want to learn php and mysql, but i need a task

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santaliqueur

Gawd
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Feb 4, 2005
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like the title says. i'm interested in learning php and mysql (i already know some C), but i dont know where to start. ive been working through some tutorials online, but that will only get me so far. if i work on a task, i think i can learn more effectively. my family's business website is pretty bland, is there anything i could accomplish with php that would be a good learning experience, while making our website better? we do need a working submission form, so i know i'll be doing that. and i have a folder on which i store some pictures, i wouldnt mind having that passworded. but if you guys can give me some other suggestions for a beginner, that would be great. thanks much.
 
I bought a book and practiced by creating guestbooks on a mySQL server. The book had some good examples and practice exercises. It was also one of those visual learning books which made it alot easier, even for me. Another good resource is one of those many PHP coding web sites where programmers actually write and contribute PHP code that is pretty much ready to use for specific tasks. One particular pre-packaged bundle of code that I simply copied and pasted into one of my sites was a voting pole that allowed people for vote for their favorite album. It was a web site I developed for a musician.

For what it's worth, that's how I began my world of PHP.
 
It's pretty generic, but building a dynamic CD or DVD collection is a good way to practice writing to and retrieving info from a database.
 
all great ideas, thanks very much. if you guys have any more, i'd like to hear them.
It's pretty generic, but building a dynamic CD or DVD collection is a good way to practice writing to and retrieving info from a database.
Click to expand...
actually, a dynamic cd and dvd collection is a really good idea, and one that i'm likely to try. BUT, your post gave me another idea which is closely related. i have a large collection of lossless live audio, and i have it categorized in an excel spreadsheet. sort of messy, and i never got around to cleaning it up. i think this project would be perfect.
 
I would also reccomend downloading code from popular OSS apps like phpBB, Drupal, phpMyAdmin. Being able to see well architected systems will be very valuable. You'll save yourself a lot of time and headache by picking up fewer bad habbits. Don't set the bar too high for your project. Start out simple with something that you could potentially use daily.
 
twyztyr said:
It's pretty generic, but building a dynamic CD or DVD collection is a good way to practice writing to and retrieving info from a database.
Click to expand...

i second that. that's how I first got into scripting languages (ASP). my CD collection was something I was very interested in cataloging since it would be cool and useful to be able to sort by artist, title, genre, year, etc. so it gave me a lot of incentive to learn.

also, the coding involved it is a straight-forward and simple approach that touches upon many of the important aspects of scripting language and SQL. in other words, it's a great way to get your feet wet without getting overwhelmed.
 
at first, i wanted to shy away from downloading code examples, because i wouldnt be writing anything, i'd just be copying any pasting, and following the code in a general way, instead of writing it myself. i plan to start small, then work my way up to more complex tasks. i figure it will take me a little while to get pretty good.

i remember seeing an example of a shell script somewhere. there were 4 different versions, each written by the same guy, and each had the same result. but he wrote them as a beginner programmer would, a novice, a professional, and a 'shell script god'. the beginner one was only a few lines, and the god one was a few pages, and had a bunch of security and other types of features built in, even though it only was designed to perform one task. so i guess i'm saying, there is always more to learn, even if i'm doing a simple task.

dualdrop[H]enia
 
santaliqueur said:
at first, i wanted to shy away from downloading code examples, because i wouldnt be writing anything, i'd just be copying any pasting, and following the code in a general way, instead of writing it myself. i plan to start small, then work my way up to more complex tasks. i figure it will take me a little while to get pretty good.

i remember seeing an example of a shell script somewhere. there were 4 different versions, each written by the same guy, and each had the same result. but he wrote them as a beginner programmer would, a novice, a professional, and a 'shell script god'. the beginner one was only a few lines, and the god one was a few pages, and had a bunch of security and other types of features built in, even though it only was designed to perform one task. so i guess i'm saying, there is always more to learn, even if i'm doing a simple task.

dualdrop[H]enia
Click to expand...

I remember a "hello world"-application like that. The beginner was a line of basic, the professional was a few pages of Win32, and the guru was "echo Hello, world".
IOW, things become simple once you're good enough. ;)
 
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