Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with php and database

Data Driven Clinical Care - Dynamic Graphing Website

rosswald — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 13:56:00 -0800

I would like advice on creating a dynamic graphing website to display clinical data on a intranet website to better aide clinicians. What my superiors are seeking is a "Data Mall." My programming/server-admin. experience is minimal, but my Linux-hobbyist mentality hates the MS Access solution that is being built. The scene:

So, our administrators have fallen in love with a concept that they have seen at a conference where clinicians could quickly and easily see a short list of their patients who have certain 'abnormal' clinical values/conditions, or to rank themselves amongst other providers according to certain metrics. Etc. Some call it a "Data Mall."

Our senior data coordinator has done a great job of leveraging an MS Access database (pulled from our true clinical database) with a VB front-end to be accessed by all providers. But, it still kind of sucks. It takes a long time to load, and is just unwieldy to ask clinicians to use the Access front-end.

Me, and where I have gotten so far:

I have previously setup my own LAMP CentOS server running MediaWiki just for fun, and was basically able to create a similar setup on a Windows PC using "EasyPHP", on top of which I installed Mediawiki and found a script for making calls to "Ploticus" from Mediawiki. I was able to display the simplest-of-simplest pie-charts on my wiki.

The heart of the matter:

The problem is that this solution seems complex, especially since my PHP and SQL knowledge is limited. Would the best solution just to be to dig in and master this option? Any recommendations for starting points?

Or is there another tool, method, etc. that I should be looking at?

I realize that building this could almost be a full-time job, but like I said, part of me is just intrigued by the challenge, and part of me wants to impress the higher-ups. Still, maybe it is best left to the pros...?

SugarCRM or custom?

sleevener — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 17:57:27 -0800

Is SugarCRM a good contacts database solution for my wife's small business, given her current database and business needs? The backbone of my wife's business is her contacts database. Every communication that she and her employees have with her customers begins and ends there. She's currently using a custom-built PHP/MySQL web interface thing that a programmer friend of mine built as a way to teach himself PHP. He has since disappeared, and the database is in need of some maintenance (mostly bugfixes) and upgrades (GoogleMaps integration).

The database itself is pretty simple. Each record has contact info, some checkboxes of various kinds, a "call-scheduled" date field, and a free-text phone log where they record the details of every interaction with their customers. Whatever she does going forward, she needs to be able to see all information for a given contact record on a single page, to search and filter the records based on multiple criteria, to export filtered lists to .csv (for email marketing), to apply changes to a given field of multiple records (say in a filtered list), etc.

So one option would be to find a programmer who could take over the maintenance. Another programmer friend of mine, however, recommends that we look into SugarCRM. After poking around in the free trial, it seems like it's much more complex than what we're currently using. I gather that it can be customized, but I'm not sure I would know where to begin. I don't even know where the information in the phone log field would go.

However, Sugar seems to have ongoing support, regular upgrades, a community of people writing add-ons for it, etc. All of this could be of great benefit for us in the future (we won't be so hamstrung by our disappeared friend). Also, we want to add some GoogleMaps functions to the database, which might already be written for Sugar -- I'm not sure how to gauge the time and expense of hiring someone to write that into our custom solution, but it seems like a mess waiting to happen.

What do you think? What seems better in the long run? What information am I missing? Would it make sense to hire someone to migrate our MySQL database to the Community Edition of Sugar and customize it for our needs? I've considered making a post in Jobs, but wanted to get community feedback first. If anybody knows Sugar inside and out, show forth! And thanks very much!

Connect to access with php

monkey closet — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 06:51:01 -0800

How do I connect, dsn-free, to a passworded Access (.mdb) database with php (5.2.4)? Google throws up lots of methods - none seem to work.

Please help me find the right back end solution

ljshapiro — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 08:14:13 -0800

Is PHP/MySQL the best solution for the back end programming of a job listing website? I'm doing the web design/front end programming for a temp agency website. They have what appears to me to be fairly simple back end needs. Job applicants register through a form, and then login to search the jobs database or update their account information. Jobs are listed and de-listed by my client, who is not super computer literate, so a user-friendly form would be necessary. I want to make sure I am looking for the right type of programming. Any info on programming rates would also be helpful. Thanks!

Looking for an advanced web calendar

The True Wheel — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 14:56:22 -0800

A colleague is looking for a calendar to use on their training company's web site. They would like to pull from a PHP-driven database of their course outlines to display the course names on the appropriate dates in the calendar, with a link for each course listing on that date that would display the full course outline to the user when clicked. One or more courses could be offered on any given date. Is there a customizable product that you would recommend for the job, or are they looking at contracting someone to build this from scratch?

