19th June 2008

I started working through chapter 2 of the Ullman text this week. Sometimes I think I am really getting the hang of this new code and other times I am not so sure. But I did manage to get through Magic Quotes, Conditionals & Operators and Validating Form Data.

The Validating Form Data was the trickiest. For some reason it just wouldn't transfer through from the html file to the php file. I must have checked the code 10 times over and I still couldn't see where I was going wrong. I guess my mind was still on the html side of things because it finally dawned on me that I had saved it in the wrong place. Here I was setting up a nice new folder within my NED24 files and then trying to get it all to work from there.

Got it into the xampp folder, thinking all was ok, and still it wouldn't work... Dah!!! forgot to turn on the zampp program! Got that going and still couldn't get it going. Then realised I had to make sure the address was correct (needed to add the proper file names in the proper order).

Then I got it to transfer through and I could finally see it. But of course I had to complicate things by creating a whole new file for the Validating Form Data exercise - handle_form2.php - and couldn't get that one to show up. I kept getting the old version showing up - handle_form.php. Then realised I still had it pegged as handle_form.php within the html file. So changed that.

Magic! It all came together. Felt good - even though I made some dumb mistakes at least I was able to handle it logically and identify and eliminate each error as I went along. I didn't panic and just went back to the basics every time.

As a final test I then uploaded the files onto geoffreymultimedia.com to see if it all translated onto the big screen. After figuring out that I had to 'replace' existing files for it to work I finally got to see it up there in bright lights.

I also had a quick look at one of the YouTube videos that someone suggested. It was the one with Luke Welling and Laura Thompson and they talk about their new book. '4th edition of PHP & MYSQL Web Development'. I have copied it below.