detecting if a link has been hit

Anon

I am new to php and I am looking for a way of detecting when a user clicks on a href link.

At which point I have written a function to run.

Alternatively is there a way to pass a Javascipt variable into a php variable. I could then do the detection with the javascipt onClick handler.

Any advice would be a big help.

rob_d

Hi Matt,

if you are new to PHP.... then first of all try to understand what PHP is, NO not all at once :-)) Start with the fact that PHP is a ServerSide Scripting Language ... That means: PHP generates HTML Code and that Code (HTML) is send to the User ... To detect if the User hits a link is not possible ... (if you want it the "onClick" way or similar ...). You can detect if a user has hit a link, in that moment, where the page specified in the link is been requested from the server ...
Try do give a short explanation of what you want to achieve and then we can look for a solution ...

cya Rob

Anon

Thanx Rob,

I have a MySQL database which contains a category column.

What I want to do is show a popup layer (which have have done with DHTML) and run the SQL query to display part of the category records.

At the moment I have got the sql statement to work fine it conects to the database and returns the correct records.

The problem is that I want to change the records when the user clicks on a link. I.e. I want to run a new query. I have setup the sql to except a variable $type so I can use the same code to run query again:

$cursor = mysql_query("select id,shop,url,category from db where db.category = '$type' order by id");

So all I need to do is pass it the new value of $type.

So if I could dynamically get the php to run the sql query again onClick, then this problem would be solved.

I hope this helps.

Matt.

rob_d

Ok, I think I got it...
So to make it a bit clearer what I think what you want ... Let us propose an example ... you have an e-shop with several categories of articles ... If the user clicks on the hyperlink or image or something else with the title "pc-hardware" you want to show all the articles with the categorie "pc-hardware" from your db in the popup layer ... if the user decides that he is actually more interested in "pc-games" he clicks on the "pc-games" link and you want to show all the articles with the categorie "pc-games" in the popup layer... hope I'm still driving in the right direction :-))
For that, all your hyperlinks (those for the categories) should point to the file where you read from the db and fill the popup layer ... - if you have only a single page (no frames etc.) you probably could use the $PHP_SELF global variable ... - all the hyperlinks should carry the specific categorie with them ... so you always know what the user requested ...
Example:
article.php
...
your sql part
...
giving out the information to the layer
...
//now we build the hyperlinks:
<A HREF="article.php?type=1">Games</A>
<A HREF="article.php?type=2">Hardware</A>
<A HREF="article.php?type=3">Powerups(?!)</A>
//instead of article.php you could use the $PHP_SELF as mentioned above ... but that doesn't bother us right now.

where ...?type=<your categorie that belongs to the hyperlink>, that should do the job ... a few things to keep in mind:
I don't know the format of your categorie so if you experience problems with getting the $type to your page via the hyperlink (e.g. <A HREF="article.php?type=PC Games">Games</A> won't work) you need to URLencode your categorie (for this example: <A HREF="article.php?type=<?php urlencode("PC Games") ?>">Games</A>) but I don't think you need it ...
Oh, if you don't have a default value for $type or you call the page without a parameter ... you need to take care of that different "first request" to the page ... eg use a if(isset($type)) to check if the variable has been set ...

hope that helps, and I hope you understand it at least a bit ... hoping that I could make myself as clear a I want in english

Anyway
if you have questions, ask 'em ... but don't tell me you are from germany ... that would have made a lot of things more einfacher :-))

cya Rob

Anon

thanx Rob,

that should help.

no I am from England.