Database driven website using PHP & MySQL

How to convert from static to dynamic

[palmpal]

Hello,

Currently m website consists of static web pages for each of my products. Before my product line gets too large I would like to develop a database driven website using PHP & MySQL. Actually I just completed a class in Database Design last night!

My question is related to my current website. Can I utilize the PHP technology using my existing pages? I can't imagine starting from scratch again!

Thanks!

[FoodPlaces]

Hi,

Depending on how your pages are written, and how good you are at writing text (text/html) parsers, yes. Without seeing it, there wouldnt be any easy way to say yes or no - and then it would depend on how you wanted the site to be databased - so it would also depend on your planned table structure (ie: whether or not the datat on your pages could easily be extracted to be inserted into the tables).

Feel free to post more specific questions here - or sticky me if you think those questions may be against the WebmasterWorld guidelines.

- Rob

[palmpal]

Hi and thanks for responding.

I will probably update the site throughout the summer after reading up on how to do things. There seems to be alot of information out there. I learned HTML from scratch with this site and plan to take my time learning database techniques. And of course, spend considerable time looking through old posts here!

[edited by: jatar_k at 4:47 pm (utc) on Mar. 20, 2003]
[edit reason] no site reviews, thanks [/edit]

[FoodPlaces]

A language that works on every Operating System I know of called REXX I find to be the easiest text manipulation and parsing language there is. It can be used in conjunction with numerous other languages from Perl to php to C/C++ to Java... and on every langauge I know of it has such easy programming benefits of auto-typing and non-typing (ie: if you put a number into a variable you can use it as an int/numeric, including numeric formatting by digit or decimal point and precision to whatever decimal place you choose - and then you can still use it as a string with all the standard text manipulation functions). Also, you dont need to allocate memory for variables (on any OS I've used it on) as it will allocate up to the maximum the OS will allow for the process/thread (primarily I use it on OS/2 so I can allocate up to 2GB per variable).

It also has numerous dlls available (varying per platform) for MySQL access (virtually every OS), wav editting, image (jpg/gif/tif) editting, tcp/ip, netbios/netbeiu, html/xml/css creation/editting/markup/parsing, and far more. (Under OS/2 you can control and do almost anything that the OS or any other language can do - but with a lot less code as it just calls the OS to do it - most other languages have many of those features available - and definitely all that are needed for text/html/xml/time/date/sql parsing, etc.

I've used "everything" but pascal and fortran for web stuff and text parsing (C/C++, BASIC, dBase (with various 3rd party extensions for text, sql and other functions), Java, NetREXX, Perl, php and dabbled in Python) and prefer REXX hands down to most and by a good margin to the rest. It's as simple as a batch file or as complex as a full blown program in another language - depending on what you choose.

Otherwise, php/Python would definitely be my choice. With any of the 3, it shouldnt be that difficult.

One suggestion... if you expect the data to grow, the tables to be large or have complex indices or be high access (ESPECIALLY if it's high simultaneous read *and* write access), plan your tables wisely, including how many you use and how you split the data up between them. (sometimes more tables can be a lot more efficient).

Hope some of that helps,
- Rob