Accessing Your MySQL Database from the Web with PHP

“In Chapter 8, “Designing Your Web Database, “we outlined how
web database architectures work. Just to remind you, here are the
steps:

1. A user’s web browser issues an HTTP request for a particular
   web page. For example, the user might have requested a search for
   all the books written by Michael Morgan at Book-O-Rama, using an
   HTML form. The search results page is called results.php.
2. The web server receives the request for results.php, retrieves
   the file, and passes it to the PHP engine for processing.
3. The PHP engine begins parsing the script. Inside the script is
   a command to connect to the database and execute a query (perform
   the search for books). PHP opens a connection to the MySQL server
   and sends on the appropriate query.
4. The MySQL server receives the database query, processes it, and
   sends the results-a list of books-back to the PHP engine.
5. The PHP engine finishes running the script. This usually
   involves formatting the query results nicely in HTML. It then
   returns the resulting HTML to the web server. The web server passes
   the HTML back to the browser, where the user can see the list of
   books she requested.

“Now you have an existing MySQL database, so you can write the PHP
code to perform the preceding steps.Begin with the search form. The
code for this plain HTML form is shown in Listing
11.1.”

Complete
Story