Rob Huddleston

A recent question on the Yahoo! Dreamweaver group asked about creating a photo album using PHP. In particular, the member who posted the question wanted the ability to add navigation to the bottom of the page reading something like "Page 1 of 75", "Page 2 of 75", "Page 3 of 75. "

The member mentioned that he had tried using PHP for this, but had not been successful. He didn’t say why the original PHP solution didn’t work, but a server-side language is definitely the solution here. While many of you know that PHP isn’t really my language of choice, since the original question specifically mentioned PHP I’m going to give the answer in that language.

Step 1: The Database

First off, we need a database. I know, the mere mention of "database" is enough to send many folks screaming from the room, but bear with me. This is the simplest database you’re ever going to need to create. Again, because we’re talking PHP here, we’ll go with MySQL – although in this case I’ll have to admit I’d use MySQL even if I was using some other language instead. All you need in this case is a single table, which to be really creative we’ll call "Photos" for the sake of this tutorial. The table needs to only contain two fields: a primary key of some kind and a field to hold the path to the image. (If you don’t know what a primary key is, click the link on the word in the last sentence. Or just trust me that you need it and don’t worry about what it really is. Either way works.) Let’s call them photoID and photoPath.

If you’re completely new to databases and I’ve already lost you, don’t worry. All you need to do is log onto your web hosting account and rummage around until you find the utility that they’ve provided to allow you to administer your database. When you open that up, there’s a 99.999% chance that they’re using something called phpMyAdmin, which for reasons I can’t fathom a lot of people love. In there, click the link to "Databases", and you’ll see a link to "Create New Database." Click it. (This would, admitedly, be a lot easier if the people who designed phpMyAdmin had ever taken usability or design into account for even a second. I should mention in the interest of fairness that there are many other, better, easier to use admin tools for MySQL, but that’s a much longer topic than I’m willing to get into here.) Give your database a name, something like "PhotoDB". Once it’s created, the page (should) refresh and you (should) see the new database over on the left side of the screen, in that hideous greyish-blue bar. Click the database, and you’ll see a text field to create a new table. Type a name (try "Photos". Honest – try it. You’ll love it.), say you want 2 fields, and then click Go. (It’s way the hell over on the other side of the screen, instead of being anywhere that might make sense.) In the first column, type the name of the first field (photoID). Set the data type to INT. (It means integer, but you don’t have to actually worry about that.) Ignore the next few oh-so-confusing choices, and click the drop-down box next to "Extra", from which you’ll select auto_increment. In the second column, type a name (photoPath), and just leave the rest of the fields as-is. Once again, hunt around on the screen for the well-hidden "Go" button (again, way to the right), click it, and you’re done. That wasn’t so bad, was it?

Oh, in all of the steps above, when you’re naming things like tables and fields, don’t use spaces.