Login etc for the noob

[sbosshar]

Hey there. I'm just starting to learn PHP and MySQL and was wondering if someone could help me out a little bit.

I'm starting with a basic project. What I envision is a login system with preset username/passwords. For instance, I set up say 7 usernames and assign 'password' as the password for each. Once they log in I'd like them to be able to change their password, so I believe this is the reason that I would need a databse for the username/passwords.

The second piece of this project is what can be described as a kind of "message board." A page within the project (say post.php) will have a pull down menu of a few different categories followed by a window to input text. Once the user inputs text, I'd like for the username to be associated with a certain label/name (different than username) and for php to post the text in for instance (home.php). home.php would have a table with different headers (the categories from the pulldown menu) that has label/name, text, time/date.

I have all the html (forms etc) and preliminary php done (some includes, a little bit of code here and there) but now I'm stuck trying to get a database table and trying to write just a basic login script that checks the database against user input and then of course how I would take the text input from post.php thrown into the corresponding table on home.php.

I've tried to look for some sample code to play around with as well as read up on how this stuff works, but it just plain confuses me. All the login scripts I've found go into much greater detail than I need. This is just a "startup" project if you will. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

[dalecosp]

All the login scripts I've found go into much greater detail than I need.

But the details are important, Failure to grok the details causes parse errors in much the same way that missing the "big picture" causes scripts that plain don't work and projects that run overtime and over budget.

Can you write an HTML form? Can you write a script that receives the form's action (the submitted information) and in turn writes it back to the browser?

From there, can you cause the handler script to connect to a relational database, and create and then execute an SQL query?

On the other side of the coin, can you write a script that reads from a db and echoes the data to the browser?

Can you write a script that compares two values and outputs a different message based on the result of the comparison? Can you change it so that it stores a value in the $_SESSION array, and then performs a redirect?

If you can handles little details like these, then, with bit of thought and planning, your login script is just over the horizon....

🙂