If you have finished the in-class assignment of creating a message board, you are ready for the advanced assignment.
The advanced assignment is to add the ability for users to upload images along with their message posts.
add_post.php
So when users add new posts, they enter in their name, the title of the post, the body of the post, as well as the image that goes along with the post.
Here’s the updated wireframe for the add_post.php page:
updated add_post.php wireframe
You will want to check out the upload file example on the server here.
You use an <input type=”file” …> tag to allow users to select a file to upload.
Make sure your form has the “enctype” attribute set to “multipart/form-data”. This indicates to the server that it should expect to be receiving binary data for the file.
process_post.php
When the server receives the data that the user submits along with the HTTP POST request for process_post.php, it has to store the data in the database, as you have already done in the first part of this assignment.
You will want to create a new “image_path” field in your messages table in the database where you will store the path where you uploaded the image. You can get the path where the image is uploaded by going through the file upload example code linked above.
So when you create the new row in the database table, you will be storing the author, post title, image path, and post body in the database table.
index.php
And when a user views the list of all the messages, if there is an image that has been uploaded along with a particular message, that image shows up next to the message. If there is no image associated with a post, the layout should adjust accordingly.
Here is the updated index.php wireframe:
updated index.php wireframe
Very advanced assignment
If this was too easy for you, here is a very advanced assignment. Require the users to register with your site before they can post a message.
Users should be able to view the home page whether they are registered or not.
But only registered users should be able to post a new message. If a user has not registered, they should be redirected to the index.php page if they try to view the add_post.php or process_post.php pages.