CREATING

DATA-DRIVEN
WEBSITES
 CREATING
DATA-DRIVEN
WEBSITES
An Introduction to HTML, CSS,
PHP, and MySQL

BOB TERRELL
Creating Data-Driven Websites: An Introduction to HTML, CSS, PHP,
and MySQL

Copyright © Momentum Press®, LLC, 2019.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored

in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—­
electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for
brief quotations, not to exceed 250 words, without the prior permission
of the publisher.

First published by Momentum Press®, LLC

222 East 46th Street, New York, NY 10017
www.momentumpress.net

ISBN-13: 978-1-94664-604-0 (print)

ISBN-13: 978-1-94664-605-7 (e-book)

Momentum Press Computer Science Collection

Cover and interior design by S4Carlisle Publishing Services Private Ltd.,

Chennai, India

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America

 Abstract

Today’s modern world is heavily dependent on the World Wide Web. It

­affects the way we communicate, how we shop, and how we learn about
the world. Every website, every page, consists of four fundamental
­elements: the structure, the style, the programming, and the data. These
correspond to four different “languages,” respectively: HTML, CSS, PHP,
and MySQL.
The purpose of this book is to provide an introduction to this set
of technologies to teach a new programmer how to get started creating
­data-driven websites and to provide a jumping-off point for the reader to
expand his or her skills. After learning the necessary components, ­users
will have the understanding required to use the above technologies to
­create a working website. This book is aimed at the programmer or ­student
who understands the basic building blocks of programming such as state-
ments and control structures but lacks knowledge of the syntax and appli-
cation of the above-mentioned technologies.

KEYWORDS

HTML; PHP; website; MAMP; LAMP; databases; CSS; structured query

language; SQL; MySQL
 Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
Chapter 1 HTML 1
Fundamentals 3
Tags and Elements 4
Attributes and Properties 5
Block Elements 6
Inline Elements 7
Form Elements 8
Entities 9
Comments 11
Project 11
Further Reading 14
Chapter 2 Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) 15
CSS Syntax 17
Selectors 17
The Cascade 21
Importance 21
Specificity 22
Code Order 23
Properties 23
Colors 23
Length Units 25
Property List 25
The Box Model 34
Comments 37
Working with Difficult Browsers 37
Project 38
Further Reading 47
Chapter 3 MySQL 49
Why MySQL? 49
phpMyAdmin 50
The Structure of MySQL 50
viii  •  CONTENTS

Data (Field) Types 52

Numeric Data Types 52
String Data Types 54
Date Data Types 56
The Special Value NULL 57
MySQL Statements 58
Indexes 67
Operators and Functions 69
Project 72
Further Reading 75
Chapter 4 PHP 77
Why PHP? 77
Getting into PHP: Basic Syntax 78
Variables in PHP 78
A Note about Strings 81
Operators 81
Language Constructs 84
Functions 86
Add Your Own Functions 87
MySQLi 89
mysqli 89
mysqli_result 90
SQL Injection and mysqli_stmt 91
The Final Piece: $_POST and $_GET 93
And One More Thing: $_SESSION 95
Project 95
Further Reading 115
Extending the Style Guide 117
About the Author 119
Index 121
 Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my wife for her patience and understanding and for
occupying the time of three children long enough to write this book; Lisa
MacLean, for being my favorite professor; my parents, for always seeing
the potential in me and wanting the best for me; and fate, for life has
given me many blessings and opportunities arising from circumstances
that reach far beyond my own actions.
 Introduction

The purpose of this book is to teach you, the reader, the basics of web de-
velopment. Web development is made up of many different parts and uses
many different languages. The languages that this book uses are HTML,
CSS, PHP, and MySQL. These languages, and the software to interpret them,
are freely available and can run on Windows, macOS, and Linux, making
them a natural choice for the beginner.

