Totally new to PHP and need some help

BluTigress

Ok, I want to make 4 pages that each have lists on them. I would like to be able to enter a word in and have it automatically put in alphabetically into the list. Also I would like a number count of words listed on that page.

Like I said, I am totally new to PHP, I know the "include" code and thats about it. I don't expect anyone to fully write anything out for me, but if some could just direct me to a page/script that has similiar details/settings, that would be great.

planetsim

I dont know of any such scripts you can probably try hotscripts.com to find something however I doubt such a script exists.

Where are you storing these lists?
Words? Are these the words that are in the list?

In terms of programming unless you wish to get complex a word is any character or string that doesnt have a space so

This is a test

is 4 words with 3spaces.

BluTigress

Yea, they are single words. I already have a page with them, go into editor and add them as needed, but thought I could help my PHP learning by trying to work on a script that would do what I was talking about. Oh well though, Thanks. I'll try browsing through hotscripts. I have no idea what PHP category that woud be under though LoL. Thanks for replying though. 🙂

Frederick

Sounds like you are storing your words individually. If so, try this:

$sql = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM tablename ORDER BY names") or die (mysql_error());
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($sql)) {
    echo $row["names"]."<br>";
}

Roger_Ramjet

OK. So you have these 4 pages with lists of words on them, and you want to add to the lists, resort and count them.

So, you need the filesystem functions to open each html file and read it in.
Then you need the string funstions to extract your list from the rest of the page. I would use an html comment as a marker for the beginning and end of the lists. Then strpos() will tell you where to cut the string using substr() to leave just the list.
Then you need the array functions . Explode() the list string into an array, add the new word, sort the array with asort(), implode() it back into a string, add the html you cut off from the ends and save the edited file.

Edit: Looking back, you could use explode() to break the page into an array of 3 strings using your markers; the middle member would be your word list which you then explode into an array of words. Simpler than strpos and substr, both to cut up the page and then to reassemble it when finished.

BluTigress

I understood about ... 1 word of that LoL. Thanks though, thats kinda what I needed. See, since I'm just starting out, I'm kinda lost as to what functions do what and all. I'll look into the suggestions and try and make my first REAL attempt at PHP.

Now to just head over and research a lil more about those codes then 🙂

Seriously, THANKS!!! 🙂

Roger_Ramjet

You had best look up the file open and read functions for yourself, to many permutations for me to tell you how to do it.

Explode will cut a string into pieces and return it as an array. So if you added some comment or marker to your html code you would then be able to chop out the word list .

// add something unique as a marker eg

<body>
<!-- wordlist @@^% -->
word1<br />
word2<br />
word3<br />
<!-- wordlist @@^% -->
</body>

// read the html file into a string

$page = ..

$page_array = explode('<!-- wordlist @@^% -->', $page);
// will return an array with 3 elements:
// html up to the marker, the word list, html after the marker.

$word_string = $page_array[1];
$word_array = explode('<br />', $word_string);

$firstword = $word_array[0];
$secondword = $word_array[1];

// then add words, reassemble the page and save it as the file