Beginning PHP 5.3

Chapter 14. Manipulating MySQL Data with PHP

This is the third and final chapter on the topic of building database-driven PHP applications. In Chapter 12 you came to grips with the basics of MySQL and relational databases, and learned how to use PDO (PHP Data Objects) to connect to MySQL databases from PHP. Chapter 13 explored the concept of retrieving data from a database within your PHP scripts; you learned in detail how to create SELECT queries, and you wrote a simple record viewer for displaying details of members in a book club database.

In this chapter, you look at how to alter the data in a MySQL database using PHP. This involves:

• Inserting new records into tables using INSERT statements

• Changing field values within records with UPDATE statements

• Deleting records using DELETE statements

You explore these three operations in detail, and learn how to perform them from within your PHP scripts.

Once you understand how to manipulate data in a MySQL database, you build an application to allow new members to register for your book club database and log in to a members-only area of your Web site, and write some PHP code that you can use to log each member's page views in the members' area. Finally, you extend the member record viewer you created in Chapter 13 to allow you to edit and delete member records.

Inserting Records

You learned how to use SQL to add records to a table in Chapters 12 and 13. Remember that you can insert a row of data with:

INSERT INTO table VALUES ( value1, value2 ...