How do I get started building a web app?

Question

Hi All,

I want to build a PHP web app which will start with a login page and then move from page to page, displaying data from MySQL table in a tabular format, logout, deals with session etc. Is there any reference that walksthrough/tutorial that does all these tasks? I have seen topics from each of those tasks but separate, is there any example/source which talks about all of them (kind of tutorial)?

I am pretty new to PHP.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

A nice tutorial is W3 Scools: http://www.w3schools.com/php/default.asp

The best PHP Reference is: http://php.net

Go through the W3 Schools tutorial and when you need to know more on a subject go to php.net.

Answer 2

I suppose you already now CSS and HTML. Basically, you'll have to do 3 tutorials :

1. The PHP basics
2. A tutorial on sessions with a login system.
3. A tutorial on basic mySQL queries.

Additionally, you could read some stuff about basic security you need to be aware of.

I'm sure you'll find everything on stack overflow, even if it's better to do a real tutorial.

Answer 3

If you're not familiar with development I'd look for a few tutorials on basics like variables, conditional statements, functions, looping etc. Then follow it up with some basic MySQL stuff.

Following that, I'd look to a framework - CakePHP is simple to get up and running, CodeIgniter and Kohana are other options, and symfony is quite popular.

You'll find a lot of pitfalls with web applications, and a framework will really take the heavy lifting out of it for you. It is, however, important to understand the basic concepts first through.