Your assignment this class is to create a message board. The message board allows users to view all of the messages that have been posted to the board so far. It also allows users to post new messages.
Here is the user flow of the site:
User flow of message board site
index.php – the message list page
When the user first comes to the site, they see the main page, index.php. This page shows them a list of all of the messages on the board in reverse chronological order. The page reads all of the rows of data from the database table and displays them.
This page also has a link to “add a new post”. When the user clicks that link, she is brought to add_post.php.
index.php wireframe
You will want to use code similar to what is available in the read.php example available on the server here.
Also, you will eventually want to format the dates that you retrieve from the created field of the database table, you will want to read this post about beautifying MySQL timestamps.
add_post.php – the post page
add_post.php consists of a form the user can fill out in order to post a new message. This form has three fields: the user’s name, the post title, and the post body. When the user clicks submit, this page makes an HTTP GET request for process_post.php, and passes along the data that the user entered into the form as part of the query string of the URL of the request.
add_post.php wireframe
This page can be a simple XHTML page. It’s ok to name it add_post.php even if it just has XHTML code inside of it.
process_post.php – the process post page
The process_post.php script receives the data that was passed in the GET request to the server by using the built-in PHP $_GET or $_REQUEST variables, and enters that information as a new row in the database table.
You will want to use code that is similar to the PHP used in the create.php example available on the server here.
This script will then redirect the user back to the main page, index.php. Check out this example of how to redirect a user from one page to another. You will be using the built-in header() function in PHP in order to pass a special “Location” HTTP header from the server to the client that instructs it to go make a request for a different page.
For example, this code redirects a user to the nytimes.com website:
header("Location: nytimes.com"); //redirect to another page