Brand new.... A few questions

Kazhultee

Okay I want to create a basic page that has newspaper articles from my area. I want people to be able to sign in and have the database remember what they have read.

It's a basic table with two columns. One has article name and one is a checkbox. When they click the link the checkbox autochecks itself. At the bottom of the page is a few links. First is refresh. Second is delete. Meaning delete what has been checked. Third is read meanin the ones they have read. Fourth is add an article where they can add one to the list. If link us already submitted it rejects it. And finally a preferances so they can reset their articles to pretend like they haven't removed anything . Is this possiblek? I'm not looking for a handout just a step in right direction.

slick101

whwhwhwhwhaattt???

Uhm maybe in the <a href=""></a> you can do a onclick="callajax()"
to update your database if it was read or not ?

Kazhultee

Sorry I wrote that on my phone..

Hopefully this will be a better example:

Newspaper Title X
Newspaper Title

Newspaper Title

Newspaper Title X

Newspaper Title X

Refresh | Remove | Read | Add | Prefs

So, when they press:

Refresh - Refreshes anything new that happened while they were browsing appears.
Remove - Removes anything that had the check box (after they click, if not possible that's okay, we can always have them manually press the box)
Read - Shows them what they have read
Add - Allows them to submit their own link/title
Pref - Allows them to change password, reset their read list, etc.

Then I was wondering if it was possible to order it by when they were submitted.. but at the same time have like "special" ones the admin can star so that they appear at the top of the list until the user checks it off?

Anyways, I have zero experience on MYSQL, Databases or PHP. Just wanna know if this is possible and a step in the right direction.

Kazhultee

Newspaper Title ______________ X
Newspaper Title ___________ ||
Newspaper Title ____________ ||
Newspaper Title ____________ X

Newspaper Title _________________ X

Bjom

Of course it is possible.

Start with a MySQL DB, where you store your articles (or store a link to the article) and another table where you store user info. And a third table where you bring this together.

Actually: start with only the table where you bring things together 😉 that is enough to begin with. That table would look like this for your example:

userID|articleID|read
1|1|1
1|2|0
1|3|0
1|4|1
1|5|1

Then try to read that out and disply it as HTML - you would represent the read column with checkboxes

For the beginning stick with the numbers for user and article - later you pull name and article title from other tables that you can link(join) with the table you start up there.
(OR if that looks too abstract: replace the ids with name and title for now and come back to ids and stuff later when you spread data across more tables)

Bjom