How to make custom search form?

Permalink 1 user found helpful May 16, 2010 at 6:11 PM

Could you please tell me how to make a search form similar to this html:

<form name="search_form" action="whatever_the_action_should_be" method="get">
<select name="select1">
<option>x
<option>y
<option>z
</select>
<select name="select2">
<option>x
<option>y
<option>z
</select>

which will search the website contents based on the selected values rather than a single 'query' value the existing search block uses. How can I pass an array of keywords from all those select dropdown boxes to the search script?

And how can I change the form widget styles? Passing the arrays, e.g.

print $form->text('firstName', "Andrew", array('style' => 'width: 100px'));
print $form->select('favoriteFruit', array('p' => 'Pears', 'a' => 'Apples', 'o' => 'Oranges'), 'a', array('style' => 'width: 100px'));