title: Use GET or POST for a search form
body: <p>I have a couple search forms, 1 with ~50 fields and the other with ~100. Typically, as the HTML spec says, I do searches using the GET method as no data is changed. I haven't run into this problem yet, but I'm wondering if I will run out of URL space soon?</p>
  
  <p>The limit of <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/208427" rel="noreferrer">Internet Explorer</a> is 2083 characters. Other browsers, have a <a href="http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/misc/urllength.html" rel="noreferrer">much higher limit</a>. I'm running Apache, so the limit there is around 4000 characters, which IIS is 16384 characters.</p>
  
  <p>At 100 fields, say average field name length of 10 characters, that's already 5000 characters...amazing on the 100 field form, I haven't had any errors yet. (25% of the fields are multiple selects, so the field length is much longer.)</p>
  
  <p>So, I'm wondering what my options are. (Shortening the forms is not an option.) Here my ideas:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Use POST. I don't like this as much because at the moment users can bookmark their searches and perform them again later--a really dang nice feature.</li>
  <li>Have JavaScript loop through the form to determine which fields are different than default, populate another form and submit that one. The user would of course bookmark the shortened version.</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Any other ideas?</p>
  
  <p>Also, does anyone know if the length is the encoded length or just plain text?</p>
  
  <p>I'm developing in PHP, but it probably doesn't make a difference.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Edit:</strong> I am unable to remove any fields; I am unable to shorten the form. This is what the client has asked for and they often do use a range of fields, in the different categories. I know that it's hard to think of a form that looks nice with this many fields, but the users don't have a problem understanding how it works.</p>