PHP and MySQL question

NeVeR

Hi all,

I've given myself a little task and it's sort of part of a project in work. But if i cant do it it's no big deal they will just drop it lol


So i've a small access database with dealers we have across Ireland.

The way it should work is like this,

When someone starts to look for a dealer they will 1st have to select there "County" then they will select product type "Plasma / Incar etc"

after these to selections a list of dealer in there selected county should appear in a list with Name, Address and Phone number.

I'm totally new to this so I'm learning,

I've been looking on php.net but i dont really know where to start.


My test database is small and has the following fields/tables
ID | company | address1 | address2 | county | phone | email | product1 | product2

and i've added in some random info.
Whats my next step?

AARRRGH

The form will be used to create the sql, so if they choose "Dublin" and "County" and submit the form, the next page which is a PHP page will read these values and create SQL based on them. This will be something along the lines of

$county = $_POST["county"]; // county is the name of the form field
$product = $_POST["product"]; // product is the name of the form field

Your SQL would then look something like

select * from table where county = $county and product = $product

You then extract the results which are returned and display them on the screen.

Note your table isn't well designed. Read about "normalisation" to see what I mean.

You should probably have it like

Company table: ID | Name | Address1 | Address2
Product table: ID | Company_ID | Name

Or something like that.

NeVeR

Hi thanks.

I'll have a go and see how i get on,

Just a questions

Where you have $county is that linking to my database table named $county ?

AARRRGH

No, $county is a variable which contains whatever county value the user chose from the html form.

So -

User submits some information from the form, including a county and a product
You collect this information and put it into variables, such as $county and $product
You then use these variables in your SQL

A great book on PHP and MySQL is "PHP & MySQL Web Development" by Luke Welling. It's well worth the investment.

squibs

A great book on PHP and MySQL is "PHP & MySQL Web Development" by Luke Welling. It's well worth the investment.

+1
One of the best technical books I've read (and I've read many)

Webmonkey

squibs wrote: »

+1
One of the best technical books I've read (and I've read many)

Yep its what got me started too

ron_darrell

I realise you're new so this suggestion may not be ideal but simple AJAX would deliver what you're looking for without all the back and forths for the user. As the drop down for the county is selected it updates the next drop down with town or dealer as appropriate and so on. http://www.w3schools.com/php http://www.w3schools.com/ajax http://www.tizag.com/phpT/ are all good reference sites for newbies.

Regards,
RD