MSAccess, php and empty date/time fields

monkey closet — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 09:00:47 -0800

How do I check (using php) the existence of data in a date/time field in an access database? I have to build some php pages around an access database (dsnless). No lectures please: I know how bad an idea this is; I don't have a choice!

I'm getting values out of a date/time field. The field isn't required. When values are there, it works fine. When they aren't, the whole thing just falls over. I can't find any way of testing whether it's there beforehand: is_null() comes up false whatever (empty() comes up true, even when there is data), any attempt to convert it to another type or look at its properties breaks it as well.

I can't find a simple way to test whether there's data there or not. Any ideas?

How to make a database-driven website

Mwongozi — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 08:15:42 -0800

Building a super-simple database-driven website, from scratch - where to start? I have a medium amount of experience in constructing MySQL databases, writing (offline) Python (and bash) scripts, and writing HTML... but only separately.

I now want to setup a web server and make a very basic database-driven site, but I don't really know where to start. I was looking at coding it in Python but only because I know Python, but I don't know whether to start from scratch or use some kind of framework like Django, or even whether I should avoid Python altogether and look at PHP. (Since PHP seems to be the default choice for this kind of thing, and my (Ubuntu LAMP) web server already understand PHP files, but not Python files, for some reason.)

Am I overlooking something? Where should I start?

Practical web programming books & resources?

Wossname — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 12:16:10 -0800

Practical web programming books & resources for the ultimate goal of creating a niche community website. I've been a web designer and technical writer for over 10 years. I'm committed to the user experience and know HTML and CSS at the expert level. I write functional specifications with pseudo code for large web projects and typically design the database. Programmers often come to me to help them when logic and math get complicated.

That being said, I do not know "from-scratch" syntax and methodology. I can look at PHP and get the general gist of what is going on, edit a few queries... but that's about it. I regret not learning programming when I was younger and want to change that. Also, I would eventually like to build a few niche community sites for my own personal projects.

I can get my feet wet with some general tutorial sites and books. But I'd like to look ahead to bigger projects. And I learn best by doing. Please recommend some programming books or other resources that provide practical, open-source examples for any or all of the following:

* User credentials (creating accounts, password protecting info)
* Financial transactions with a merchant gateway (ideally in a subscription system as opposed to a shopping cart)
* Basic community-type sites -- for example, users can browse, search, post, rate, and comment on uploaded files
* Basic collaborative events -- for example, a shared calendar
* Optimizing database queries

I have not decided on a framework yet... I suppose a lot of that would be colored by whatever resources I end up using.

My holy grail is to find a resource that takes you through the creation of a membership-style, database-driven site from the ground up. I'd love to go through a series of tutorials and end up with a real, practical project, rather than a smattering of "hello world" samples.

How do I go about making a database app for the iPhone?

Biru — Sun, 16 May 2010 05:45:22 -0800

What is the best way to go about creating a simple iPhone database access application? I'm looking to create an application which, although it could be very easily done in a web-based manner through the combination of php and mysql, I'd like the data to all be stored locally on the iPhone, in the app itself. Is there an API within the iPhone SDK for such a thing? Is SQL even the best format for storing the data? The database itself is very simple (see screenshot of structure) and the interface for recalling data will also be simple. I intend to use scrolling wheel selectors for the user to select the five variables for the query (as per the hours and minutes in this picture).

I've looked all over, and I've seen a great many differing articles on how iPhones handle databases, but none of them are particularly clear. Can anyone give me a straightforward answer to my problem?

Essentially, I'm looking to run a php/mysql database locally on the iPhone with a minimalist interface.

How can I use php to index a site using keywords?

lyam — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 07:05:48 -0800

Looking for information on developing/finding a php script to generate a Site Index (A - Z index). My boss wants an A-Z index of our site of approximately 200 pages. He wants as many common words/descriptions of services in the index as possible. Obviously this would be nightmare to manually generate and maintain.

I was thinking of developing an automated solution along the lines of using key-words/tags on all pages to be indexed and then running a script to read all the pages in the site and deposit the key-words/tags and respective urls into a database. Then build the A-Z index using a script to draw the page using data from the db. I'm most familiar with php and would like to use it to spider the site.

I'm OK on all fronts except the spidering script. Can anyone steer me in the right direction with this idea?

MySQL and PHP suggestions for beginner?

parrot_person — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 05:52:34 -0800

I am looking for suggestions for inexpensive online or real life courses, books, or web sites that will help a friend learn MySQL and PHP. Hello,

I have a friend in Dudley, UK who would like to get ino database development, MySQL in particular. He also would like to know at least the essentials of a scripting language such as PHP in order to be able to create web sites that can interact with any databases he creates.

