FAQ Page

[goldilok]

Hiya,
I'm only starting really with PHP. But at the moment I'm doing a project which requires a faq page. I don't know if it's the way I've got my code written or the way I've my tables set, but I want to de able to use threads, like in this forum, for the display of the relevant questions.
I've gone through a million different ways that I though I could do it but I always come to a dead end. I know it's probobly simple and it's just the way I've written my code and it's impossible to do it that way. But I would appreciate some ideas.
Thanks a million.

[[deleted]]

The trick is that you need recursion somehow.
Recursion is tricky.

What I do is create a tble like this:

messageid
parentid
threadid
postdate
subject
body

When a new post is inserted, it gets an automatic messageid from the database.
If the message is a reply to an existing message, the parentid is filled the the id of the message that this message is a reply to.
The threadID is filled with the ID of the message that first started the thread.

This does mean you have to post a little more data in your html, but you can easily get all data for a thread by selecting all row that have the same 'threadid'.
One thing to notice, when you insert a message that is not a reply, the it's threadid must be set to it's own messageid.

Then you have to write a recursive function that uses the messageid and the parentid to print the list of messages and replies to those messages and replies to those replies....

[goldilok]

Hiya,
Thanks a million for the tip.
I'm going to give it a go and I'll get back to you. Fingers crossed.
goldilok

[[deleted]]

Another tip:
If you are about to do some complex programming, start off by
writing the program in plain english.
Write down what you think your php program would have to do:

start page
open connection to database
if connection fails, send warning
read articles
print articles
close database connection
stop program

Then make this more and more detailed and slowly start translating the english to PHP.
That way you won't forget what you were trying to do, and you can clearly see what each block of PHP does by the comments in english.

[Anon]

That sounds alot like UML. What a hassle! But I do agree. It's the right way to do things.

[[deleted]]

A hassle indeed, but it helps! :-)

[goldilok]

Hiya Vincent,
Sorry to bother you again. But I'm getting this error:

Cannot redeclare print_replies() in c:\phpweb\showquestion.php on line 85

The error is on the first line:

I've tried a couple of things but nothings changed. This is the function.

function print_replies($arg1,$arg2)
{
if($previous_id==$parent_)
{
$space.="-";
echo"<TR><TD bgcolor=#FFFFFF>$space<a href=\"showreply.php?this_id=$id&orig_id=$num\">$topic</TD><TD bgcolor=#FFFFFF>$author</TD><TD bgcolor=#FFFFFF>$date</TD></TR>";

$sql_reply = "SELECT * FROM $table_name WHERE parent_id=$previous_id";
$result_reply = mysql_query($sql_reply,$connection) or die("Couldn't execute query.");

if($result_reply)

{
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result_reply)) {
$id_reply = $row['id'];
$topic_reply = $row['topic'];
$author_reply = $row['author'];
$content_reply = $row['content'];
$date_reply = $row['date'];
$parent_reply = $row['parent_id'];
$replies_reply = $row['num_replies'];
$f_question_reply = $row['first_question'];
$previous_id=$id_reply;
print_replies($id_reply,$parent_reply);

} } }
else
{
$previous_id=$id;
$space="-";
}
}

Any ideas?
Thanks

[[deleted]]

'cannot redeclare' means that you are somehow declaring the function twice.
The most common reason is that poeple put their functions into seperate files, and use include() or require() to import them.
If the function declaration is in the main script and in the included() script, then you'll get one of these errors.