PHP & MySQL Everyday Apps

About This Book

This book is a practical introduction to dynamic Web applications. It provides the code and information needed to build several of the most popular appli¬cations on the Web. The applications in this book allow you to

* Restrict your Web site or part of your Web site to authorized users
* Sell products on your Web site
* Provide a place where users can communicate with each other online
* Allow users to publish and edit their documents on a Web site
* Manage mailing lists

You can use these applications as is, modify them for use on your Web site, or build your own application by using techniques that I show you in these applications.

How This Book Is Organized

This book is divided into six parts, with two chapters in each part. Chapters 3 through 8 present applications. An additional bonus application chapter is included on the CD. Each application chapter includes the following information:

* Discussion of issues
* Structure of the database
* Code listings
* Explanation of the code

Each application chapter presents both procedural code and object-oriented code for the application.

The additional chapters provide information that’s useful when building applications (for example, I demystify security considerations).

Part I: Introducing Application Development

Chapter 1 in this part provides the information needed to use the applications in this book. It discusses PHP and MySQL versions, installing and modifying applications, and procedural versus object-oriented programming. In Chapter 2, you find out how to write secure code.

Part II: Building a User Authentication Application

This part provides information and code to build a user login application. I present two types of applications: user authentication using HTTP authenti¬cation (Chapter 3) and a user login application that allows users to register their own accounts, as well as log in to a secure Web site (Chapter 4).

Part III: Building Online Sales Applications

This part provides information and code for online sales applications. In Chapter 5, you find out how to write code for an application that provides an online catalog. Chapter 6 covers writing an application that allows customers to buy products from the catalog.

Part IV: Building Other Useful Applications

In Part IV, I present two other applications that you may find useful. In Chapter 7, I describe how to build a content management system (CMS). I describe how to build a Web forum in Chapter 8.

Part V: The Part of Tens

This part provides a useful list of important things to keep in mind when build¬ing an application (Chapter 9). I also provide a list of Web sites offering useful resources, such as code libraries, tutorials, articles, and so on (Chapter 10).

Part VI: Appendixes

This part provides instructions for object-oriented programming. Appendix A provides an introduction to the object-oriented programming features of PHP for people who know PHP, but are unfamiliar with the concepts and termi¬nology of object-oriented programming. Appendix B describes the syntax of PHP object-oriented features for those who are familiar with object-orientedprogramming in another language. Appendix C provides information on PHP functions used to interact with MySQL. It provides tables for converting from mysql functions to mysqli functions and/or mysqli objects. Appendix D describes in detail what you can find on the CD accompanying this book.
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