new page for each record automatically

gschwendt

ok... so of course I'm a complete newbie otherwise I wouldn't be posting this question here. I've already got my database & tables setup and have already began learning the basics of querying the database to create a webpage.

I'm trying to create a website for archival of football stats and team history, etc. I've slowly started working on it, here's something I have so far. Here's the simple query I'm using:

SELECT Num, Lname, Fname, Pos, Height, Weight, School, Picture FROM tblRosters WHERE School = "Arkansas State" ORDER BY "Num"'

I have 15 other teams that I would need to create similar pages for, however, I'm sure there's a way to automatically do it depending upon the previous link that I clicked; ie if I clicked on Arkansas State, it takes me to ASU's roster, if I click on Eastern Michigan, it takes me to EMU's roster and so on.

Expanding on that, I would also want to have each player have their own page, something similar to this to where when you click on Reggie Arnold, it takes you here: http://sbcol.net/players/arkansasstate/reggiearnold.htm
(mind you its currently all static html)

I've got the tables built for stats, team information, etc. etc. but I need help getting started building the pages/php code. I'm honestly not sure what this type of page would be called. I've seen the term "dynamic page" being thrown around in various places but I can't determine if its what I'm looking for or not.

At any rate, I'd certainly appreciate any help either pointing me to some in depth ground-up tutorials or someone who would be willing to take me under their wing.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me as Ive been the "expert" on boards in the past and rarely looked at the newbie section so you reading this is a nice first step. 🙂

cgraz

You currently have a section of your query that reads:

WHERE School = 'Arkansas State'

You need to make the query "flexible" so that the user can click a link, and depending on which school he wants to see, you grab the info from that school from MySQL.

So rather than hard-coding the school into the query, you would use a variable that held the school that the user wanted to see.

WHERE School = "' . $school . '"

Please keep in mind this is a very simple example, and you will need to validate the input held in $school before just sending it to MySQL.

Using this approach, you're essentially loading different content based on a single variable rather than hard-coding hundreds of different queries. The player's profile page would work using the same logic.

Hope this helps!

gschwendt

cgraz wrote:
You currently have a section of your query that reads:
WHERE School = 'Arkansas State'
You need to make the query "flexible" so that the user can click a link, and depending on which school he wants to see, you grab the info from that school from MySQL.

So rather than hard-coding the school into the query, you would use a variable that held the school that the user wanted to see.
WHERE School = "' . $school . '"
Please keep in mind this is a very simple example, and you will need to validate the input held in $school before just sending it to MySQL.

Using this approach, you're essentially loading different content based on a single variable rather than hard-coding hundreds of different queries. The player's profile page would work using the same logic.

Hope this helps!

yeah... that definitely helps me out, thanks. Now, how do I pass that $school variable from a previous page? Possibly either through links or through a drop-box.

Just a little background... I only truly started all of this a couple of days ago. I know basic HTML and am learning SQL Reporting at work but the rest was directions from someone helping me setup the database and then me reading through a PHP book. If there's a specific phrase that I need to peruse through the book for, by all means let me know.

Again though, thanks for the tip of using the variable in the query.

cgraz

That's exactly right. Create a form (set the method to POST), and make a select list (named school) with options for each school. Set the value of those options to the name of the school in your MySQL database. Upon submission, you'll have access to the school name

$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM your_table WHERE School='" . $_POST['school'] . "');

Just be sure to validate $_POST['school'] to ensure it's safe.