PHP as a Tiny Database

Link to this post10pm, Tuesday January 13th, 2009CommentCommentsTags: ,

Here’s a little bit of code I put together this evening to use PHP as a kind of miniscule database. OK, so that’s a bit of a crap analogy; but hopefully the idea makes sense…

Oh, and also: it doesn’t have a front end of any kind. Because I’m lazy (and I think it’s impossible).

Essentially, the code below generates a random number between 1 and 2 (inclusive), and decides which of the selection of variables should be used from $theURL and $theAuthor.

<?php
  $thePhoto = mt_rand(1, 2);
  $theURL = ‘url’ . $thePhoto;
  $theAuthor = ‘author’ . $thePhoto;
  $url1 = ‘http://flickr.com/photos/hortulus_aptus/2367460316/’;
  $author1 = ‘Seán A. O'Hara’;
  $url2 = ‘http://flickr.com/photos/jule_berlin/571121649/’;
  $author2 = ‘Jule Berlin’;
?>

The parameters generated above are then placed into index.php using the following syntax:

<img src=”http://mullr.foo/img<?php echo $thePhoto; ?>.jpg” width=”340px” />
<p><a href=”<?php echo $$theURL; ?>“>Image</a> by <?php echo $$theAuthor; ?></p>

The procedure for increasing the number of images in the "database" is relatively simple: upload a new image with the name img#.jpg to the directory, and add $url# and $author# to the PHP file. Oh, and then increase the range of random numbers that the script can create.

I’m pretty much completely new to this whole server-side scripting thing, so this post is as much about you telling me a better way to do it as it is me sharing this "achievement". In any case, I’m pretty happy – it seems like a nice way of doing things and only took me an hour to get my head round.

2 Comments

  1. Chris Northwood says:
    14 January 2009 at 1:09

    It’s certainly an interesting way of doing things. A more traditional approach would be something along the lines of a multi-dimensional array:

    <?php
    $db = array(
    array('author' => 'Seán A. O'Hara', 'url' => 'http://flickr.com/photos/hortulus_aptus/2367460316/'),
    array('author' => 'Jule Berlin', 'url' => 'http://flickr.com/photos/jule_berlin/571121649/')
    )
    $thePhoto = mt_rand(0, count($db)-1);
    $myelement = $db[$mt_rand];
    ?>
    <img src="http://mullr.foo/img.jpg" width="340px" />
    <a href="">Image</a> by

    This then avoids the nasty $$ thing you’ve got above

  2. Alex Muller says:
    14 January 2009 at 11:06

    Cheers Chris – I had no idea how to do arrays in PHP, but it’s something I’ll have a look at :)

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