phpHoo, Part I

Conclusion

We've completed phpHoo. We reached perlHoo Part I functionality in 3 hours and completed the job in a combined total of about 8 to 10 hours of work. The program itself comprises 470 lines of code with 190 for phpHoo.phtml and 280 for mysql.php3. We've got a completely functional "Yahoo Like Directory" using a blistering fast relational database that meets all but one of our design goals, and includes the all-important "search" capability.

There is also a lot of room for improvement:

1. A nice administrative interface would help "Approve" new submissions.
2. Since we're tracking "who" submits "what" and "when", we could easily add a means where individuals "volunteer" to handle the admin functions for different categories.
3. There is no way to add new Categories from the web. This could easily be done in the admin interface.

Hopefully along the way I've also been able to teach you a bit about interfacing MySQL with PHP in a way you'll find useful in your own projects. The mysql.php3 file, once stripped of it's phpHoo specific routines, should be a very useful starter file for future PHP+MySQL projects.

Attribution

M:CDI is a programmer and tech-support monkey for L:Blarg! Online Services Inc. (http://www.blarg.net), an ISP in Seattle Washington. (Where they pay him to sit and write PHP programs. :-) He has released numerous PHP libraries available on his web site, L:The WebMaster's Net. CDI is also one of the core contributors to L:PHPBuilder.com, where he can be reached via the PHP Developer's forum hosted there. CDI also doesn't much care for writing about himself in the third person, but oh well.