PHP compatibility with MySQL with Front Page

Can I use PHP to access MySQL and then publish as HTML in FP?

[kloren]

I have 25 web sites published with Front Page, now just moving to some more advanced language, and have a problem.

I want to use MySQL to create a server-based database, then use PHP to access the database (using MySQL commands), so that PHP can convert the MySQL data into HTML pages that can be published with Front Page. So far I've not been able to do this.

I've tried the MS-recommended add-in for PHP, but it doesn't seem to handle my situation.

I can publish a PHP page with Front Page, OK, but then it doesn't seem to allow inclusion of the nice proprietary Front Page web components -- which I use often.

Also, I've never seen Google, or others, display PHP pages as a search result, so wonder if search engines index PHP files?

How can I access my new server-based database and publish the results of queries onto an HTML page, published by FP?

I'd hate to have to learn Dreamweaver, and Java looks a long distance for me to travel in a hurry.

Karl
Webmaster

[ergophobe]

Caveat: I have never used FP an don't know anything about it except that it keeps messing up everything when people use it to change my pages.

I've never seen Google, or others, display PHP pages

First, you must not be looking very hard, since there are probably millions of them in Google, All The Web and every other search engine. I have PHP pages that index quite well and come out as one of the first five hits for the expected subject search. They are in php. I typed "php pages" into Google as a search criterion, and every page on the first screen of results was a php page.

Second, many php pages will not have a php extension - they may be listed as .html pages or having no extension at all.

Anyway, all that is really beside the point of your post, isn't it?

I think you would find the FrontPage experts in the WYSIWYG forum, but for what it's worth....

PHP can convert the MySQL data into HTML pages that can be published with Front Page

That's not really how PHP works. In my completely uninformed guess, I would think you would need to somehow write your PHP pages in Frontpage, put those on the web as PHP pages, and THEN use PHP to get your data from the database. However, you would also need to make sure that your pages were evaluated in the order expected, so that FP would add whatever it does server-side, then PHP would do it's thing server side, then the server would send the page out.

Remember, PHP is typically invoked only upon a request for a specific page, so that page doesn't really exist as such to be edited and then published with Frontpage.

I also found this page on Editing PHP Files in Frontpage [support.salescart.com] but I don't think it's what you're looking for.

[kloren]

Dear Ergophobe

Thanks.

Gives me more stuff to study.

I'm new to this forum, didn't understand your message as it looked like someone else wrote on your page, and disagreed with you.

In any even, I did some Google searches for pages with PHP extensions -0- found only a few.

I will work on this, see what I can do.

Karl

[oilman]

can't remember where exactly it is but somewhere in FP there is a check box you can click that will force FP to preserver html as you edit it. That should allow you to drop in some more proprietary codes etc and not have them messed up by FP. I edit php into pages in FP all the time with no problems.

[ergophobe]

Karl,

Welcome! Stick around, this is a great place.

I'm not sure whether or not you figured it out, but if you click on the link to "Style Codes" next to the box you use to post, you'll see all the code you can use. I used the "quote" code to quote your original text so you'd know which part I was talking about.

Also, reread my post and was sorry about the "you must not be looking very hard line". It sounds impolite, but I just meant it as reassurance that they are everywhere and using php will in no way harm search engine's abilities to find you.

Tom

[kloren]

Dear Both,

Well thanks for nice tone.

I am busy as the dickens, but this does seem like a good place to be.

I'm not sure if it belongs, or where, but let me describe myself a bit, and indicate my areas of interest, and more importantly the areas where I might actually be able to help.

As said, I have 100,000 pages, 25 web sites, about 8,000 (Urchin) visitors per day and many many Web Position top ten rankings

I'm 72, trying to retire, but decided I had to do one big push to change from the antique of dBase III where I designed the some-50,000 lines of code, some 20 years ago, to something modern.

I've hired two young college guys to do my information system modernization plan -- the early decision was to move to MySql and PHP. My guys would rather use Dreamweaver, but I am so fast with FP that I hate to change.

