PHP Numptie

[SkulkrinBait]

OK so I'm wanting to learn PHP, can anyone advise on a good site to learn from, or a book

Any other advice, a good IDE for example?

Thanks for any advice!

Oh and how do PHP and MySQL interact, I'm not used to this type of stuff being a BASIC programmer mainly, with a bit of HTML knowledge = numptie ;D

[sparrowhawk]

the book i used was Wrox's Beginning PHP 4. I found this really good, if a little weak in some areas (eg array handling only dealt with single dimensional arrays).

Wrox have gone bust, but I have seen the book still around in bookshops.

Avoid the really hefty tomes if you are starting out on your first web app, IMO. The Visual Quickstart books are very good for html and JS, so the PHP one might be a good thing to check out.

the MOST important thing to remember when coding web apps is that web apps are stateless, unlike vb, or delphi, access, whatever is your favouriet desktop dev tool. This means that once you render an html page using php and it's sent, that's it. the server has no idea that the user has it, what they are doing on it, etc. So you need some kind of mechanism for passing stuff to and from the server.

initially you will learny how to pass veriables around using forms and querystrings or post methods.

then you'll probably learn about cookies, and then sessions.

getting php and mysql to interact with each other is very easy, as php comes with lots of mysql functions built in,

getting php and mysql to run on your pc is another thing altogether!

first class for you:

create an html page that has a form. the form has an imput box called "txtName". it also has a submit button.
when you enter your name in the box and click submit, get the second page to display "Hello" + the name.

sounds trivial, but it is the first crucial step into understanding how web apps work, and it was my first ever web app!

tomorrow I'll show you how it's done if you did not manage it.

hint: go to www.php.net and go through the basic tutorial there

[SkulkrinBait]

Thanks for the advice, I'll try out that excercise! Give me 48 hours though as I'm busy this weekend.

[sparrowhawk]

fair enough!

a really good place to ask php questions is:
forums.devnetwork.net/

my user name there is "jean-yves".

a good ide is maguma studio Free. the current version, 1.3.3 is a little buggy (seems pot luck whether you get crashes or not - I do), but they are working on 1.3.4 that is due out very soon that is supposed to fix everything.

has colour syntaxing, intellisense (you know, you put in abs( and it tells you what the abs() function expects, autocomplete, FTP manager, etc, etc


get it here: www.maguma.com

.

[SkulkrinBait]

Due to other commitments I haven't had time to do this, don't set me deadlines JY! ;D

Partly due to a race I ran in this weekend and had to update my site, partly due to this Midnight MU addiction I now have!

[celebaglar]

Jean-Yves said:

Wrox have gone bust, but I have seen the book still around in bookshops.

The Wrox trademark and a number of books (including Beginning PHP 4) have been bought by Wiley & Sons who continue to publish these under the Wrox name. In fact, they've been carrying out quite a publicity campaign for the Wrox range in the press, so I doubt you'll have any trouble finding any of these books in the near future.

The rest of the Wrox range of books was bought by APress. It's unclear who bought which former Wrox community website, but from what I can see the Wiley and Sons ones have been modified to show the owners' copyright message.

Beginning PHP 4 is still available from Amazon.co.uk and I suspect most decent bookshops.

[SkulkrinBait]

I'm having trouble getting PHP working locally on my system

Anyone recommend a good place to download all the stuff I need with instructions in baby-talk! ;D

Don't ask me about deadlines either JY

It'll be done some time this Epoch, maybe!

[Perun]

SkulkrinBait said:

I'm having trouble getting PHP working locally on my system

Anyone recommend a good place to download all the stuff I need with instructions in baby-talk! ;D

Don't ask me about deadlines either JY

It'll be done some time this Epoch, maybe!

Do you have problems with PHP specifically of with Apache?

I had a lot of trouble getting Apache started with PHP, until I found out that many of PHP modules are missing (logically, really) from the main PHP distribution.

So, you'll have to deal with httpd.conf for Apache configuration, and php.ini for PHP, assuming you're using Windoze.

[Perun]

And as I said earlier, PHPEd is the editor of choice for me (full docs on apache, php, mysql, etc.; builtin debugger; embedded web server and PHP distribution), EMS MySQL Manager for db administration/programming (programming with mysql? funny).

The site I visit often are Codewalkers, with lots of tutorials, code snippets and reviews concerning PHP.

[Perun]

Nusphere (www.nusphere.com) have one-click installation for apache/php/perl/debugger on their site called TechPlatform. Latest version is v3.4.

[SkulkrinBait]

Perun said:

Nusphere (www.nusphere.com) have one-click installation for apache/php/perl/debugger on their site called TechPlatform. Latest version is v3.4.

Sounds good, I like the sound of "one click installation" ;D

Will check it out later tonight fingers crossed!

[sparrowhawk]

I just found this at Amazon.com - you may find useful:

www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/159200153X/qid=1094482880/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/002-4514916-2914401?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

The UK site only appears to have an eBook of the same title though.