[Resolved] Changing Dynamic DB Content on Refresh

Benny_Johnson

Hi everyone,

I'm still somewhat new to PHP (but learning quickly, of course) so this question is probably plain old stupid, but here goes.

I have a PHP page that connects to a SQL database and grabs one specific row of information from a table (based on the date, which is the first field) and puts it in various places on the page. It's basically a press release page. The dynamic parts of the page are what come from the SQL database, such as the title of the story, the body copy, etc. I built it and it works fine, however...

I want the user to be able to jump from one press release to the other, so I built a table that lists all of the titles of each story and wrote code to create <a> tags for the links around each title. I know this is confusing and I apologize.

Basically, my question is this. What do I need to put inside the anchor tags to make the page reload and have all of the dynamic content change when the user clicks one of the links to another story? Right now, I have something like this:

<a href="press_releases.php?currentdate=20030326">Organization X Hits a Homerun at Seybold</a>

The date, seen as 20030326, is dynamic and comes from the first column in the database, but when I click links with various dates, such as the example above, nothing happens when the page reloads...the content is simply static. I have a variable called $currentdate, which I set near the beginning of the PHP file. It is set to the most recent date for now (which may or may not change later). What I'm doing now is trying to change the $currentdate variable, when the user clicks a different link, with the <a> code I pasted above, but I'm not really sure what the hell I am doing here. Evidently, one of two things is true: 1) using the anchor tag syntax above does not change the value of $currentdate, or 2) changing $currentdate isn't what is going to determine which row of the database the information comes from. Any thoughts?

Thanks A LOT!

-Benny

LordShryku

It looks like the variable you have hard coded is overriding your GET variable.

I'm guessing somewhere around the top of your page you have

$currentdate = date("Ymd");

Change that to

if(!$currentdate) {
   $currentdate = date("Ymd");
}

This way the GET variable is not overriden, and the actual date is only used if the variable is not already present.

Benny_Johnson

Thanks for your response, LordShryku.

I don't have a GET variable, which I think is at the heart of an answer to my question. Like I said, I have no idea what the hell I'm doing in this area of PHP 😕

I wasn't sure how to update/refresh the dynamic information on a page AT ALL, so it sounds like I need to do a GET function when the user clicks on one of the links that causes all of the information to change. Is that correct?

How would I incorporate my SQL queries into the GET function? I guess the best way would be to see an example of a page or some code that does this very thing.

Any ideas?

Thanks again,

-Benny

LordShryku

Any variable passed through your URL is a GET variable. Depending on whether you have register_globals on, you do this one of two ways..

If register_globals is ON, you can do it the way I showed before. If not, try this:

if($_GET['currentdate']) { 
   $currentdate = $_GET['currentdate'];
}
else {
   $currentdate = date("Ymd"); 
}

Everything in your SQL statement and <a href>'s can stay the same. You'll just be telling the script to use the one in the URL if it is there.

Benny_Johnson

You're the guy! It worked! 😃 I guess I have register_globals on (is that a php configuration variable?) because your first suggestion worked (sorry for making you clarify a second time, I'm a goon).

One thing. Just because I like to know what is happening when people help me reach a solution, what does the "!" in the following statement mean:

if(!$currentdate) {
$currentdate = date("Ymd")
}

I'm guessing it indicates whether or not the value stored in the variable is null?

Anyway, thanks again so much, you really made my day because that has been bothering me for eight hours!

Sincerely,

Benny