Coding Forum

**rolda hayes** · 06-20-2008, 12:54 PM

OK, here goes...

I am trying to create a form where someone can enter into a text box - choose from a list of pages in a drop down, hit submit - and then the text is displayed on the relevant page.

The uploads are going to be quotes and need to be displayed on pages i.e
"sport" "general" "movies" etc.

I'm assuming i need a table created in my database called "quotes" and then a column after that with "sport" in there as well...?

I know the code for displaying on the page would be something like

PHP Code:


			
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM quotes WHERE page_number = sport");?>

but how do i get the information to the database with an upload form?

Hope this makes sense!

**Learning Newbie** · 06-20-2008, 02:43 PM

I'm not sure what you're asking? If you want to put data into a database, it's generally bulk loads or insert commands.

You would probably want a lookup or enumeration table so that instead of having to query for (and store!) string data like in your query, sport might map to 1, movies 2, etc. Then your table is smaller, ie it stores less data, and querying it is faster because there isn't so much disc IO. Plus, it's faster and more efficient to match integer values than strings.

**rolda hayes** · 06-20-2008, 02:50 PM

Woa!!! I think I understand that..!

When I originally asked about how best to do this i was told to do it your way sport=1 movies=2 etc but I thought that actually using the names would make it easier - guess not!

I'll try and explain myself a bit better...

I'm going to be building a site that diplays a list of quotes to do with particular subjects i.e. "sport" as one page "movies" as another.

Originally, I was going to use a text file for each list, and then get the client to FTP each text file so they would display in the right place on each page.

But now I thought it would be better if they could have an admin page, type the new quote into a text box, choose from a dropdown which page list the quote should appear on and then hit submit.

I need this to be foolproof for me though as I really am a Noob at mysql!!

**Learning Newbie** · 06-20-2008, 03:19 PM

You could do text files and have an admin page. I have no idea how to make that happen in PHP - can PHP even access the file system? To, say, enumerate text files in a directory, server side, and build a response from them? A database will be drastically faster, tho, because of caching. A DB will also let you do things like query by author, instead of by movies vs music.

Whether you store the category or page directly as text or as integers with lookup values is a bit of a side issues. You can make a working system either way, and it will take a lot of concurrent users and or a lot of data before you'll feel pain from this.

So, basically, you would want to make some tables to hold your data, then write a bunch of procs in your MySQL database to interface with the data. One probably takes the page name, quote, and author as input parameters, then, internally, fires off an insert. Another might fetch all the quotes for sport. Finally, your PHP code will call the appropriate procedures and render the data they return to HTML.

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/...rocedures.html

**rolda hayes** · 06-20-2008, 03:25 PM

Is there any way to write to a .txt file through an HTML form?

**Learning Newbie** · 03:35 PM

In .NET, sure! It's easy as pie.

Code:

void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) {
   string text = Form["quote"];
   StreamWriter w = new StreamWriter("filename.txt");
   w.Write(text);
   w.Dispose();
}

I don't know what the PHP equivalent might be, if there is one?

**rolda hayes** · 08:42 AM

Ok, I've changed this a bit..

Im now going to have an upload page for each section....

i've created a table like this

CREATE TABLE `sport` (
`quote` VARCHAR( 50 ) NOT NULL
);

and my form is here

PHP Code:


			
<?php 



$hostname = "localhost"; 

$db_user = "***"; 

$db_password = "***"; 

$database = "***"; 

$db_table = "sport"; 





$db = mysql_connect($hostname, $db_user, $db_password); 

mysql_select_db($database,$db); 

?> 

<html> 

<head> 

<title>Sport</title> 

</head> 

<body> 



<?php 

if (isset($_REQUEST['Submit'])) { 





$sql = "INSERT INTO $db_table(sport) values ('".mysql_real_escape_string(stripslashes($_REQUEST['quote']))."')";

if($result = mysql_query($sql ,$db)) { 

echo '<h1>Thank you</h1>Your information has been entered into our database<br><br><img src="http://www.webmaster-talk.com/images/headers/default_logo.jpg"'; 

} else { 

echo "ERROR: ".mysql_error(); 

} 

} else { 

?> 

<h1>Sport</h1>

<hr> 

<form method="post" action="">

 quote

<br> 

<textarea name="sport_quote" cols="60" rows="5" id="sport_quote"></textarea> 

<br>

<br>

<br>

<br> 

<input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit"> 

</form> 

<?php 

} 

?> 

</body> 

</html>

but it returns:

ERROR: Unknown column 'sport' in 'field list'

??

**Learning Newbie** · 06-23-2008, 03:03 PM

It's very hard to tell because of the antique coding style (hint, dynamic SQL must die!), but it appears you're trying to add data to a column named sport in a table named sport. Using a stored procedure would have prevented this from the start.

**rolda hayes** · 06-23-2008, 05:42 PM

Thanks for the reply John,

I've been playing around with it today and came up with a solution that works well.

Just one last question to finish this for me...

I'm using this code to display the results.

PHP Code:


			
<?php  

$database="*****";  

mysql_connect ("localhost", "*****", "*****");  

@mysql_select_db($database) or die( "Unable to select database");  

$result = mysql_query( "SELECT user_name,user_email FROM sport" )  

or die("SELECT Error: ".mysql_error());  

$num_rows = mysql_num_rows($result);    

print "<table width=700  border=0 cellpadding=5>\n";

$color1 = '#FFFFFFF';

$color2 = '#FFFF00';

while ($get_info = mysql_fetch_row($result)){  

print "<tr>\n";  

print "\t<td><font face=arial size=3 color=$color1/>{$get_info[0]}</font><br />";

print  "<font face=arial size=2 color=$color2/>{$get_info[1]}</font></td>\n";  

print "</tr>\n";  

}  

print "</table>\n";  

?>

It prints the quote on 1 line, then the source of the quote on the next in a different color.

My question is - how can i get an image for a bullet point for each quote?

Where ever i put the <img> tag it messes everything up!

**Learning Newbie** · 06-24-2008, 04:09 PM

Use an unordered list, and then CSS to replace the bullet points with an image?

**rolda hayes** · 06-25-2008, 05:38 AM

I used this in the end

PHP Code:


			
print "\t<td><img src=\"images/more.gif\"><font face=arial img src=images/more.gif size=3 color=$color1/>{$get_info[0]}</font><br />";

Solved it all now! yay!

Cheers for the advise John