Databases and PHP - PEAR DB Basics (
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Example 8-1 is a program to build an HTML table of information about science fiction books. It demonstrates how to use the PEAR DB library (which comes with PHP) to connect to a database, issue queries, check for errors, and transform the results of queries into HTML. Be sure to verify how to turn on PEAR with your setup of PHP, as the Unix/Linux flavor is slightly different to that of Windows. Go to http:// www.pear.php.net/manual/en/installation.getting.php for a starting point on installation. The library is object-oriented, with a mixture of class methods (DB::connect(), DB::iserror()) and object methods (
$db->query()
,
$q->fetchInto()
).
Example 8-1. Display book information
<html><head><title>Library Books</title></head>
<body>
<table border=1
>
<tr><th>Book</th><th>Year Published</th><th>Author</th></tr>
<?php
// connect
require_once('DB.php');
$db = DB::connect("mysql://librarian:passw0rd@localhost/ library");
if (DB::iserror($db)) {
die($db->getMessage());
}
// issue the query
$sql = "SELECT books.title,books.pub_year,authors.name
FROM books, authors
WHERE books.authorid=authors.authorid
ORDER BY books.pub_year ASC";
$q = $db->query($sql);
if (DB::iserror($q)) {
die($q->getMessage());
}
// generate the table
while ($q->fetchInto($row)) {
?>
<tr><td><?= $row[0] ?></td>
<td><?= $row[1] ?></td>
<td><?= $row[2] ?></td>
</tr>
<?php
}
?>
The output of Example 8-1 is shown in Figure 8-1.
Figure 8-1. The Library page
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