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PHP - AJAX and MySQL
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AJAX can be used for interactive communication with a database.
AJAX Database Example
The following example will demonstrate how a web page can fetch information from a database with AJAX:
Example
|
Example Explained - The MySQL Database
The database table we use in the example above looks like this:
| id | FirstName | LastName | Age | Hometown | Job |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Peter | Griffin | 41 | Quahog | Brewery |
| 2 | Lois | Griffin | 40 | Newport | Piano Teacher |
| 3 | Joseph | Swanson | 39 | Quahog | Police Officer |
| 4 | Glenn | Quagmire | 41 | Quahog | Pilot |
Example Explained - The HTML Page
When a user selects a user in the dropdown list above, a function called "showUser()" is executed. The function is triggered by the "onchange" event:
| <html> <head> <script type="text/javascript"> function showUser(str) { if (str=="") { document.getElementById("txtHint").innerHTML=""; return; } if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {// code for IE7+, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari xmlhttp=new XMLHttpRequest(); } else {// code for IE6, IE5 xmlhttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP"); } xmlhttp.onreadystatechange=function() { if (xmlhttp.readyState==4 && xmlhttp.status==200) { document.getElementById("txtHint").innerHTML=xmlhttp.responseText; } } xmlhttp.open("GET","getuser.php?q="+str,true); xmlhttp.send(); } </script> </head> <body> <form> <select name="users" onchange="showUser(this.value)"> <option value="">Select a person:</option> <option value="1">Peter Griffin</option> <option value="2">Lois Griffin</option> <option value="3">Glenn Quagmire</option> <option value="4">Joseph Swanson</option> </select> </form> <br /> <div id="txtHint"><b>Person info will be listed here.</b></div> </body> </html> |
The showUser() function does the following:
- Check if a person is selected
- Create an XMLHttpRequest object
- Create the function to be executed when the server response is ready
- Send the request off to a file on the server
- Notice that a parameter (q) is added to the URL (with the content of the dropdown list)
The PHP File
The page on the server called by the JavaScript above is a PHP file called "getuser.php".
The source code in "getuser.php" runs a query against a MySQL database, and returns the result in an HTML table:
| <?php $q=$_GET["q"]; $con = mysql_connect('localhost', 'peter', 'abc123'); if (!$con) { die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error()); } mysql_select_db("ajax_demo", $con); $sql="SELECT * FROM user WHERE id = '".$q."'"; $result = mysql_query($sql); echo "<table border='1'> <tr> <th>Firstname</th> <th>Lastname</th> <th>Age</th> <th>Hometown</th> <th>Job</th> </tr>"; while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) { echo "<tr>"; echo "<td>" . $row['FirstName'] . "</td>"; echo "<td>" . $row['LastName'] . "</td>"; echo "<td>" . $row['Age'] . "</td>"; echo "<td>" . $row['Hometown'] . "</td>"; echo "<td>" . $row['Job'] . "</td>"; echo "</tr>"; } echo "</table>"; mysql_close($con); ?> |
Explanation: When the query is sent from the JavaScript to the PHP file, the following happens:
- PHP opens a connection to a MySQL server
- The correct person is found
- An HTML table is created, filled with data, and sent back to the "txtHint" placeholder
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