Thus far he has made progress learning data modeling concepts, but is a bit stuck in implementing them by actually building a database in MySQL (though he does seem to now have a working installation of MySQL on Fedora).

He recently took the "Introduction to Database Design" course from eclasses.org. Although he definitely learned from the experience, a class with more feedback would be preferable. I was able to help him some because I am a web developer and pretty solid on data design concepts. But I will be able to help him less as he gets into MySQL because I have almost no experience with that db.

I know there are free resources on the web, but since neither of us is that familiar with MySQL, we don't know which resources are best. And we also think that taking a course or following a lesson plan will help him more initially by giving him a specific path to follow, rather than trying to wade through the tremendous amounts of info online.

We are looking for suggestions for inexpensive online or real life courses, books, or web sites that will help him learn MySQL and then PHP. And more generally, any suggestions you might have for what to focus on, what to watch out for, etc. I also think it might help for him to be able to ask the occasional question of someone who is truly knowledgable in MySQL and/or PHP.

These are the books he has in his possession thus far: Databases Demystified by Andy Opel, PHP6 & MySQL by Larry Ullman, and MySQL pocket reference by George Reese.

Thank you so much for any suggestions!

How do I convert checkbox results to numbers?

opsin — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 10:32:03 -0800

Can anyone give me advice on dealing with checkboxes in PHP, to hand off to SQL. Apologies for the sheer noobness of the question...

I have a form with, among other things, some checkboxes on. I want to hand off the checkbox results, and convert them to a boolean field (1 or 0) for the SQL database.
But I cannot, no matter how much googling I do, find a way to do it.

Online collaborative database front end

sleevener — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 15:20:32 -0800

I need a front end for an online database of contacts, the easier the better. My wife has a contacts database with about 1700 records in it. It's currently in Access. We want to put it online so that it can be collaborative without having to constantly resave and email it back and forth between collaborators. (Access is reshuffling the records, which is causing problems; this may be due to one collaborator using Access 2007 and the other using Access 2000, is that possible?)

I know a database wizard who is willing to help us set this all up, because I don't know what I'm doing, but so far we haven't had much luck finding a front end that will:

- be easily customizable (add and rearrange fields, etc, without writing extra code),
-feature user logins and passwords,
-do filters, sorts, and queries or whatever (like Access does).

My database wizard friend and I have looked at other AskMe threads about this, but haven't been able to find what we're looking for. I want to find something free, but I think we'd be willing to pay a little bit (~$50) for something simple and functional. I am also willing to spend a little money on a rent-a-coder, but I don't even know what I'd be asking for or how much it might cost. Any and all help is appreciated; thanks.

PHP/MySQL Database solution for newbie?!

wibbler — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 02:28:42 -0800

I usually design sites using either plain html/css or Wordpress for its CMS capabilities. However, one client has just asked if there can be a database on his site, which they can add to and visitors/members of the site can purchase "entities" from. This obviously needs a database with a usable front-end for the client and an ability to connect to a payment gateway to purchase "entities". Can anyone help advise on a PHP/MySQL package to do this? I do not have the skills to build a database from scratch (I plan to learn, but cannot do so in the timescales needed for this potential assignment), and I'm presuming there must be a solution out there...

PerHaPs SeQuentiaLly?

prophetsearcher — Sun, 04 May 2008 05:45:22 -0800

Which version of PHP should I start to learn, and how? I know HTML and CSS, and intend to build with Drupal (or similar) and its many extensions. I've decided to start learning PHP, and I'd like to do it right. My end goal, for this initial project, is to ultimately build a Metafilter-like site with PHP and MySQL, perhaps with something like Drupal on top of it. I'd like to have a strong sense - if not a complete understanding - of each layer of the process, but I need some direction.

I do well with books and videos (rather than pdfs or websites), but in browsing Amazon, I realize I don't know if should be reading about PHP 5 or 6 - as I expect most of the modules I'll want are only 5-friendly. Any advice? Are there specific Dummies, and Dummies-like books you can recommend? Ideally, it will also cover MySQL. I'm also open to books on Drupal, if they're any good. Does anyone have feedback on the Lynda videos?

So:
Learn PHP 5 or 6?
How?

Finally, a bonus question: I'm certainly going to have many questions going forward - from installation right on. Can you recommend a good resource for someone at my level? I know there is certainly no dearth of forums (fora?), but I'm looking for the BEST one to devote myself to and invest in.

(I have spent days looking through previous threads - they do exist, but they're either old or not exactly on-target).

