Re: db questions and newbie...

Matt, Welcome to the PHP and MySQL communities! > I have lots of questions and am new to the list... so alas I hope I'm > posting to the correct area. In PHP and MySQL... can you import and > export to flat files? =yes, check out the online PHP manual, appendix XXX, Filesystem Functions (http://uk2.php.net/manual/en/ref.filesystem.php) > I want to export a series of vars, IE: > Name, Age, State > Bill 25 NY > So that in a file, it will appear like so: > Bill|25|NY =check out the online PHP manual by entering implode and/or explode into the (functions) search facility > With one record per line, separated by a delimiter? And then import > those record by being able to set a filter to sort all people from NY or > all people that are 25 years old. =sounds like a job for an RDBMS rather than a flat file, but there you go... =check out the online PHP manual for string functions and/or regular expressions > Also, I've been trying to playing around with PHP and MySQL. I haven't > found a great tutorial. Anyone know of a good link? I'm comfortable > somewhat with the myphpadmin to manage the mysql db, but other than > that, I haven't found anything simple that goes indepth including: > Sorting records IE... alphabetizing certain fields or sorting them by > descending etc. =it sounds as if you need to learn SQL. There are a huge number of tutorials available on the web (...check out Google). Better yet - visit the MySQL site and follow the links to a "Links" page. This will direct you to a number of sites that offer helpful articles and tutorials. Similarly the PHP site will point you to many great resource sites. =Don't overlook the online MySQL manual's Chapter 3 which is a step-by-step tutorial. There are many books available which introduce MySQL or PHP or both together, and are most useful because you can read up the theory and then work through examples step-by-step. > AND I haven't found much reference on DB locking to prevent file corruption. =check out the online MySQL manual (it has a search facility too) > Any help to these issues would be great! =did you detect a theme? The manuals are really v.good! Sorry if it seems unhelpful to answer in this way, but help-yourself is the first law of the OpenSource jungle! =Regards, =dn