Regarding PHP, XML, and my website

Erich

being a novice web builder im still unknowledgeable in most fields outside html and css, yet im starting to seriously get into learning other languages. background:

I run a website that displays tour information about an artist im fond of. The tour information is kept on html tables that just display general information about each date, with coresponding links to things such as pictures and setlists. What i wish to do is create an xml document that stores all the tour information and create a php document for each year which will display only certain parts of the xml document in the same fashion as the html document i had prior. My reasoning would be that i just have to update the xml document and it will make any changes to the corrosponding pages. my questions about this are:

Is this a fesable thing for me to accomplish, and if so, is it in your opinion a practical thing for me to do? my rational is that in the end it will save me time by just needing to configure one page instead of many.
will this make it easier for me to develope a search function for the site as well, allowing people to display information based on their criteria?

I have very little skill in the lines of php and js, though i have a decent base knowledge of xml. i do have a few questions regarding the coding though.

Im going to be going through this site and others to try and learn php on my own, as i dont exactly want anyone to give me the code as a quick way out. Does anyone have a recomendation where to start, though?
Im still slightly iffy on this "parser" thing. Am i correct to assume that a parser takes the code, interprets it, and then displays it in the way you define on the page? If so, why are there many different parsers? do i need to parse both the xml and the php data? where can i learn specificaly about parsers and their job in coding?

i thank you all for your time 🙂

Norman_Graham

Yes, PHP and a data-storage medium can do all the things you want to do.

I don't really think XML is a suitable info-storage medium. It seems to me that XML is the perfect medium for defining and exchanging data, but not for storing it. I think a relational database would be better ... and of course the one to choose for PHP would be MySQL (free, quite easy to learn and PHP offers strong native support for it). It is perfectly possible to construct search routines for MySQL and indeed there are lots of examples of that at this site. Updating is done on the database, not the PHP, as you correctly assumed.

As PHP supports both SQL/MySQL and XML, you may find it useful to use both media for your purposes. It remains to be seen.

Parsing: PHP code is a server-side web-programming language. It's client-side counterpart is Javascript. With Javascript, the language is supported and interpreted by the browser. With PHP, the language is supported and interpreted by the PHP engine residing on the web-hoster's server. PHP produces HTML (and Javascript and XML and a whole bunch of other things if you want) that is sent to the browser, but the browser never sees the PHP code. If you want to write and test PHP code at home, you need to install both the PHP engine and a web server (Apache, PWS, IIS, BadBlue) to intepret the code and write to your browser. Check out the forum 'Install' for extensive info on how to do this. It's not too hard.

I didn't know that there were many different parsers. As far as I'm aware there's only one, namely PHP, obtainable from http://www.php.net. If you mean editors, yes there are hundreds of those, some free some not. Check out the Echo Lounge for reviews of them. You can, however, write PHP in any old text editor, e.g. MS Notepad. The special editors are nice because they do colour coding and give you lots of groovy little extras, including debugging in some cases, but they're not strictly necessary.

For starters tutorials, check the net. There are thousands. Check the newbies forum at this site, also. I recommend getting a book, however (Sams, New Riders, Wrox, O'Reilly ...) for bedtime reading and as a reference to have beside your computer. Most PHP books delve into MySQL and XML as well (they should, if they're any good).

Best of luck, and if you do something interesting with PHP and XML, post it to these forums so that we can all learn something from it.

Norman

Erich

thanks for your response, Norman. Ive got the idea of what a parser is decently now, though its all still sinking in as an entire concept. I think MySQL would most likely be the most logical ways to go for databasing, but i still have a gut feeling about xml, and hey, i might end up having to transfer all the data for reinterpretation elsewhere, so who knows.

The type of tutorial im looking for is a "follow the bouncing ball" type guide, much in the same vein as the html tutors for pagetutor.com. Im still searching, i found some idiot guides but they still dont give user excersizes and stick to "heres what this code does" stuff, leaving me with trial and error mistakes that i dont know how to properly fix yet. oh well.

If i get this done the way i wish to, i'll be sure to post. and thank you again 🙂

ejrhodes

Originally posted by Erich
thanks for your response, Norman. Ive got the idea of what a parser is decently now, though its all still sinking in as an entire concept. I think MySQL would most likely be the most logical ways to go for databasing, but i still have a gut feeling about xml, and hey, i might end up having to transfer all the data for reinterpretation elsewhere, so who knows.

The type of tutorial im looking for is a "follow the bouncing ball" type guide, much in the same vein as the html tutors for pagetutor.com. Im still searching, i found some idiot guides but they still dont give user excersizes and stick to "heres what this code does" stuff, leaving me with trial and error mistakes that i dont know how to properly fix yet. oh well.

If i get this done the way i wish to, i'll be sure to post. and thank you again 🙂

You could always right a script to convert the mysql data to xml if you need to export it elsewhere. the mysql situation would accomplish what you are looking for for your website much easier in my opinion.

Norman_Graham

Originally posted by Erich
The type of tutorial im looking for is a "follow the bouncing ball" type guide, much in the same vein as the html tutors for pagetutor.com. Im still searching, i found some idiot guides but they still dont give user excersizes and stick to "heres what this code does" stuff, leaving me with trial and error mistakes that i dont know how to properly fix yet. oh well

You're unlikely to find this type of tutorial free on the net. You need a book - you need a book anyway, no matter what you do. I recommend Wrox Beginning PHP4, but there are lots of good alternatives. Check the Echo Lounge and read the user reviews at Amazon.

As ejrhodes points out - don't just drop the XML thing. What I meant is that you should definitely use your XML knowledge - PHP has strong native support for XML - but use it for something other than just storing the data, which is what MySQL is for. Try and think what XML could usefully do for your website and then combine it with PHP and MySQL.

Best of luck

Norman