Question

I have a SQL database for a dynamically generated form that users submit.
It is normalized and I have one normal table(user_data) and two sub-tables(activities, awards) that are linked to the normal table.
I was thinking about making a page where the normal table’s data is displayed like

Name Date activityID awardID formID description
foo  5/4  23251      23101   4343   "blah blah"

and you would click on the activity id or award id number given to open a popup window which would show the data linked to that ID in the activity or award table. like

activityID formID activityDescription activityDate
23251      4343   "bladhsh baldshh"   5/4

I also would need to make it so that it shows the data in paginated sections, instead of showing the whole thing at once…

I am a beginner-intermediate html, Javascript, and PHP coder. I already made a dynamically generated html/Javascript form and a PHP that processes all the data submitted, and I created a normalized database. I’m trying to figure out how people usually do this kind of task, and what scripting language they use. I heard you need to use AJAX and jQuery, but I am unfamiliar with either of those languages. Is it hard to learn, and how exactly do they work?

Answer 1

You can do that using PHP. Just make the row link to a .php file that takes an awardid as a parameter.

AJAX/JavaScript is a lot more work, and a lot harder to maintain. You can Google for ajax php tutorial to find many good results.