This PHP Style Switcher can be done in two easy steps.

Step One: Setting styles

The first step is to create a new file on your server named switcher.php and paste the following code into it:

<?php
/* expire in 1 year */
setcookie("sitestyle", $_GET['set'], time()+31536000);
header("Location: $HTTP_REFERER");
?>

When it’s queried, this file will write a cookie for the user detailing which site style to use. The cookie is set to expire in one year, and then the script sends the user back to the referring page. All of this happens behind the scenes, so the user will never really “see” switcher.php in action.

Telling switcher.php which site style to use is an equally simple matter. You can query it using conventional HREF links in text, images, or even flash

<a href="switcher.php?set=red">change to RED style!</a>

Step Two: Detecting styles

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen"
title="User Defined Style"' href="<?php echo 
(!$_COOKIE["sitestyle"]) 
?'default':$_COOKIE["sitestyle"] 
?>.css" />

This tiny script detects which style is in the user’s cookies and prints out the result. If the user doesn’t have cookies enabled, or just hasn’t chosen a site style for themselves yet, the script will default to “default.css”.

So there you have it. A cross-browser, backwards-compatible, forwards-compatible, standards-compliant style sheet switcher in just five lines of code. It’s fast, straightforward, and universally accessible because there’s no processing done on the client side.

Here is the code (.zip) as well for you to review.

Jonathan Sampson created a very useful screencast (.zip) showing you exactly how to do this using PHP and MySQL. I took his code (.zip) and created my own simple example.

Looking over the code and demo you will see it is a fairly complete solution for any type of data that you may need pagination. Since it is so complete you probably will need a little time to fully understand it (like me), but Jonathan explains it very nicely in the video.

1. Grab the total number of database records and pages:

// Get total number of database entries
$totalCount = "SELECT COUNT(*) as 'Total' FROM pagination";
$rsCount = mysql_query($totalCount, $conn)
$rowCount = mysql_fetch_object($rsCount);
 
// Get our total number of pages
$numOfPages = ceil($rowCount->Total / $perPage);

2. Creating paging links for next and prev as well as each page:

// If our current page, minus our padding, is greater than 1
if (($pageNumber - $padding) > 1) {
 
     print "... ";
 
     // Set our lower limit
     $lowerLimit = $pageNumber - $padding;
 
     // Print all padded numbers between lowerLimit and current
     for ($i = $lowerLimit; $i < $pageNumber; $i++) {
 
          print "<a href=\"page.php?page=".$i."\">".$i."</a> ";
     }
 
} else {
 
     // Print all numbers between current page, and first page
     for ($i = 2; $i < $pageNumber; $i++) {
 
           print "<a href=\"page.php?page=".$i."\">".$i."</a> ";
     }
}
 
// If not on first page, or last page, print current page
if (($pageNumber != 0) && ($pageNumber != 1)
&& ($pageNumber != $numOfPages)) {
 
     print "<b> - " . $pageNumber . " - </b>";
}
 
// If current page, plus padding, is less than the total pages
if (($pageNumber + $padding) < $numOfPages) {
 
     // Set upper limit
     $upperLimit = $pageNumber + $padding;
 
     // Print all number from padded pages above current page
     for ($i = ($pageNumber + 1); $i <= $upperLimit; $i++) {
 
          print "<a href=\"page.php?page=".$i."\">".$i."</a> ";
     }
 
     print "... ";
 
} else {
 
     // Print numbers between number of pages and current page
     for ($i = ($pageNumber + 1); $i < $numOfPages; $i++) {
 
          print "<a href=\"page.php?page=".$i."\">".$i."</a> ";
     }
}

3. Grab the page results and display them:

// Get page results
$sql = "SELECT id, teams FROM pagination ORDER BY id
        LIMIT $startIndex, $perPage";
 
// Get result set
$rs = mysql_query($sql, $conn) or die(mysql_error());
 
// Do we have results?
if (mysql_num_rows($rs) > 0) {
 
     // Show the results
     while($row = mysql_fetch_object($rs)) {
 
          print $row->id;
          print $row->teams;
     }
 
} else {
 
     print "Sorry, no results found.";
}

The web site has some features that I’ve seen elsewhere on the web such as paging, sorting data and keyword search highlighting. The hard part was finding the resources to explain how to do these techniques because no book gives you all the answers.

The new PHP 5 features I implemented can be found in any current PHP book. The OOP techniques added has the advantages such as increased code reuse, modularity and flexiblity for expansion. This style of coding has been around for a long time (like exception handling) so it was a nice addition in my opinion to PHP 5.

Though for a web site this small using OOP may not be necessary, but will give you a good example of basic syntax and basic implementation. Here are some screencasts (.zip) by Jonathan Sampson that explain PHP OOP development with the first video covering what is a class and how to create one and the second video showing you how to create private, public and protected properties within a class. The third video covers interfaces and abstractions that are not used.