PROJECT

As an example, through the course of this book, we will create a fully

functioning project: a style guide. When multiple programmers work on a
project together, it’s common for them to have learned multiple different
customs when coding. It isn’t generally important whether a line is in-
dented with four spaces or a tab, but it is important that the same method
be used consistently throughout code. In a more general sense, this can be
thought of as a suggestion box. Users (in this case, our hypothetical fellow
coders) make suggestions regarding the style to be used a collaborative
project, and the group as a whole votes on them. Those suggestions that
receive majority approval are considered to be part of the guide.
When designing a site, it helps to think about the various tasks it will
need to perform. Generally speaking, each task will be a separate script
(or page). Just from our description, we have a short list of tasks that the
site must perform:

1. Accept a suggestion from a user.

2. Allow users to vote on suggestions.
3. Determine whether a suggestion has a majority vote.
4. Display approved suggestions together.
xii  •  Introduction

This, however, is overly general. Each of these involves several smaller

tasks. We also need an index (landing) page, something to show users who
first visit the site. A more detailed, structured list would look as follows:

a. Index page. As a landing page, it should do the following:

1. Have a link to approved suggestions (the guide).
2. Contain a login link so we can distinguish between the different
users and track their votes.

b. Handle users. As the administrator, we can create a section to

­handle user-related tasks. Specific tasks in this section should do
the following:
1. Display the list of users.
2. Delete a user who is no longer with us.

c. Handle suggestions.
1. Allow users to create a suggestion.
2. Display a list of suggestions.
3. Display details about a particular suggestion.
4. Allow users to comment on a suggestion before voting, in case
clarification is needed.
5. Allow users to vote on a suggestion.

We may find as we proceed that even this isn’t quite detailed enough,
but it will be sufficient for now.

BEFORE WE BEGIN...

As part of the project in this book, you will need a host with PHP, MySQL,
and your choice of web server software. Apache is common on Mac and
Linux; Windows users may use IIS (Internet Information Services). The
host need not be from a web services provider; your personal computer is
sufficient to run all of these. If you do not have a host set up for you, search
for a guide to help you install these software packages on your machine.
 CHAPTER 1

HTML

HTML is not, strictly, a programming language. HTML stands for hyper-

text markup language. It is a way of marking text, so that a web browser
knows how to display it. It can be considered the most basic “building
block” of a web page, and as such, it is where we begin.
It is customary when teaching a new language to begin with a sim-
ple program that simply outputs Hello, world! With HTML, it couldn’t be
­simpler. Open a new document in your editor and type in “Hello, world!”,
as seen below (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1.  Desc: “Hello, world!” in a text editor window

2  •   CREATING DATA-DRIVEN WEBSITES

Save the file to your web root with the name hi.html (Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2.  Desc: file “hi.html” visible in a folder

View the results in your web browser of choice. Enter in the URL for
your web root, and add hi.html to the end (Figure 1.3).
You’re done!

Figure 1.3.  Desc: “Hello, world!” displayed in a web browser

 HTML  •   3

FUNDAMENTALS

So what’s really going on here? The short answer is it is the browser’s job
to make as much sense of an HTML file as it can. We can see what it has
done by inspecting the web page. In Chrome: View -> Developer -> De-
veloper Tools. In the window or pane that opens, select the Elements tab.
We see that the browser has taken our file, which the web server has told it
is an HTML file (thanks to the.html extension) and added to it. We should
see something like the following (Figure 1.4):

Figure 1.4.  Developer Tools window in Chrome

The document is located on the left. We see our Hello, world! text on
the left. What’s the rest of that?
An HTML file is rendered by the browser into a document with
elements. Note the three elements in document: the <html> element,
which encompasses the entire document; the <head> element, which is
currently empty and provides information about the document; and the
<body> element, which contains the part of the document that the web
browser is intended to render. Because our file contained only plain text,
4  •   CREATING DATA-DRIVEN WEBSITES

the browser created enough elements for our document to make sense. It
put the contents of our file into the <body> element.
Revisit the document in the text editor and add in some of the ele-
ments the browser filled in on its own. Change the document to be as such:

<html>
<head></head>
<body>Hello, world!</body>
</html>

Save the file and refresh the browser window. It should look pretty
much the same! Only this time, the browser is reading our file and parsing
(making sense of) it.

