Help a Newbie! Database count and html post

[RicadoGigante]

I am working on a volunteer site and have limited knowlege of php and mysql and could use some help.

I would like to execute a command automatically from a HTML page when loaded that would count the records in a table and place that number in a file(?). The next time the page is loaded, it would do a count and compare to the last count and if greater then post a 'new message' image on my page.

People will be posting messages into a mysql database related to emergency information. When others come to the page, I would like a "New Message" graphic be displayed on the html page if the new count is higher. I don't know the best way or how to do this. I am looking for suggestions and some help, to the point of having the code to put into my html, to include connection to the database for the php command.

Is this a relativly easy thing to do? Can someone please write this for me?

We would greatly appreciate it.

Operating System Linux
Apache Version 1.3.26 (Unix)
Perl Version 5.006001
Perl Path /usr/bin/perl
PHP Version 4.2.2
Mysql Version 3.23.53a

Thanx in advance

[e-mail]

[raymie]

If checking for a 'new'entry on a database I would advise against using a count to achieve it.

What you want is to have a timestamp field on each record (if you have only one it will be maintained autotically) and you also want to keep a record of the timestamp when last you checked the site on another table.

You can then select the rows which have a greater timestamp than the last checked value.

If you use counts then you will be in a mess if you ever need to clear out any old database records, but timestamp should be a robust solution.

[barand]

As different users will be viewing the site at different times, the latest record one user sees will not be that of another user. The timestamp is therefore going to be unique for each user.

I would suggest you store the timestamp of the latest viewed record in a cookie. See [man]setcookie[/man]

[RicadoGigante]

That sounds like exactly what I need, but I do not know how to do that. Is this something that someone could assist in coding for me?

Let me know.

Thanx,

John