Dreamweaver MX: PHP Web Development
July 17, 2002
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This is a book for web professionals who want to use Dreamweaver
MX to produce PHP web sites. It doesn't assume any knowledge of
PHP, and it doesn't hold your hand when talking about Dreamweaver,
so experience of Dreamweaver would be useful. It assumes
knowledge of HTML and Web design.
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This book is all about making dynamic PHP web sites with Dreamweaver MX . It covers PHP, enough to get the reader up to speed with the technology, and how to use Dreamweaver MX to produce PHP code quickly and efficiently. It also covers site design and databases and SQL. It uses an example project, a hotel reservation system, that is built up through the chapters to demonstrate the concepts explained
Web Professionals have been calling for years for Dreamweaver/ UltraDev to support PHP, as it's the premier free open-source server-side scripting language. With Macromedia's landmark new release of Dreamweaver, PHP is fully supported in the familiar Dreamweaver visual environment.
Table of Contents
1. What is PHP?
2. What is MySQL?
3. Getting started with MX
4. Planning the Site and Determining Functionality
5. Basic site setup
6. Manipulating the database
7. Advanced SQL
8. Creating a Search system
9. Re-using code by creating Server Behaviours with the Server Behaviour Builder
10. Hand Coding within Dreamweaver MX
11. Debugging your code
Getting
Started with
Dreamweaver MX
In the first two chapters of this book, we have guided you
through installing and configuring the development tools that you need to
begin working successfully with Dreamweaver MX.
Now that you have a web server running PHP, and a MySQL
database server configured and ready to use, it's time to get your teeth into
what this book is really about: Designing PHP web pages in Dreamweaver MX.
We'll begin by giving Dreamweaver all the information it
needs to work with your development environment, by creating a Site Definition.
Once your site is defined, we'll take our first look at the juicier subject
of Databases, and show you how to create a database connection within Dreamweaver,
which will allow you to access the MySQL database we created in Chapter 2.
Summarizing this chapter, we will discuss some of the more
common problems and errors that you might encounter, and provide you with
simple, no-nonsense solutions, guaranteed to keep the development blues at
bay.
The Essentials
Before you begin working through this chapter, you must
ensure that you have the following:
- A web server configured to work with PHP (see
Chapter 1).
-
The Web Server Address, FTP Server Information
(if applicable) and Authentication Information (Username & Password).
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A working MySQL Server (see Chapter 2).
-
The MySQL Server IP Address and Authentication Information. (Username
& Password)
All of this information will be required at some point over
the coming pages, and is essential to providing you with the richest development
experience possible.
Dreamweaver is a unique tool in the way that it allows
you to view your web page within the User Interface. Certainly, there are
many WYSIWYG (What
You See Is What You Get) web page editors on the market today, but
few, if any, offer the rich design experience that Dreamweaver presents. Indeed,
Macromedia describes Dreamweaver as a "visual editor" in order to
highlight this fact, and many Dreamweaver developers prefer this description.
One of Dreamweaver's best features is its ability to interact
with your web server and application server, so that dynamic elements of your
web page come to life within the UI, even before the page has been uploaded
to your server.
With the above information to hand, we shall now take a
look at the essential first steps you should take when creating any web site
with Dreamweaver MX.
Dreamweaver MX: PHP Web Development
Creating a Site Definition - Page 2
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