TAGS AND ELEMENTS

An html file is made up of markup contained in tags. An HTML tag con-

sists of an open angle bracket (less than sign), certain characters to denote
the type of tag, and a closing angle bracket (greater than sign). Tags may
not have a space between the opening angle bracket and the letters. In the
file above, note that we have three tags: <html>, <head>, and <body>.
These correspond to the html, head, and body elements that the browser
renders in its document.
HTML tags usually come in sets. There is an opening tag, as described
above, and there is a closing tag, telling the browser when the element in
question should end. A closing tag is an angle bracket, followed by a slash,
followed by the same characters used in the opening tag. In the file above,
every opening tag has a corresponding closing tag. A more correct descrip-
tion of our file would be that there are three opening tags: <html>, <head>,
and <body>; and three closing tags: </head>, </body>, and </html>.
Also note that HTML is hierarchical: Elements can contain other el-
ements when tags of another element are found in between the opening
and closing tags. The head and body elements are contained within the
html element because the <head> and <body> tags appear between the
opening <html> and closing </html> tags.
While it’s possible to not close tags—if our file above was missing the
closing tags, the browser would still render it correctly—some tags must
be closed, and the browser will always try to render a document as if it
were well-formed. It’s also possible to close tags not in reverse order: For
example, the following would most likely render correctly:
 HTML  •   5

<p>This is some <b><u>important</b></u>

text.

but it is not well-formed. The following is well-formed:

<p>This is some <b><u>important</u></b>

text.</p>

Note the differences. The </u> closing tag closes the <u> element,
which was the last one opened, followed by </b> to end the <b> opening
tag. We also properly closed the <p> tag with the closing </p> tag. Don’t
worry if you aren’t familiar with what these tags do! They’ll be explained
soon enough. For now, simply note what it means to have well-formed
HTML: that tags are closed in reverse order that they are opened.

BEST PRACTICE

Although web browsers give their best effort to make sense of an HTML
file, throughout this book we will endeavor to generate well-formed
documents. A well-formed document is one which always closes
HTML tags and closes them in the reverse of the order opened. HTML
documents that follow this guideline are easier for humans to read and
understand, and following this practice makes it harder to make a mis-
take in which the web browser becomes legitimately confused.

ATTRIBUTES AND PROPERTIES

The HTML tags covered so far are tags at their most basic. They open an
element, and they close an element. Tags, however, can also have attrib-
utes, which define an element’s properties. (Sometimes, properties can be
changed on an HTML document. To be more precise, attributes define an
element’s initial properties.) The attributes that can be used in a tag vary
depending upon the tag type, but nearly every html tag can contain the at-
tributes id and class. Consider the following:

<p id=“myId” class=“myClass”>This is some

<b><u>important</u></b> text.</p>
6  •   CREATING DATA-DRIVEN WEBSITES

In the code above, we’ve added the id attribute, with the value myId,
and the class attribute, with the value myClass. These become properties
of the rendered p element. The id and class attributes don’t do anything on
their own, but we’ll be revisiting them later.

BLOCK ELEMENTS

HTML elements are considered either block elements or inline elements.

Block elements begin a new line, and they usually try to be as wide as
possible. The following is a list of the most common block-level elements:

• p: short for paragraph. This is used to contain a paragraph of text.

Multiple paragraphs will have space between them
• h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, and h6 : These six elements are all header ­elements.
They are intended to be used hierarchically; the main header is h1, the
first subheader is h2, the next level down is h3, and so forth.
• ol, ul, li: short for ordered list and unordered list. They contain li
elements, which are list items. An ordered list will number the
items. An unordered list will use bullet marks.
• hr: Short for horizontal rule, this is used to denote a break by
drawing a line across the document.
• pre: This element contains preformatted text. Any text within this
element will be displayed in a monospace font and with any line
breaks left intact.
• table: The table element is used to display tabular data. It will con-
sist of table rows (tr), which in turn contain table data cells (td)
or table headers (th). The td and th elements contain one attribute
worth mentioning here: colspan, which specifies how many col-
umns the element should span.
• div: The div element is a generic block-level element. Think of it
as a “page division.” They have no particular behavior on their own,
but are often used with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to position
elements in a certain way.

