[Plugin: Events Manager] Using Search with this plugin

Instead of the Codex approach I just updated my search.php file and placed the following code above the loop:

mysql_connect(DB_HOST,DB_USER,DB_PASSWORD);
@mysql_select_db(DB_NAME) or die( "Unable to select database");
$table = $table_prefix."em_events";
$s = $_REQUEST['s']; // The search key words
$found_event = false;

$query = "SELECT * FROM $table WHERE (event_name LIKE '%".$s."%') OR
(event_notes LIKE '%".$s."%') ORDER BY event_start_date";
$result = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error());

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) { // Found some matches
	print "<h2><a href='".get_bloginfo('url')."/events/?event_id=".$row['event_id']."'>".$row['event_name']."</a> ".$row['event_start_date']."</h2>";
	print substr($row['event_notes'],0,250)."[...]";
	print "<div style='clear:both;'></div>";
	$found_event = true;
}

Based on feedback I’ve updated the PHP code to use more WordPress built-in functions:

$table = $wpdb->prefix."em_events";
$s = mysql_real_escape_string($_REQUEST['s']); // The search key words

$found_event = false;

$query = "SELECT * FROM $table WHERE (event_name LIKE '%".$s."%') OR
(event_notes LIKE '%".$s."%') ORDER BY event_start_date";
$events = $wpdb->get_results ( $query, ARRAY_A );
foreach ($events as $row) {
        print "<h2><a href='".get_bloginfo('url')."/events/?event_id=".$row['event_id']."'>".$row['event_name']."</a> ".$row['event_start_date']."</h2>";
        print substr($row['event_notes'],0,250)."[...]";
        print "<div style='clear:both;'></div>";
        $found_event = true;
}