SQL sorting when sort field is null

dnash — Fri, 02 May 2008 19:09:20 -0800

MySQL sorting issue. When I have "first name" and "last name" columns, and I'm sorting primarily by "last name." Some entries have only a "first name," and rather than have those end up at either the start or end of the sort, I'd like it to pretend the "first name" IS the "last name" and sort accordingly. Is there a way to do this with the SQL SELECT statement or should I just edit the data? So, I've got this list of names like:

Ron
Bill Smith
Adam Jones
Steve Washington

They're split up into "firstName" "lastName" fields. For purposes of the webpage they're getting displayed on, I'm concatenating them into a single "fullName" field, and will be sorting "ORDER BY lastName." Except a few names only have "firstName." Left alone, MySQL seems to put those at the beginning of the list, and I've seen some info on ways to push them to the bottom - but what I want, is when "lastName is null" to have it use "firstName" instead, so that the list above would end up:

Adam Jones
Ron
Bill Smith
Steve Washington

I realize one option would be to just edit the data and wherever there's a first name only to move that into the "last name" field (because once concatenated the displayed name will be the same) but that just seems like a bad solution in the long term, if there's a way to make the SQL do this for me.

(I'm pretty new to MySQL so forgive me if there's some obvious answer. I've searched forums via Google but I can't find questions quite like this.)

But I don't want to learn .NET!

logic vs love — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:01:23 -0800

How can I connect to a SQL Server 2005 database using windows authentication with PHP? I'm working on a small PHP/MSSQL application at work, but I can only connect to the database server using windows authentication and I can't figure out how to make that happen. Is it even possible?

Database application freelancer seeking programming language advice

mrbloo — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 02:34:51 -0800

I'm planning on starting a database freelancing business. I understand a lot of people prefer Microsoft Access or FileMaker. With the current evolving trend of applications going on the web and add to that my somewhat good experience with PHP, HTML, Javascript and CSS I'm seeking a cross platform efficient application environment. This is why I believe Access and FileMaker are not an option, I'm also more experienced with high level languages than I am with Access or FileMaker. I am currently looking into alternatives. I have been looking at different frameworks and toolkits. These are generally what I have come up with;

- PHP-GTK (Required GTK+ and PHP)
- Python (With wxPython/pyGTK)
- Perl (Perl/Tk)

All those options and similar and require a toolkit and or an interpreter to be installed on the system to work. I'm looking for a cleaner (and possibly compiled or packaged) applications. So I came across other tools such as;

- Mozilla Gecko (XULRunner)
- Adobe Air

Those seem like the most viable options, however, it would be best if the code was compiled, since each of these applications require a lot of virtual memory. Lastly, I came across boo and mono. I like the idea a lot, however there is still the issue of writing and compiling boo code. I only got introduced to boo yesterday.

I'm very reluctant about getting into Java, C, C++, or C# simply because of the complexity of it compared to the languages above. However, if you have another opinion please feel free to share. I'm open to ideas and criticism.

I'm confused as to what would be my best option here for a cross platform programming language and framework/toolkit (GUI) for creating portable database (and possible Point of Sale) applications for my town's local small businesses. What would you recommend?

Need to know who I'm president of!

epersonae — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 11:59:07 -0800

I'm looking for a way to organize a list of members of my neighborhood association, preferably something web-based, but that doesn't require the actual members to log in. I'm the (new) president of my neighborhood association, and our membership database is, well, a nightmare. As in: a laundry hamper full of slips of paper at the treasurer's house. Plus I have a small stack of sign-in sheets from our general meetings.

I would really like to get something together to track who's paying dues, who comes to meetings, etc.

I started playing with a spreadsheet last year, but I couldn't figure out a good way to record years of membership and meetings attended, especially over more than a year or two.

I would love to have something web-based that I could just hand off to future board members without worrying about what kind of computer/software they have.

Our current web setup is LAMP, with some flexibility of what we can install/run. I have enough PHP expertise that I can definitely futz around with something close but not quite, but would prefer not to have to do a ton of work or write the whole dang thing myself. Something that interops with WordPress would be nifty but in no way necessary.

Most of my searches thus far have turned up things for managing membership of a web site, which is entirely NOT what I'm looking for.

Hive mind, can you help?

XML vs. Serialization

destro — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:35:35 -0800

For database usage, is it better to store data in XML or serialized format? In particular, PHP serialization. PHP serializing has this length attribute that makes manually typing out an entry a pain, but maybe that makes it render quicker than XML parsing? Are there any other features down the road that might be affected?

