Our Tag Board Script - PHP

Tag boards enable users to leave a short message on your site without having to go through the trouble of registering. From a development point of view, they are actually rather simple to develop. In this article we will create a quick and easy tag board for any web site. We will be taking advantage of the php and MySQL technologies.

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By: Haiden Taylor

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November 03, 2004

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Our tag board is made up of three functions, four defined constants, a switch statement and a nifty little comparison operator to help with those of you using error-reporting E_ALL.

So let's have a look at the complete version of our script, and then we will go through and look at the script with greater detail. Our Tag Board Script can be found below:

<?
define('HOST', 'localhost');
define('USER', 'mysql_username');
define('PASS', 'mysql_pass);
define('DB', 'mysql_db');

function doTags()
{
$conx = mysql_connect(HOST, USER, PASS) or die("Unable to connect to MySQL Server");
mysql_select_db(DB) or die("Unable to select Database");

$stSql = "SELECT tag_name, tag_url, tag_entry, tag_date FROM tagboard ORDER BY tag_date DESC";
$arrResult = @mysql_query($stSql);
if (!$arrResult) { echo "Query Failed - Unable to Retrieve tags - ".mysql_error()." – Action Aborted"; exit(); }

if (mysql_num_rows($arrResult) >= 1)
{

while ($arrRow = mysql_fetch_assoc($arrResult))
{
?>
<table align="center" width="100%" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<tr>
<td><a href="<? echo stripslashes($arrRow['tag_url']); ?>"><? echo stripslashes($arrRow['tag_name']); ?></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><? echo nl2br(stripslashes($arrRow['tag_entry'])); ?></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span style="font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 9px; color: #666666"> <? echo date("F j, Y, g:i a", $arrRow['tag_date']); ?></span></td>
</tr>
</table>
<?
}
} else {
?>
<p style="font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; background-color: #FFFFFF">No entries to display</p>
<?
}
}

function doInsert($__name, $__entry, $__url)
{
$conx = mysql_connect(HOST, USER, PASS) or die("Unable to connect to MySQL Server");
mysql_select_db(DB) or die("Unable to select Database");

$__name = addslashes($__name);
$__url = addslashes($__url);
$__entry = addslashes($__entry);

if (empty($__name))
{
?>
<p style="font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; background-color: #FFFFFF">Name Field Is Required</p>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5;url='board.php?do=Tags'">
<?
} elseif (empty($__entry))
{
?>
<p style="font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; background-color: #FFFFFF">Entry Field Is Required</p>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5;url='board.php?do=Tags'">
<?
} else {

$stSql = "INSERT INTO tagboard(tagId, tag_name, tag_url, tag_entry, tag_date) values('', '$__name', '$__url', '$__entry', ".time().")";
$arrResult = @mysql_query($stSql);
if (!$arrResult) { echo "Query Failed - Unable to Retrieve tags - ".mysql_error()." – Action Aborted"; exit(); }

if (mysql_affected_rows() == 1)
{
?>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="3;url='board.php?do=Tags'">
<?
} else {
echo "Unable to Add Entry to Database";
?>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5;url='board.php?do=Tags'">
<?
}
}
}

$do = (isset($_GET['do']) ? $_GET['do'] : FALSE);

switch ($do) {
case "Board":
doBoard();
break;
case "Tags":
doTags();
break;
case "Insert":
doInsert($_POST['__name'], $_POST['__entry'], $_POST['__url']);
break;
default:
doBoard();
}
?>

Next: What Makes Our Tag Board Tick? >>