WEB SITE MANAGING WITH PHP

Anon

I am seeing all these sites with links such as
http://www.phpbuilder.com/forum/post.php3?num=2

AND

http://www.something.com/lead.php?cat=links&num=5

How can i implement something like this into my site? I realize that they are drawing from a database and drawing web addresses or links within fields. But how do i know where to start?

Basically if i could have an understanding of how this site or others are working I could maybe create one for my self.

Help would be greatly appreciated!

rulian

well, it doesnt have to be database driven if it doesnt need to be. the ?cat=links&num=5 part of the url is just a definition of variables. variables are elements that programmers use to build a program, when variables are different the program either performs different, or shows different information.
for example ?cat=links&num=5 means that there are two variables being defined, one called cat, the other called num, cat is being set to links, the & symbol is what seperates the variables from each other, and num is being set to five. In phpbuilder.com's case, it tells the program what your looking for and where your looking at. For example, if you have PHP installed in your computer, copy paste this :

_________ start
<?php
if (isset($something)) echo $something;
else echo "nothing said";
?>
___________ end
adding $ <--- is how you define a variable in php.

what this program is doing is saying, okay check to see if a variable called something is set, if it is I want you to say what it is set to, if the variable is not set, then say "nothing said"

now, let's say you saved this code in a page called mypage.php, on the url to the page, if you type //mywebsite.com/mypage.php
your page will say "nothing said" cause we never told the program what $something is. now if we went //myswebsite.com/mypage.php?something=hello
your page would say "hello" because you've defined the variable. But dont be mistaken, there are hundreds of way to define variables in php, from getting them from your database, to adding variables together, you can really manipulate them, they dont all have to be in your url. if you get a good php4 book, you can pick up php4 rather quickly, I was in a months time doing simple php coding. Hope this helps let me know if you need anythign else

Anon

i understand the basics you have wrote about. Thanks Alot! so they are just using the <sid> function in every lins? I guess I am just confused about how and where to organize all these pages. Like when :

?cat=links&num=5

where is this drawing the certain page from? I guess i need to understand more about navigating with php.

rulian

well I dont know how phpbuilder.com does set's up their website to function, but if I were doing the same thing, the variables would be used in my database querie to search for specific items. Like on my website on artists pages I have ?name=rulian&type=wallpapers

so that my mysql query looks like
"select * from artwork where artist='$name' AND type = '$type'"

The pages are generic, their form never change, the only thing that changes is the information
is that what you were talking about?

amcgrath

OK, ryan, im gonna explain this as simply as I can:

There two primary ways (more if you count cookies, etc... but I'm not going there) to pass data: the GET method and the POST method. GET method uses the string on the url, everything after the ? you see. POST uses the headers (I think, not too sure, don't quote me on that). POST data you can't visually see, GET data you can.

This data is pased in name=value form. So, ?var1=test&var2=this means

var1 equals "test"
var2 equals "this"

So, with that said, here's a hypotheitcal for you:

The goal is to build a website. It is a simple website, consisting of two pages, ball.php and glove.php. What it does is a user enters a type of ball in ball.php and "throws" (sumbits) the ball to glove.php. Glove.php will tell the user what type of ball was thrown. Here's the code:

ball.php code:
<form method="get" action="glove.php">
What type of ball to throw:
<input type="text" name="ball">
<br>
<input type="submit" value="Throw">
</form>

glove.php code:

if(!$ball) { // if no value was entered in the ball field

echo "You didn't throw a ball!";
} else {

echo "You threw a $ball ball.";
}
echo "<br>";
echo "You used the $REQUEST_METHOD to throw the $ball ball.";

To rpactice with this, change method="GET" in ball.php to method="POST" and you'll see the difference.

Let me know if that helps....

groupvertical

thank you all very much for the help.

few more ?s if you have time

so are most sites using the GET method with hidden form elements? Does GET seem to work with more browsers? Because obviously these more advanced sites are using links instead of submit buttons and text forms.

thanks again

amcgrath

6 and a half is a dozen, I guess. I personally prefer posts when creating forms and the like, but it's really up to you...

Anon

I am beginning to understand, but:
how is the info posted to a page displayed?
so when i see somefile.php?cat=books
it is selected from a database, but how is the info stored? Is it a huge text field? a php page? a html page? I guess what I can't understand how the main content (large amounts of info) are posted to a page. I do understand the header and footer can keep a consistent look though.

Thanks for the help, I'm going to keep trying

amcgrath

Most data is stored in a database. For example, somefile.php?cat=books is passing the variable "cats" with a value of "books" to somefile.php. The code ofr somefile.php could look like this: (Postgres Database example)

$query = "select * from some_table where some_column = '$cats'";

$res = pg_exec($conn,$query);

Now, the variable $res is the pointer to the data returned from the database based on the query.