Utterly new newbie questions

scudsucker

Hi- as a (whisper) asp/access (/whisper) developer, I am somewhat lost with PHP, but as a favour for some friends who are in a band I have created a Flash/php/MySQL site.

The reason I did not go in my field of expertise is that their free server was apache/postgres, and I needed the backend in PHP, planning to get their sysadmin to sort out the postgres database.
However, things change, and they are now planning to host on a pay server, which supports MySQL.

Research has turned up everything I need to create tables, populate them etc, but I am unsure of how to go about creating a database on the remote server. Obviously I cannot ask the sysadmin to do it, so apparently it can be done like
this


(mysql_create_db ("MyNewDatabase"))

Now.. do I just create a page, run this script and start creating tables? Or am I missing something.. like usernames, passwords etc? And how does that get an ODBC..

Or can I do it with something like phpMyAdmin installed on my home PC managing a database on a remote server?

Thank you

janhouse00

Do you have your site hosted on paid server? If yes, they will most likely provide you a MySQL account. You ought to connect to their database server using mysql_connect(DATABASE_HOST,USERNAME,PASSWORS) prior to creating your database. Take heed it's merely impossible to do so, or at least they won't grant you such a privilege(to create db) due to the security violation.

Once you have connected to the database server, you can use the phpmyadmin software or a pure php script to do your work.
Either way, it's rather a preference of style.

scudsucker

OK, asking around, It appears that I can just mail them my dat file, and they'll do the work.

Simple.. or at least I hope so.

Thanks for the help, though!

Norman_Graham

Btw, Scudsucker, you don't need an ODBC for MySQL/Postgres/Oracle or whatever with PHP - the support is native. You DO need an ODBC with PHP if you want to use Access and PHP, but you can use them together if you really want to. Note, however, that very few hosts will offer this combination, possibly none at all.

Btw2 - there is an abstraction layer (class library) for databases and PHP called ADOdb. Most PHP people don't use it because it's unnecessary. The point of it, however, is to make your PHP code portable to any DB without changing the query code - you only have to alter the access routine to port to a different database, and it's usually contained in one file. Sounds like this might be useful for you if you're juggling different DBs.

Here's an article on ADOdb (be sure to check out part 2 as well): http://www.databasejournal.com/features/php/article.php/2222651

Here's the download page for ADOdb: http://php.weblogs.com/adodb#downloads

HTH

Norm

scudsucker

Yes, thanks, I've ben using Access.. I'm giving up on it as soon as I can though.

Thanks you for your help, I really appreciate it.

Any time you need Flash help, Flashkit.com and Werehere.com is where I am useful!