Question

I am wondering what the best way is using php to obtain a list of all the rows in the database, and when clicking on a row show the information in more detail, such as a related image etc.

Should I use frames to do this? Are there good examples of this somewhere?

Edit:

I need much simpler instructions, as I am not a programmer and am just starting out. Can any links or examples be recommended?

Answer 1

Contrary to other’s recommendations, I would not recommend a framework or abstraction level. It will insulate you from understanding how php works and requires that you learn php and the framework structure/process at the same time. An abstraction layer is good practice in a commercial environment, but from the vibe of your question, you don’t anticipate moving servers or migrating your db.

I recommend working procedurally (not object-oriented) with the php and mysql until you understand what is going on and how the language works.

To respond to your actual question:

You need to connect to the database: mysql_connect()

You need to select the database you want to work with: mysql_select_db()

You need to define the query: msyql_query()

You need to use a while loop to get the data:

$query=mysql_query('select * from table_name');     while($row=mysql_fetch_assoc($query)){          extract($row);          echo $name of field 1.': '.$name of field 2;     } 

To make each row of output a link to more info rewrite the echo statement like this:

 echo '<a href=\'http://addresstomoreinfo.php?image_id='.$image_id.\'>'.$name        of field 1.': '.$name of field 2.'</a>'; 

The ‘name of field’ variables represent the column names of your db table and I have made up the layout of the field name, colon, and second field name. How the info is displayed is up to you.

The question mark prepends the name of a variable that is defined in the addresstomoreinfo.php page that will be identified by $var=$_GET['image_id'];

Other php, html, css elements are involved in the big picture of accomplishing this. A good source for begining information is http://www.w3schools.com/ I also live and die by the php manual linked to above