A complete and utter beginner.

[scoobyroo]

I'm working on a webpage for my band and have done minimal amounts of programming with anything but HTML. My server has recently been changed to LAMP, and over time, I want to be able to utilize it to it's fullest potential. So, it's time to hit the books, and I have found some really good ones thanks to you guys.

Now, just a little advice if I am heading in the right direction...
The only dynamic content(for now) on this page will be a link to a webcam to watch band practice. The HTTP server for the cam has an external URL notification service, which basically checks for a change in the IP address and outputs the information to a URL of my choice...

output example - http://www.thejiveroster.com/status.php?user=client1234&url=http://140.0.250.128:8080&online=true&cam1=false&cam2=false&cam3=false&cam4=false&cam5=f
alse&audio=false&version=101&nickname=theband&country=usa&camID=1&title=the+band+cam!

I would rather not use a service like DynDNS, as I feel that defeats the purpose of having my own domain names.

So with that in mind, I'm guessing I would create a page like /status.php that would run a script to take the server notification data and populate a table, then another script would be used to update the link to the cam with the current location of the webcam. Am I correct to assume that this can be done, and is this a good project to start learning on?

After reading and re-reading this forum, I realise I have a long way to go, but like many people, i learn by diving in way over my head. Thanks in advance for your patience🙂

[Sxooter]

Good news, this kind of stuff is fairly simple in PHP.

One cool trick is that if you have url wrappers installed (most installations do, but you never know) you can "open" a web page just like a local file:

$file = "http://server1.com.com/status.html";
$fp = fopen($file,"r");
$page = fread($fp,100000);

then the whole web page status.html is loaded into the page variable and ready to be parsed.

Then, using ereg, preg, or split, you can grab the exact data you need out of that page.

Good luck with your project, we'll see you in a day or two I'm sure. 🙂