Need experts' opinion

[walidno1]

Ok, Im learning Javascript from W3school and well, I was wondering what else wud I need?? PHP and My SQL I guess..........

PS: I just want a simple login page for members...........nothing complicated


:rant2:

[marshian]

For a simple login page you only need PHP and MySQL. JavaScript can be nice to add an additional dimension (active content on the client's side), but it's not required.
If you want to keep it simple, just stick with PHP and MySQL.

Actually it can be done without MySQL too, but it's certainly easier than most other solutions.

[misson]

The more I look at W3Schools, the less I like it. Second page in to the JS tutorial and they're using document.write. W3Schools is terribly out of date; much of what you'll learn you'll later have to un-learn. Tizag Tutorials is a little better, but not without its faults.

Read my response in palmettoexpress_ceo's "Want to learn to program...." thread.

[drf1229]

There are MANY ways to create a login page that stores names and info of members. The most common way is using MySQL, as said above, but what I usually do is save all of the user's information to a text or XML file. Then, use php fread/fwrite to adjust the file as users are added or edited. This requires a lot of creative thought, but I find it easier than writing to a database.

[misson]

[...] save all of the user's information to a text or XML file. Then, use php fread/fwrite to adjust the file as users are added or edited. This requires a lot of creative thought, but I find it easier than writing to a database.

While it's conceptually easier ("a file is a sequence of characters, and has a read/write position" is simpler than the RDB model), it's harder to implement. When you use a database, you get a number of features for free that you otherwise need to implement when using flat files.

XML is a whole new game. As long as you don't write your own XML handler, you get the ease of use and some of the features of a database, though the performance suffers. For this reason, XML is best suited for transfering partial datasets rather than storing large amounts of data. Add in a database management system that uses indices and a binary XML format and you're just about golden, but at that point you need a DDL and DML, so there's not a significant advantage over using MyQSL/MSSQL/PostrgeSQL in terms of simplicity of use.

SQL, by the way, has a hidden simplicity. You have some basic (aka atomic or scalar) types and two aggregate types: rows (collections/tuples of scalars) and tables (collections/lists of rows). DML statements map tables to tables. They support the following operations on tables:

• join tables to create a new one using the JOIN clause,
• remove columns (aka "projection") by listing columns after SELECT,
• filter rows using the WHERE and LIMIT clauses
• map a group of rows to a single row using the GROUP BY clause and aggregate functions,
• sort rows,
• perform set operations (union, intersection, difference) on tables,
• add rows to/change rows in tables via the INSERT and UPDATE statements

There are details (such as NULL values) this doesn't cover, but that's the gist. Database design, by contrast, can be a more complex topic, though SQL's DDL is simpler than its DML.

[walidno1]

hmm................btw, is there any ebooks on mysql, javascript and php????