Other new PHP 5 features I used were exceptions, which are a new way of handling errors in your PHP code. As with OOP, this feature has been around in other programming languages (VB.NET, C#, Java, etc.), and in my opinion a easier and better way to capture unexpected errors (i.e. database error). The last new feature was using the mysqli extension which incorporates new functionality in MySQL 4.1 and above. The changes are small (compared to mysql extension) and very easy to implement in any exisiting PHP code you may have.

I also used functions such as mysqli_real_escape_string and addslashes to help prevent against SQL injection.

There are many other issues of security that should be considered when developing web applications. Read the PHP Security Guide (.pdf) by the people at the PHP Security Consortium to learm more.

Configuring either IIS or Apache can be tricky and somewhat confusing so I did the research for you and give you detailed steps on how to configure either IIS or Apache to work with PHP.

Setting up PHP (for IIS or Apache)

1. Download the latest Windows zip package
2. Extract the files to c:\PHP (PHP folder)
3. Find libmysql.dll and php5ts.dll and copy to c:\windows\system32
4. In PHP folder: find php.ini-dst and make a copy
5. Rename the copy to php.ini
6. Move the php.ini to c:\Windows
7. Open the file in Notepad
8. Find extension_dir = “./” and change to extension_dir = “c:\PHP\ext”
9. Find ;extension=php_mysql.dll and remove semi-colon
10. Find ;extension=php_mysqli.dll and remove semi-colon
11. Create a temp directory (c:\temp)
12. Find ;session.save_path and change to session.save_path = “c:\temp”
13. Save and close Notepad

Configuring IIS

1. Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Internet Information Service
2. Right click on Default Web Site -> Properties
3. ISAPI Filters tab: Add PHP filter with executable c:\PHP\php5isapi.dll
4. Home Directory tab:
    Click Configuration, Click Add (Mappings tab)
    Executable: c:\PHP\php5isapi.dll and Extension: .php
    Click OK
    Now all .php files will be processed using the PHP library (php5isapi.dll)
5. Documents tab:
    Click Add
    Default Document Name: index.php
6. Restart IIS
    Go to Services (Administrative Tools -> Services)
    Select World Wide Web Publishing Service
    Click Restart the service button

Configuring Apache

1. Download the Win32 binary (MSI Installer)
2. Run the installer wizard
    During install enter “localhost” for Network Domain and Server Name
3. Program Files -> Apache HTTP Server -> Configure Apache Server
    Edit Apache httpd.conf file
4. Find LoadModule
    Go to the bottom of section and add a new line:
    LoadModule php5_module c:/php/php5apache2.dll
5. Find DirectoryIndex
    Add to exisiting line:
    DirectoryIndex index.html index.html.var
    DirectoryIndex index.html index.html.var index.php
6. Find AddType
    Add a new line to the bottom of this section:
    AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
7. Save and close Notepad
8. Restart Apache:
    Program Files -> Apache HTTP Server -> Control apache Server -> Restart

Testing PHP

1. Create an index.php file with this code:

<?php
       phpinfo();
?>

2. Save to:
    c:\inetpub\wwwroot (IIS)
    c:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\htdocs (Apache)
3. Type http://localhost/ and it should look something like this

You can use phpMyAdmin to easiy setup your MySQL database, tables and perform any necessary SQL statements.

Here are some videos (.zip) to get you started:

MySQL Overview
MySQL Basics
SQL Statements with MySQL
Using PHPMyAdmin
PHP and SQL
PHP and SQL cont.

Here is a great article (.pdf) reviewing most of what is covered in the videos as well written by Gareth Downes-Powell.

Web server: PHP will work with virtually all web server software, including Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (IIS), but is most often used with the freely available Apache server.

Database: PHP will work with virtually all database software, including ORACLE and Sybase, but is most often used with free MySQL database software for which it has specific optimizations.

PHP parser: In order to process PHP script instructions, a parser must be installed to generate HTML output that can be sent to the web browser.  The parser engine is identical, irrespective of the operating system, so PHP pages need no changes to run on different platforms.

Editors: You can use a free web editor to make writing and editing PHP scripts easier such as PHP Designer 2007 – Personal or Komodo Edit which have features such as code highlighting, autocomplete and debugging.

Each of these components can be installed seperately, but would require configuration changes for them to work properly.

An easier solution would be to install a software package that does everything for you. The most popular are XAMPP, WAMP5, and Uniform Server.  These distributions make it easy to get started developing in PHP and MySQL without all the extra hassle.

It is fast, fairly easy to learn, integrates with many database systems (MySQL, SQL Server, ORACLE), used on all major operating systems, and is open source which means there are many add-on components to use (i.e. PEAR) that extend its functionality. It costs nothing to download and all you need is a web server, whether it be open-source (Apache) or Internet Information Server.

Video Tutorials:

Your First Script
Variables
Strings
String Functions
Numbers
Arrays
Conditional Statement: IF Else
Conditional Statement: Switch
User-Defined Functions: Creating
User-Defined Functions: Using
User-Defined Functions: Return Values
Global Variables and Functions
For Loops
While Loops

Here are also some great articles (.pdf) written by Gareth Downes-Powell covering the same and some new topics:

Basics
Arrays
String Functions
Conditional Statements
Functions
Working with Forms