Let’s take a moment to practice using these elements. Put the follow-
ing in a document.

<html>
<head></head>
<body>
<p>This text is inside a paragraph tag.
 HTML  •   7

It’s worth noting that,

in HTML, we can have line breaks
wherever we want, but the browser will ­
ignore
them.</p>
<pre>On the other hand,
preformatted text preserves white space.</pre>
<p>A simple multiplication table:</p>
<table>
<tr><td></td><th>1</th><th>2</th>
<th>3</th><th>4</th></tr>
<tr><th>1</th><td>1</td><td>2</td>
<td>3</td><td>4</td></tr>
<tr><th>2</th><td>2</td><td>4</td>
<td>6</td><td>8</td></tr>
<tr><th>3</th><td>3</td><td>6</td>
<td>9</td><td>12</td></tr>
<tr><th>4</th><td>4</td><td>8</td>
<td>12</td><td>16</td></tr>
</table>
<p>Our shopping list:</p>
<ul>
<li>Bread</li>
<li>Milk</li>
<li>Eggs</li>
</ul>
<p>Our to do list:</p>
<ol>
<li>Drop off dry cleaning</li>
<li>Pick up Tim from school.</li>
<li>Drop Jan off at soccer practice.</li>
</ol>
</body>
</html>

How does the HTML above appear in your browser?

INLINE ELEMENTS

Unlike block elements, inline elements do not create a new line. They exist
within the flow of the content around them. Inline elements should not
8  •   CREATING DATA-DRIVEN WEBSITES

contain block elements, but may contain other inline elements. Most inline
elements make use of their attributes to help define their behavior. The
following are the most common inline elements:

• b, i, u: These elements simply make the text inside them bold, italic,
or underlined, respectively. It’s often easier and better to use CSS
for this (more later), though there’s no harm in using these to itali-
cize a book title, for example.
• em, strong: Short for emphasis and strong. These elements be-
have much like i and b, respectively, with the added bonus that
text-to-speech screen readers will read them differently. Whenever
you want to draw attention to words, you should prefer these ele-
ments to simply making the text bold or italic.
• a: Short for anchor tag. This tag is used to generate links to other
documents. Its notable attribute is href, the value of which is the
path on the server to the other document, relative to the current one.
An absolute path may also be used if linking to another site.
• img: This is the image tag, used to include an image in your docu-
ment. img typically uses the following attributes: src specifies the
source of the image. Much like the a tag, this is the path to the image
file, relative to the current document, or an absolute path if including
an image from elsewhere. alt specifies alternative text to display if the
image can’t be displayed. height and width are both optional. If used,
they are the height and width the image will be displayed, in pixels.
• span: This is the inline equivalent of div. It does nothing on its own,
but it can be used to mark off a section of the document to be used
by something else, such as CSS.

FORM ELEMENTS

In the earliest days of the Internet, websites were simply pages up for display.
You read them, you clicked around, and you went on your merry way. That’s
hardly the case nowadays, and HTML forms are a big reason why. Forms
­allow data to be sent to the server to be processed. Forms can be used for
search fields, or for registering at a site. Any time a site submits user-provided
data back to the server, it’s likely to be using a form. On to the form elements:

• form: The form element itself is a block element. It contains many

other elements that together allow users to enter data. form has
two main attributes: action, which specifies the document that will
handle the form; and method, which is how the information will
 HTML  •   9