MySQL Query from 2 Tables?

gramcracker — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 09:07:58 -0800

How do I query data from one MySQL table, but I also need to get a single piece of data from a second table too? Should I be doing a JOIN, or a separate query? I'm a self-taught, on-the-fly, make-it-work PHP/MySQL coder. Do little easy side projects, with basic MySQL queries, so this might be a 'duh' answer, but I don't really get it.

So I'm registering people for our class reunion. Their data gets entered into the 'users' table. They can buy tickets online through Paypal, which is linked to their users.id ID, but their Paypal purchase info is stored in the 'paypal' table. (An extra field in the paypal table lists their users.id ID.)

In the directory page that basically does a while() loop to display everyone's information with a basic SELECT * FROM 'users' query, I'd like to be able to also show which people have purchased tickets. The way I'm doing it now is having the Paypal script ALSO write to the users table to make users.tickets = 1 where id=X, which works fine, but there must be a more elegant way to do this from just one SELECT query involving both tables, right?

I tried something like SELECT users.*, paypal.purchaseduserid FROM users, paypal , but that was screwing up the loop. I basically need to display all the data from the user field, but if the paypal table also has the purchaseduserid in it that matches the current user.id, echo "blah". Thanks!

All months, now.

tmcw — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 13:28:27 -0800

Sum of data for all months, including months with no rows, in MySQL? Hi, I've come across this problem a few times, and here's the thing:

I'll do a query, for instance, SUM(distance) for each month, group by month. This'll give me results with the sum of distance for each month with rows. But I'd like to present the sums of all months, including non-active months. So far my only option seems to be to create an array of months in PHP, iterate through that, and, for each month, search for a result in the MySQL query result. This works, but is there a cleaner design pattern, or a MySQL trick that might come in handy?
Thanks for any help.

Bootleg Management with WordPress?

SansPoint — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 20:24:52 -0800

WordPressFilter: Can I do something like this site with WordPress? I'm the webmaster for Booji Boy's Basement, a Devo bootleg trading site. Right now, everything that is done on the site is handled through 100% static HTML pages. I tried coding a database-driven version of the site in PHP and MySQL, but my code-fu is weak. This is one reason why I no longer study Computer Science... anyway...

I realize that WordPress might be able to let me have all the functionality I need without the need for a lot of coding. I have some technical questions about how to go about it.

I know WordPress has support for custom fields, but would it be possible to have those custom fields visible at all times on the new post page? If I, or my co-conspirator Alex want to add a new disc to the collection, I would want the various fields that need to be filled in (Tracklist, Rating, Description, etc.) to be visible.

How would I sort by the disc identifier? (A001, S001, I001, etc.) Should that be a separate custom field?

Also, I have NO clue how to handle the DVD screenshots.

If you have any suggestions, or even better, an off-the-shelf thing I could use to do this, please let me know. It's already become insanely unwieldy to deal with all the HTML... I'm lost!

Ahhh, now thats refreshing!

LoopyG — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 11:11:58 -0800

How do I make sure a page loads with a fresh copy and not from the users cache? I am working on a small site. It is basically just a single message board. The page has a form where people can enter some text and their name and hit submit. Below the form is the message list.

The form sends its data to a PHP script which cleans the text a bit and then adds it to a MySQL DB. It then uses a "Location: 'main.php'" command to go back to the main page. The main page with the form is just a short PHP script that queries the DB and displays all the results.

The problem is, on some computers (my work computer for instance) after adding a message using the form, when it sends them to the main page it shows a cached copy of the main page, and so their message isnt visible. Hitting "refresh" will reload the page and their message is then visible.

How do I go about forcing the page to "refresh" every time it is vistited, or at the very least, after the form has been submitted? Any help you guys can provide would be most appreciated!

Other frameworks akin to Ruby on Rails?

killdevil — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 16:14:49 -0800

What are the best database-driven Web application development frameworks out there right now? More specifically, please orient me to toolsets you know of that are similar to Ruby on Rails. I have a couple of database-oriented Web applications I'll be working on in the near future. I'd love to avoid (re)writing lots of the low-level code (recordset handling, security, user input validation, &c, &c, &c ) that every such application needs in order to function, as I've done numerous times in the past. Rather than dust off some of my own home-rolled libraries, I'd rather take the time to choose and learn one of the integrated open-source frameworks that have come into being over the past few years.

I know of Ruby on Rails, obviously, and have heard of a a couple of python-based frameworks that seem philosophically similar to RoR. Please note that I'm totally language-agnostic -- I'm quite handy with all the languages that form the "P" in "LAMP" and with some others as well, but I don't mind picking up some new syntax if it'll simplify my development task in the end.

Help me understand my options!