I have some, what I think, revolutionary ideas of eBooks and eCourse services to develop. The revolution won't be in the mechanics of page presentation, but in the theory of how to test comprehension so that my "students" can actually learn and apply.

I spent days trying to learn Java before I decided that I had first to understand Object Orienged Programming -- got close to that only to discover that my guys are still back with simple relational databases, no java. Others now tell me that my sad experience with program tutorials is universal -- I know I can write better stuff than I tried to stumble through.

So, I view the programs we are now using as pretty simple, but I also know I have lots of learning yet to do.

Somewhere along this line I hope that some of my comments will provide useful insights to others -- perhaps not early on at the high-tech level, but possibly at the "skill of writing content" level.

Long, but tell me? Is this too long?

Regards,

Karl

[ergophobe]

Too long? I think the thing that most people hate to see around here are lengthy postings of code of the sort "I have no idea what's going on, here's my entire file, how do I fix it."

I think we are getting rather off-topic though. That said :-) ...

As for relational/oo you may find this [leavcom.com] interesting

Relational databases are still by far the most widely used databases. Meanwhile, object-relational database-management systems (ORDBMSs) have added object capabilities to relational databases. They are gaining in popularity and are expected to outsell even relational databases by 2003. And OO databases (see the "OO Database Orientation" sidebar) are still minor players with solid but strictly niche markets. Sales of relational databases have grown considerably faster than the sales of OO databases, and annual worldwide RDBMS revenues are now about 50 times larger.

Rick Cattell, distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems, indicated, "Object-oriented databases are doing just fine, and the news of their demise is highly exaggerated. While their market [share] isn’t as big, they continue to be used in areas like CAD (computer-aided design) and telecommunications, where RDBMSs are not well suited."

However, said Michael Stonebraker, chief technology officer at Informix and an ORDBMS proponent and pioneer, "ODBMSs occupy a small niche market that has no broad appeal. The technology is in semi-rigor mortis, and ORDBMSs will corner the market within five years."

Anyway, since there is no database forum, would you care to say a little more about learning ODBMS

[kloren]

Dear Ergophobe,

Thanks for your comments -- it's particularly good to learn the etiquette of the formum.

You said:

Anyway, since there is no database forum, would you care to say a little more about learning ODBMS

I plan to use what I call a revolutionary eCourse technique of teaching and testing, and, of course, put this all on my webs.

In learning OOP I found, for instance, that you must take the time to understand the full definitions of the individual words. I spent some days just understanding the word "object" and only after several days did I realize that "class" was a more important word to understand.

I wouldn't try to repeat MY understanding here, but urge
any and all to approach OOP, as any subject, by making very sure that you have a complete definition for all the words you find, and then also figuring out the proper sequence of learning those words.

I started trying to learn Java, ran into what I call very poor tutorials. Finally I realized that Java uses OOP, and decided to start learning OOP. I made good progress there, not finished, only to learn that my two programmers were working with MySQL. Originally I thought that was OOP, but it is apparently not, nor is PHP.

Now, just on a different line, I really appreciate the input from the several responders.

I DO have plenty to study and try out.

Karl

[abbeyvet]

FrontPage components will NOT work on pages with .php extensions, no way, no how.

What components are you using though? There is almost invariably another way of doing things that will work.

[ergophobe]

MySQL. Originally I thought that was OOP, but it is apparently not, nor is PHP.

you may be happy to hear about the future directions of PHP with regards to object-oriented programming

[devx.com ]

[rockdog147]

I came across a solution to this problem on an obscure message forum yesterday... it's actually quite simple.

Just use the following tags to make FP treat the php code as a webbot:

<!--webbot bot="HTMLMarkup" startspan-->

<?php
your code ;
?>

<!--webbot bot="HTMLMarkup" endspan-->

By doing this, you can embed php in a FP page while keeping the .htm extension (without altering configs on the server) and still use other FP components.

I've tested this and it seems to work fine.

Don't get me wrong, I still don't much see the point in doing php in FP. But if that's your bag, this is a nifty trick.

Tom Martin

[jatar_k]

nice one rockdog147

and Welcome to WebmasterWorld