help with tables & forms please

chelseybun

Hi All,
This is my first post to this forum so hi, I'm Chelsey, a fairly amateur php person... I know a few things and did some courses but that was a few years ago now so I am out of practice. Have been lazy lately using pre-made scripts for my websites!

Anyway my problem today concerns a new site I am building. What I have is just the one table in my database with a list of items in it. I have got as far as displaying this list of items on my page! Yeah :rolleyes:

What I would like to do next is have a form on my page that lets someone order one of these items. There is only one of each item so once it is ordered I would like to delete it from the database automatically so if someone comes along 5 seconds later they are unable to place an order for that particluar item. It will no longer show up in my list of available items.

Does that make sense? Is it possible? Can anyone help?

I look forward to hearing from some of you experts 😃

Cheers for now

Houdini

Well show your table structure in your database like what tables you have and how they are contructed.

table name=items
id SMALLINT(5),
item_1 VARCHAR(30),
item_2 VARCHAR(30),
...etcetera

Yes it is possible with MySQL queries like the DELETE command or UPDATE it all depends on just how you are wanting to achieve the objective. So post the table structure as above and what it is you would like to do with it.

chelseybun

Hi,
Thanks for the response.

My table structure is pretty basic, as follows;

table name=avail_items
item varchar(255) NULL default '',
PRIMARY KEY (item)
) TYPE=MyISAM;

I was thinking if having more than one field, and ID number for each item, there is 100 items, and I was also experimenting with have a reserved item field to insert the purchased item into, and then displaying a distinct command to only show items that there was one of in the table but I couldn't work that out.

It looks like my table might be wrong too? Should I have a field for each item rather than one field listing each item?

OK so exaclty what I would like to do is have a page with all available items called up, only items in the database are shown here in a list.

I would like my client to be able to choose an item (only one) and submit the choice via a form with some other info to be mailed to me (I know the mail code) when the form is sent I would like to have the item they have chosen deleted from the database or updated, the thing is that it must not show on the order page as available once it has been purchased. This will stop anyone placing an order for the same item as there is only one of each item.

Does that make sense?

So basically I want to call up my list of available items from my database
Have an order placed for an item
Have this item deleted or updated on my database with the action of submitting a form
Have item removed from the list of available items

I'll carry on with my own investigating in the meantime and see how I get along with your table structure... I was pulling my hair out yesterday though!!

Thanks

Houdini

Well I would have different fields for various items like possibly in a category such as food, drinks, clothing, toys, automobiles, cars, trucks. Something that is easy to remember instead of a numbered bunch of items or long list of items in one single table. If you wanted to see if a user picked an apple or a case of cold drinks you would have to go through the entire table to find it where if they were in their own descriptive category you would just look in that part of the table.

chelseybun

Hi Houdini, thanks. I think I will put them into different fields in my table. Although they all fall under the same category, just 100 different kinds.

Could you possibly advise how I then go about removing an item automatically once it is ordered.

This order could be placed while I am not online so I don't want the problems of double orders so if possible I would like to send a message to my database to delete the item when it is ordered via a text box on a form. The form will be sent to a php page which will email me the form contents. Could this page also send a msg to my database? Deleting the item?

Sorry to ask so many questions, it's just been a while since I studied up on php and my books are not with me right now, they are in storage.

Thanks

Houdini

You would use the UPDATE query to replace the data in a particular row in the database.

$query="UPDATE avail_items SET fieldname="$fieldname' WHERE condition";

You might want to have a username field and also an id field that is auto_incrementing and is the PRIMATY KEY this way using the usename as a condition will work to your advantage because there may be several row with the same item in the database but only one possibly more that belong to a particular user.

chelseybun

Thanks Houdini, I'll see how I get on with it....