php newbie, please help meeee

alphasurf

hi everyone, i am new to php, I have hosting thru a company and on my control panel it says php 4.3.10 is enabled i was learning from this book i bought and i wrote all the different php pages exactly how it showed in the book. I also made a small two table data base in my sql...

I uploaded thru ftp in ascII mode all the php docs to my server, but when i try to go to see a page how it looks i get an error message.., when uploading php is there a specific place you must upload it to?

and where do you upload the mysql database docs to?

I am sorry i am a newbie to this.. any help is greatly appreciated....

this is the error message i get for this php doc i uploaded...

Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_NEW in /home/booger/public_html/bookmarks/db_fns.php on line 7

this is my script that is running the error

<$php

require_once('bookmark_fns.php');
do_html_header('');

display_site_info();
display_login_form();

do_html_footer();
?>

thank you for the help i appreciate it alot i am just starting with php today.... Also where do upload my mysql database files to?

alcibar

First, when you sign-up with your host, you are given your account including MySQL Host, MySQL Username, Password, etc. On your control panel, look for something like PHPMyAdmin or MySQL datababases. If found, login with your account and create the database and table there. Change also your db connection file to your host settings.

Question: Does your host support MySQL db?

alphasurf

yes my host actually has mysql db on it and i tried to make a database thru the host acct control panel but i was never given a user name and password... i know hot to make the data base in my sql on my pc but once i do that where do i find what i have created and where do i upload it to?

alcibar

No need to upload. Just create it in PhpMyAdmin in your host. It's a web-based tool to create the MySQL database and tables. But of course ask them for your MySQL account.

alphasurf

ok here goes... when you make a .php documant does it always have to start with the html tags?

Like this:

<html>
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<h1></h1>
<body>
<?php
echo '<p>It is currently';
echo date('H:i, jS F');
echo '</p>';
?>
</body>
</html> ...and save it as ctime.php

OR...

Can you do this:

<?php
echo '<p>It is currently';
echo date('H:i, jS F');
echo '</p>';
?> .....and save it as ctime.php?????

ok all it may be a stupid question, but i am new to php...

darthmahon

Nope PHP docs don't need to start with HTML - that code should display just fine if your PHP is installed properly...

chads2k2

Good to see that someone read the noobies side of the forums. All well, it's all good. Yeah you don't have to start .php's with HTML code nor do you have to start with PHP code. You can start .php coding with anything you would like. Except ASP. Because that is just a wickedly awful langauge. :-D

Chad

Weedpacket

To clarify the previous two posts....

A PHP file does not need to start with HTML; you can have <?php and PHP code right from the start and all will be well.

But the output generated by the script (assuming it is generating an HTML page) and received by the client SHOULD be valid HTML; i.e., include, <html><head>...etc.

Thing to remember is that PHP doesn't care what PHP sends to the client; and the clien doesn't care how the server generated what the server sent in its response.

So if your entire PHP file was

<?php
echo '<p>It is currently';
echo date('H:i, jS F');
echo '</p>';
?>

So that the HTML the client received only said

<p>It is currently13:48 3rd March</p>

Then it means that you just sent them invalid HTML.

You could write

<?php
echo '<html><head><title>Time</title></head>';
echo '<body>';
echo '<p>It is currently ';
echo date('H:i jS F');
echo '</p>';
echo '</body></html>';
?>

So that the client received

<html><head><title>Time</title></head><body><p>It is currently 13:48 3rd March</p></body></html>