Very basic questions :)

Anon

Hi guys,

I'm a complete newbie when it comes to PHP. I'm trying to generate my own database driven site.

Basically, I've written out a lot of pseudo-code for the functions I need. (I'm trying to make a game)

Anyway, some questions:

Can you tell me where I can read up more on IF statements or the PHP equivalent? i.e. IF value in a field <10 do this function. ELSE do this function. That sort of thing.
How do I use the time functions? I want the database to update at a certain time everyday, and change fields as necessary. Is that possible?
Is it possible for me to do functions like, take a value from one table, multiply by a value from another table, and then another table... so on and so forth?
Is there a random number generator? i.e. could it generate a decimal between 0 and 1.

I know these are all rather broad questions so I'm not really looking for complete answers. Just point me in the right direction, any articles you might have come across, good tutorials for manipulating MYSql databases using PHP and being able to do the things above.

Thanks a lot for your time guys.
I hope you can help me out.

Newbie D

jc94062

well the php manual is a good source of information... (www.php.net)

if (somethig == "value") {
//do stuff
}
else {
//do other stuff
}

Is this simple if / else you were looking for.

The tutorial I used to get myself started was the webmonkey one, link below.
Its a PHP/MySQL tutorial;

http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/databases/tutorials/tutorial4.html

Hope that helps.

Anon

Dear Dhiraj!

I recommend you to download some PHP documentation (under documentation on www.php.net) and inside you have complete PHP language reference. If you're not completly new to programming (not PHP but programming generaly) it won't take you much time to learn PHP...

Somewhere I got rebuilt version of manual-en.cfm (windows help file) which is better than the one on the page.

Roger&out

Anon

Thanks James and Lenart.

I've had a look at both. Since I have almost nil progrmaming experience the Webmonkey tutorial has been very helpful.

Anyone else know of any other good tutorials, more comprehensive perhaps, dealing with more advanced options in forms/query statements/if functions?

Thanks a lot once again to any replies!

Anon

Download the MySQL manual as well. Read the tutorial section of the manual. Assuming that you're unfamiliar with SQL statements, the tutorial should be very helpful in getting you started.

I second the recommendation of the webmonkey tutorial.

Good luck!
DLB

jc94062

I had only basic programming knowledge in Nov '00.
I moved up to PHP over the past 7 months via the manuals, that tutorial, many searches on here and also JS.

JS, (Javascript) is a lot simpler than PHP but it does contain many similar features I found which acted as a good platform to bridge the two, if you don't know any, I found that helpful.

www.hotscripts.com has a lot of scripts as well, looking through some of those can help I find.

Anon

Go to Barnes and Noble and buy some PHP books and mySQL books and read them, write the code, test it, and then post here when you can't figure out what's wrong. You can also search around here for answers before you post.

The books are great and will answer the questions you have. php.net and these other websites assume everyone is a genius programmer and don't explain anything.