Re: Idea/Suggestion for PHP App

I think you're probably doing what almost all of us have done. Get an idea, see PHP as a potential solution and decided to just dive right in. I don't think many people start out in a classroom style "Hello World" situation and build slowly onto that. I'm sure other people have better starter sites to point you to than I do, so I'll leave that to someon else. Just know that php.net and the examples in the online manual are your friend. Same with MySQL, but databases are a little trickier than PHP concept-wise (I believe at least). First thing.. dive right in. You're going to do some really goofy stuff in the beginning and you're going to learn how to do things better the longer you work with it all. Second.. if you get the inclination to write a function to perform some task in PHP, dredge through the online manual for a bit. I can't tell you how many times I did something "the hard way" only to find that PHP already had a function to do what I was trying to do. Third.. when designing your site and database, try to keep things modular. Try not to create the same set of data or same page functionality over and over again so it'll have to be updated in 10 different places if you decide to change it. Example(s): Menus that appear on many (all?) pages can be put into a file and either include() or require() (also see the "once" versions of those) as appropriate. In your database, say you had a human resources table that had employee data. You'd want a column for each piece of data that all employees are going to have. If there are data items that are only going to pertain to one or two employees, or maybe there's an unknown quantity of extra items, then you might consider putting that information in another table and linking it to your user table using the unique ID from the user table. The company I work for deals with mortgage data and part of that is credit information. On credit reports, you have a list of liabilities that are factored in. Maybe you only have one, maybe you have 20. In our current database, there's a table with stuff like "Liability1", "Liability2", "Liability3"..etc.. as columns. This is amazingly poor database design. It limits the number of liabilities we can store and also bloats our database with extra information for people who only have a couple liabilities listed. It would have been better designed if Liabilities were in their own table as rows, not separate columns in the main loan information table. Once you get waist deep in the project, make a few silly mistakes and learn how to structure your code and data, you'll get it all working the way you want. Just don't be afraid to dive in and make a mess..hah. Planning is great if you know what you're doing, but when you're still learning then expect to do some silly stuff for a bit. And, as always, feel free to ask questions on the list here.. after consulting the manual and Google/Yahoo/MarthaStewart of course :) Welcome and good luck! -TG = = = Original message = = = Hey... I am new to the list so please forgive me if I say anything that might have already been discussed. So here we go... OK I am attempting to start a new application using PHP. I have started and stoped this application now 2 times cause I get moving then I stop realizing I should have done this work before hand and in a differant way. I was wondering does anyone have any places I can read on how develope a PHP Web application like what area should I start with first, what are somethings I need to think about before hand. The application I am working on is Database driven app. It will have data inserted into the DB from various data sources that are manually entered. However I need to develope the app as dynamic as possible for future add-ons... I know I am probably biting off more then I can chew at this time... So any pointers or exampled (which would be great) on how to start an app from scratch and also how to use OOP (Which I have a feeling is what I need to learn) would be wonderful. Thank you all for any help you can provide. Thanks, Billy S. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com.