Newbie question

Anon

Hi There,

I am trying to create a database for keeping my bookcollection. Now I want to use Mysql with PHP to do this. to insert new titles with author and that kind of things I use a form to insert it into the database. No problem this far. Now I want to update some comments that I put in the database for some book titles.
Is it possible to search the title and than click on the title so that the form which i use to insert I can now use to update the database? What is the best solution for this?

Yours Thankfully,

Kee

Anon

searching for the title might give you the right book, but it is possible to get more than one result. You should have an index that is unique for each book. If you don't have one, you can do this by doing:

$sql="Alter book_table_name add book_id int not null auto_increment";

then you can search or your book:

$sql="select * from book_table_name where book_id=164"; // obviously the number would be whatever the book you are looking for

then, in your form, you can prepopulate the values of your form with the values you pull with the sql above. like:

THEN... when you hit submit, you need to UPDATE not INSERT for your sql:

$sql="UPDATE book_table_name set title=$title, author=$author where book_id=$book_id";

in order for your action page to know if you are inserting or updating, you could use a hidden form field then on the action page, do:

if ($action=="insert") {

do the new code

} else {

do the old INSERT code

}

hope that all helps!

craig

Anon

Thanx for your help.

you wrote

in order for your action page to know if you are inserting or updating, you could use a hidden form field then on the action page, do:

if ($action=="insert") {

do the new code

} else {

do the old INSERT code

}

I don't understand this code. Can you or somebody else explain it further. Does the form than automatically knows when to insert and when to update??

Yours Sincerely,

Kee

Anon

In your script (the one your are submitting your form to) check to see whether $action=update or $action=insert, then execute either an update SQL query, or an insert SQL query.

example:

<?php

if( $action=="update" ){
mysql_query( "UPDATE user SET name='$name' WHERE id='$id'" );
}
else{
mysql_query( "INSERT INTO user (name) VALUES('$name');
}

Hope this clears things up for you.

Anon

what Azureash said is helpful, but I don't think it answers your question. What I meant is, on your page with your form, put a hidden field in your form:

make sure you set the value of $action earlier in the script to tell it whether you are updating or inserting or whatever. Then, you test for the value of $action (as Azureash explained) on your action page.