Newbie Question on using PHP to receive HTTP data

pt01

Hi All,

After browsing through 3 php books. I am still confused about how to do the following:

1) I have a program that sends out a HTTP message in JavaScript using its HTTP object, like this: HTTP("\localhost\test.php?param1="user1"&param2="password2"&message1="test");

How would I write the test.php to accept and parse these parameters and their values?

2) And then once I get these values properly stored, how can I "push" these values onto a table on a web page?

3) Since my JavaScript program will generate messages based on events, how can I make test.php to scroll the web table content downward as new messages arrive and old messages are not overwritten but just get "scrolled" down?

Thanks alot,

Flyier

1) I have a program that sends out a HTTP message in JavaScript using its HTTP object, like this: HTTP("\localhost\test.php?param1="user1"&param2="password2"&message1="test");

How would I write the test.php to accept and parse these parameters and their values?

$_GET['param1'] , $_GET['param2'], $_GET['message1']

...

2) And then once I get these values properly stored, how can I "push" these values onto a table on a web page?

<?
        echo "<table>";
        echo "<tr>";
        echo "<td>Param1</td><td>Param2</td><td>Message</td>";
        echo "<td>$_GET['param1']</td><td>$_GET['param1']</td><td>$_GET['message1']</td>";
        echo "</tr>";
        echo "</table>";
?>

Mitko Kostov

pt01

Thank you very much, Mitko.

How do I prevent old messages from being overwritten with new incoming messages in the <table>? so that the table actually "scrolls" down as new messages (rows) coming in?

Thanks again.

laserlight

You would need to write the incoming message to a file or database, and then retrieve from that file or database to print.

pt01

tnx for the reply, laserlight.

I was thinking about storing all the messages in some array in php...
but I will look into store them in mySql - which I would have to do eventually anyway.

Assuming I have stored all the messages in a db - what would the logic in PHP be like in terms of displaying the messages?

Like upon receiving a new message, the php code would store it in a db table, and then echo-ing out all the messages everytime from scratch? or there is some more effective way of achieving this "scrolling" down effect on the <table>?

TIA,

pt01

ok I just realized something - what I am trying to do actually is 2 different php scripts: 1) use $_GET[] to get the message from the external program via HTTP() and dump the received message into a file or db;
2) another script to read that file or db and post what is there onto a HTML table..
and that is the script a user would use in a URL to view the messages..

Please correct me if I am wrong in my "new discovery" here?

TIA

laserlight

Yes, but they are not so much two different scripts but two different series of steps in a single script.

pt01

tnx for the confirmation laserlight...

the reason I am thinking I need 2 scriptes is:
the first one is used by me to interface with the HTTP() message - i.e. process the incoming message; so the URL for that php is like http://localhost/test.php?param1="user1"&param2="password2"&message1="test"

And the second one is used by a user to view the message via a URL like: http://localhost/view.php
that actaully outputs the table?

Am I misunderstanding the whole thing here? (Sorry for the ultra-newbie-ness.)

In the second php, I am thinking I need some sort of timer to read that file or pull from db say every 5 seconds...is there some sort of global timer that php has? or I just keep track of time stamp of each call and test to see if time has elapsed 5 seconds before go read the file and out table?

Thanks,
pt

laserlight

Ah yes, that could be the case. It depends on what you want to do? For example, if you were writing a message board kind of script, then they could well be a single "script".

pt01

any suggestion for the timer implementation?

Tnx, pt

Flyier

You can use the meta tag, where content="5" is the time of refresh in seconds :

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5">

- Mitko Kostov

pt01

ah that's genius - so I don't have to track the timer in php script itself but the "refresh" will actually invoke that php script every 5 seconds - if I understand the meta tag correctly...

but wait, where do I put that line of code? inside or outside of PHP script?

thanks...

Flyier

Hello again.

You can write two php funcitons, save them in file func.php for example and use them in view.php :

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
 "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
 <head>
 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
 <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5">
 <title></title>
 <?php

  include ("func.php");

  func1();
  func2();

?>
 </head>
 <body>

 </body>

Mitko Kostov

pt01

Flyier - thanks very much...that works great!
Now I have my first "live" webpage!

pt.

BTW, if I want to color a particular text, do I do that with PHP or HTML?

pt01

oops, I celebrated a bit prematurely:

I am reading from a file which has multiple lines, ending with a "\n";

while(!feof($test)) {
   $inline=fgets($test);
    list ($p1,$p2,$p3,$p4,$p5,$p6,$nl)=explode("|",$inline);
    echo  <td>$p2</td><td>$p3</td><td>$p4</td><td>$p5</td><td>$p6</td>";
echo "<td>$nl</td>";
   }

Now instead of the lines being displayed "scrolling" vertically, only a single line is being expanded horizontally ("growing" horizontally) with each new message line.

What am I missing here?

Thanks,
pt

laserlight

You need to insert <br />, perhaps with [man]nl2br/man.

pt01

sorry, laserlight - where do I put <br />? at the time I writing to the file or at the end of echo while output? tried both did not work.

Also, I have getting Undefined offset (1, 2, 3, 4,5) on the line:

list ($p1,$p2,$p3,$p4,$p5,$p6)=explode("|",$inline);

...because I did not declare variables $p1 ... $p6?

Tnx.
pt

pt01

ok I fixed the table to "grow" vertically...

still trying to figure out the "Notice: Undefined offset" message..

would appreciate any advise.