[Resolved] Building a User's MyLinks Area

artnow

Hello all. I need a little help with figuring out how to build an area where user's can add selected links from a list of public links. For instance, I list contests and I want to be able to offer users a way to save specific links in their own myLinks page so that when they come back they can go to their own page of links. I hope that's clear.

This is what I have figured out so far that I will need.

User Registration and/or User Authentication
set a variable using the user's id generated when they registered
login name using the same user's id
use of sessions to carry the id variable throughout the site
a button that when clicked adds the contest to a database using the link id and the user id as variables
a page to view selected contests based on user id listing contests using link id
removal method to remove expired or unwanted contests

And that's it. If someone wouldn't mind following the above logic and letting me know if it would work as I envision it that would really be helpful. I always get stuck with the logic of how to do things...

n00854180t

I think your outline there is a pretty good start. Were you planning to have users register and enter their information into a db? If so you could use a table for the users and their info, and a table for their links, which would contain at least 3 columns, id, userid, and link(s). You could SELECT FROM using a join to get the information from both tables (join on he userid). If you used links (multiple links in one column, rather than a new row for each link) you could just separate the links by commas and explode them when you want to list them.

artnow

Thanks so much for you help.

So, if I am understanding things correctly, I would have a table with ID, UserID and LinkID and then explode the comma seperated LinkID and join the resulting individual LinkIDs from that table to the LinkID in the second table (where the actual URL of the link resides).

In the meantime I will look up both join and explode in the forums so I know what it is that you are talking about.

n00854180t

Actually I meant something more along the lines of this:

You have a table called users which has 5-6 columns. Id, UserId, Pass, Email, Homepage (or whatever).

Now your other table, called say myLinks has 3 columns, Id, UserId, and Links.

You will use a SELECT query to get whatever links the user already has. ("SELECT * FROM myLinks WHERE UserId = '" . $uservar . "'")

Then get the links using a while loop/mysql_fetch_array.

Then do this: "$allLinks = $row['Links'] . "," . $newLink;"

Now, wehn the user adds a link to his "my links" page you will do an insert query. Something along the lines of "INSERT INTO myLinks WHERE UserId = '" . $uservar . "' VALUES ('" . $uservar . "', '" . $allLinks . "'")".

Then when you want to display the links to the user, do a JOIN query where Users.UserId = myLinks.UserId.

You can find information about the functions mysql_fetch_array and explode() at www.php.net and you can search the sql stuff at www.mysql.com

n00854180t

Have you made any progress with my suggestion?

artnow

Well .... I finally got the registration page to work but I have been struggling with the login page. I can login but usernames and passwords don't matter. I guess it defeats the purpose. This is what I have so far having borrowed heavily from other threads:

<?php 
  session_start(); 
  $_SESSION['access'] = "dead"; 
?> 

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> 

<html> 
<head> 
<title></title> 
</head> 
<body> 

<? 
  if (!empty($HTTP_SERVER_VARS['QUERY_STRING'])) { 
    parse_str($HTTP_SERVER_VARS['QUERY_STRING']); 
    if ($fail==1) { 
      echo "login failed.<br /><br />\n"; 
    } elseif ($fail==2) { 
      echo "you must login.<br /><br />\n"; 
    } 
  } 
?> 



<form name="login" action="auth.php" method="POST">
  <table width="590" border="0" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0">
    <tr> 
      <td width="79">Username:</td>
      <td width="506"> 
        <input type="text" name="userid">
      </td>
    </tr>
    <tr> 
      <td width="79">Password:</td>
      <td width="506"> 
        <input type="password" name="password">
      </td>
    </tr>
    <tr> 
      <td width="79">&nbsp;</td>
      <td width="506">&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>
  </table>
  <p>
    <input type="submit" name="submit">
  </p>
</form>
</body>
</html>

and auth.php ----

<?php 
  // pass/fail flag for the following logic 
  $no = 0; 


$db = mysql_connect("localhost", "user", "password"); 
if (!$db) { 
    echo("Could not establish a connection to the database server."); 
    exit(); 
} 

mysql_select_db("database"); 
if(! @mysql_select_db("database")) { 
    echo("Could not establish a connection to the database."); 
    exit(); 
} 


//$encripted_password=md5($password); 

$sql = "SELECT * FROM mysweeps_user WHERE userid = '$userid' AND password='$password'"; 

//$sql = "SELECT * FROM mysweeps_user WHERE userid = '$userid' AND password='$encripted_password'"; 

$storedUserid = "$userid"; 
$storedPassword = "$password"; 


  if ($_POST['userid']!="" and $_POST['password']!="") { 
    $userid = $_POST['userid']; 
    $password = $_POST['password']; 

if ($userid == $storedUserid) { 
  if ($password == $storedPassword) { 
    session_start(); 
    $_SESSION['access'] = "set"; 
    header("Location: [url]http://www.contesthound.com/?userid=[/url]$userid"); 
    exit;   

  } else { 
    $no = 1; 
  } 
} else { 
  $no = 1; 
}    
  } else { 
    $no = 1; 
  } 

  if ($no == 1) { 
    header("Location: index.php3?fail=1"); 
  }