PHP and COM - Access-ing The Web (
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How about one more,
this time using the third member of the Microsoft Office family - Microsoft
Access?
What do I have in mind for this example? Well, I plan to
manipulate (add/edit/delete) records in a Microsoft Access database using a Web
browser and a bunch of PHP scripts.
At first glance, this might not seem
like a big deal. You're probably already familiar with manipulating a MySQL
database with PHP - PHP comes with built-in functions to do this, and the MySQL
connectivity in PHP is easily one of the more important reasons for the
language's popularity. And you might also be familiar with manipulating
Microsoft Access tables via ODBC. But what I have in mind is a little different.
Since this is an article about COM, I don't intend to use either ODBC or
PHP's MySQL functions to modify the Microsoft Access database. Instead, I'll be
using the methods and properties of the ADODB COM object, in order to
demonstrate an alternative technique.
First, here's the Microsoft Access
database, holding information on my coin collection in a single table. You may
assume that the database is named "phpcom" and the table containing the records
is called "coins".
Now, I need to create a
Web based interface to modify this database with PHP.
The first step is
to create a Data Source Name (DSN) in order to access the database through ODBC.
Pop open your Control Panel and use the ODBC module to create this DSN. Tab to
the "System DSN" section, and add a new DSN.
Select "Microsoft Access Driver" from the list of
available drivers. Set a data source name ("phpcom"), a description ("DSN for
PHP/Access connection") and the name of the database to be accessed
("phpcom").
Save your changes, and go back
to your PHP editor. It's time to start writing some code.
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