?php echo $total_pages; ?>:((page<1)?1:page)); 
 window.location.href = '../Filter.php?Type=$Type?page='+page; 
 } 
 </script> 
<?php
} else {
 echo "0 results";
}
?>

[jbearnolimits]

Got it solved. I was not using the right syntax to pass 2 variables along the URL. I was using /Filter.php?Type=$Type?page=".($page_number-1)." But the right way was /Filter.php?Type=$Type&page=".($page_number-1).".

So, just in case anyone else comes across the same issue this may help.

[robzilla]

Just a few more things to consider with pagination:

- "First" and "Last" links to quickly navigate to the first and last page of the set (textual or with icons).

- If there are lots of pages, the pagination section can grow too large; you could opt to show only the most useful links. For example, if you have 20 pages and the user is on page 10, I would usually only show "First" "1" "2" "..." "9" "[10]" "11" "..." "19" "20" "Last" or something like that. There are many variations, best to see what works well for your visitors and content type.

- When any page links to page 1 of the paginated set, ideally those links would refer to the URL without the "page" parameter. This is to prevent having people link to, and bots crawl, a URL like /whatever?page=1 when that's the same as /whatever, the URI you're probably referring to in other links.

- Do not link to the current (active) page in the paginated set.

[Dimitri]

@robzilla's recommendations are very good, as usual.

I would add, do not forget to test your parameters, to be sure $Type is one of the value you are expecting and $page is not out of range. If the parameters are wrong, return 404 to avoid unexpected behavior of your code. Keep in mind that anybody can change these parameters.

[jbearnolimits]

Thanks guys. I'll be implementing the tips.