PHP - Bit Of A New Kid, Need Help Getting Started.

I'm going to go for broke here as this is the last thing I can think of that is going to help me learn anything...

First things first. I have been reading tutorials and guides and all other things about PHP and playing around with all the codes from these tutorials and guides on my localhost. All work well. Yet, they haven't really taught me a great deal since all the code is already written and it's extremely hard to customize with the limited knowledge I currently have. I do not learn very well from sitting down and reading something that someone else has already written and then trying to work out what all the parts are.

When I look at some code - I can usually figure out what is happening and what the code is doing. But it doesn't really help me understand how to write the code myself...

So I thought if I made a topic where I get people to help ME write out a complete code.. I would actually learn something as I go along.. asking questions where I need to and building it exactly the way I want it. Note the 'ME' is capitalized. I don't expect everyone else to write it all down for me. I want to write it - have you guys give it the ok and we'll move on to the next bit. I know there will be parts where I am completely lost and I will need people to write down something to keep the whole thing moving. I would then ask questions untill I understood what you have provided.

The whole idea of this is to build a User Login/Management system. If anyone is up for supporting this idea and helping me start from scratch let me know. Otherwise I'm not sure what else I'm going to have to do.

Hi guys,

I am new to php and mySQL.  I am trying to just learn how to input and output data to a mySQL database.

What I want to do is have a single page with a text area and button where a user can enter some text and then press a submit button.  When the button is pressed I want the text that the user typed to be entered in my database and then displayed below the text area.

If you have any questions about what I am trying to do please ask. 

Thank you for your help in advance!

I'm trying to learn how to create a simple API, possibly using REST. I found a lot of online tutorials on how to implement API's but how do I create my own for my own website?

The API I want to make is just for querying simple data and inserting data in the DB.

From what I learned, REST does HTTP requests from a XML or JSON file but is REST a script I have to download, I can't find a REST site. I'm confused.. 

Hi guys,

Just starting to play with PHP Domdocument, only to fail at the very first step:

<?php   

$html = 'test/php/somefile.html' ;

if(!empty($html)){  

      $dom_1 = new domDocument ; 
      $dom_1->loadHTML($html) ; 
      $links = $dom_1->getElementsByTagName('li') ;

      foreach ( $links as $link) {
			// echo $link ;
           echo $link->nodeValue, PHP_EOL;
      }  
}
?>

When I visit it in a browser I get a WSOD, what am I missing?

Hey Guys,

Im having a really frustrating problem with this set of PHP:

writeConversationFunctions.php
<?php
session_start();
the function writeMessage($message){
$_SESSION['messagetest'] = $message;
$chatLogFile = "log.txt";
$openChatLog = fopen($chatLogFile, 'w') or die("Failed to open Log File.");
if($message == "resetnow"){
$message = "";
fwrite($openChatLog, $message);
fclose($openChatLog);
$_SESSION['lastMessageSize'] = 0;
}
elseif($message == ""){
}
else{
$timestamp = date("h:i"); 
if(isset($_SESSION['username'])){
$username = $_SESSION['username'];
}
else{
$username = "Anonymous";
}
if($message[0] == "/"){
$commandString = stripslashes($commandString);
$commandString = htmlentities($commandString, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');
$commandString = substr($commandString, 1);
$command = explode(" ",$commandString);
switch ($command[0]){
case "slap":
$name = command[1];
$commandResponse = '<p class="commandText">' ."You slap " . $name . "across the face.</p>";
fwrite($openChatLog, $commandResponse);
fclose($openChatLog);
break;
}
}
else{
$message = stripslashes($message);
$message = htmlentities($message, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');
$message = preg_replace('@(https?://([-\w\.]+)+(:\d+)?(/([\w/_\.]*(\?\S+)?)?)?)@', '<a href="$1" target="_blank">$1</a>', $message);
$messageString = '
<p class="message">
<span class="timestamp">' .$timestamp . '</span>
<span class="username">' . $username . ': </span>' 
. $message .
'</p>';
fwrite($openChatLog, $messageString);
fclose($openChatLog);
}
}
}


writeMessage($_POST['message']);
?>

Simply, the session at the top will not be created for some reason.

The post data is sent from:

index.php
Code: [Select]
<?php
session_start();
?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="styles.css" />
<title>Chatulo.us</title>
<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.js"></script>
<script>
var n = 0;
$(document).ready(function () {
    var focused = true;
    $(window).focus(function () {
        focused = true;
        f();
    });
    $(window).blur(function () {
        focused = false;
f();
    });
    var title = document.title;

    var f = function () {
        if (focused) {
            n = 0;
            document.title = "Chatulo.us / Home";
        }
        else { // none of that else if needed here, you're only checking is focused or not.
            if (n == 0) { // now you're checking if its zero, so ...
                document.title = "Chatulo.us / Home";
            } else { // you need ELSE here, otherweise you'll always use this next clause
                document.title = "(" + n + ") " + "Chatulo.us / Home";
            }
        }
    };

    function playSound(soundfile) {
        document.getElementById("dummy").innerHTML = "<embed src=\"" + soundfile + "\" hidden=\"true\" autostart=\"true\" loop=\"false\" />";
    }
    $.ajax({
        type: "POST",
        url: "loginHandlers.php",
        data: {
            required_function: "checkSession"
        },
        success: function (response) {
            $('#usernameBox').html(response);
        }
    });

    $("form#sendMessageForm").submit(function () {
        var message = $('#messageInputField').attr('value');
$('#messageInputField').val('');
        $.ajax({
            type: "POST",
            url: "writeConversationFunctions.php",
            data: {
                message: message
},
            success: function () {
                update();

            }
        });
        return false;
    });

    function update() {
        $.ajax({
            type: "POST",
            dataType: "json",
            url: "readConversationFunctions.php",
            data: {
                required_function: "readConvo"
            },
            success: function (message) {
                if (message.newmessage == true) {
                    $('#messageBox').html(message.message);
                    playSound('sounds/pop.mp3');
                    n = n + 1;
                    f();
              }
                else if (message.newmessage === false) {
                    $('#messageBox').html(message.message);
                }
            },
            complete: function () {
                setTimeout(update, 1000)
$("#messageBox").attr({
            scrollTop: $("#messageBox").attr("scrollHeight")
        });
            }
        });
    }
    $("form#getUsernameForm").live('submit', function () {
        var username = $('#usernameInputField').attr('value');
        $.ajax({
            type: "POST",
            url: "loginHandlers.php",
            data: {
                username: username,
                required_function: "usernameHandler"
            },
            success: function (response) {
                $('#usernameBox').html("Processing...");
                setTimeout(function () {
                    $('#usernameBox').html(response)
                }, 1000);
            }

        });
        return false;
    });

    $("span#logoutText").live('click', function () {
        $.ajax({
            type: "POST",
            url: "loginHandlers.php",
            data: {
                required_function: "removeSession"
            },
            success: function (response) {
                $('#usernameBox').html("Processing...");
                setTimeout(function () {
                    $('#usernameBox').html(response)
                }, 1000);


            }
        });
        return false;
    });
    update();
});
</script>
</head>

<body>
<form method="post" name="messageInput" id="sendMessageForm">
    <input name="message" id="messageInputField" type="text" autocomplete="off"/>
    <input name="submit" type="submit" value="Send"/>
    </form>
    <div id="messageBox">
    </div>
    <div id="usernameBox">
</div>
<span id="dummy"></span>
<img src="images/logo.png" width="175" height="50" alt="Logo" id="chatulouslogo"/>
</body>
</html>
Any help with this issue would be GREATLY appreciated!

Regards,
Cody