be sent. Note that while form is a block element, most elements it

contains are inline elements.
• input: Used to specify input as part of a form. The input element
does a lot of work, depending on its attributes. All of the following
are attributes of the input element:
• type: The most important attribute, this is the type of input we
want. Valid values most commonly used are checkbox, for a
simple checkbox; radio, for linked buttons that allow only one
to be chosen; text, which presents a single-line text field; pass-
word, which acts much like text, except that anything entered
is obscured by the browser; and hidden, which is not displayed
to the user.
• checked: The checked attribute specifies whether an input of
type checkbox or radio should be displayed as already checked.
The mere presence of this attribute means it should, so any
value is unneeded, but often it is assigned a value of “yes” or
“checked”.
• disabled: A disabled form element is one that is displayed but
cannot be interacted with or changed. Notably, any disabled
form elements are NOT sent when the form is submitted.
• name: This is the name the form element will have when
processed.
• value: An initial value for the form element may be set with this
attribute.
• label: A label is used together with input elements to allow the
user to click on the text label as if they were clicking on the in-
put element itself. This is especially useful for checkbox and radio
buttons.
• select: The select element allows the user to choose from a list of
predefined options. When using the select element, the name at-
tribute is placed on the select element, whereas each option ele-
ment may have its own value attribute. If it is not used, the default
value of an option is the text contained inside it.
• textarea: The textarea element is simply a multiline text input. You
can use the rows and cols attributes to specify the number of text
rows and columns (roughly, characters) it should take up.

ENTITIES

One last topic of note in the world of HTML is entities. Recall that HTML
tags are the < symbol, followed by a tag name, and any attributes are part
10  •   CREATING DATA-DRIVEN WEBSITES

of the tag until the closing > character. This seems pretty straightforward,
but what if we need a web page to say the following?

if a<b and b<c, then a<c

At first glance, the problem may not be apparent, but put that in a
document and view it in a browser. All we see is if a. What happened?
Well, the <b and everything after it was treated as a tag. That’s not what
we wanted! Thankfully, HTML provides us with a way to output special
HTML characters without having them treated as tags: entities. The six
most common entities are listed in the table below:

Character Description Entity

< Less than &lt;

> Greater than &gt;

" Quotation mark &quot;
’ Apostrophe (or single quote) &apos;
& Ampersand &amp;
nonbreaking space &nbsp;

The non-breaking space is exactly what it sounds like: A space be-

tween two words that doesn’t allow a line break. It’s not necessary to use
an entity absolutely everywhere; for example, in normal text, a quotation
mark won’t be confused as anything else. However, if you must include
a quotation mark inside a quoted attribute value, an entity would be re-
quired. Below are some examples:

if a&lt;b and b&lt;c, then a&lt;c<br/>

if a&lt;b and b&gt;c, it is unknown whether
a&lt;c or a&gt;c

<option value=‘Fermat&apos;s Last ­ Theorem’>

Fermat’s Last Theorem</option>
<option  value=“She  said, &quot;Hello.&quot;”>
She said, “Hello.”</option>

It’s also possible to encode a reserved HTML character (and in fact,

any character) as an entity using the character’s decimal ASCII (or even
Unicode) character number. &, for example, has a character code of
 HTML  •   11

38 and can therefore be replaced by either &amp; or &#38;. Likewise, it

is possible—though pointless—to use &#65; instead of the letter A. Al-
though using named entities is generally preferred, as it’s clearer what the
character will be, the numeric version is also allowed.

COMMENTS

Comments may be used inside HTML. A comment begins with the string
<!-- and ends with -->. It may span multiple lines if necessary. HTML
comments are sent to the browser, but the browser ignores their contents.
However, because they are sent to the browser, they aren’t used very often;
comments are for you, not for the users of your site. Nevertheless, if there’s
a “secret” message you want to send to your users, an HTML comment
would be a fun place to put it.

<!-- I’m learning HTML! -->

The above would appear when a user viewed the source of your web
page, but it wouldn’t appear on the page when the browser renders it.

PROJECT

As much of our project involves dynamically generated content, there isn’t

much we can accomplish yet. There are, however, a couple of tasks we can
at least begin. We can create pages for the form to input a new user and
the form to add a suggestion. We can also create an index page to link to
these forms. As that describes three tasks, we will be creating three files.
Let’s begin with adding users. Each piece of information we want to
store should be its own field. About our users, we need to store a username
and password, so they can log in. We might also want to store their first
name, last name, and job title within our fictional company. Put the below
HTML into a file named user-new.html:

<html>
<head>
<title>Add User</title>
</head>
12  •   CREATING DATA-DRIVEN WEBSITES

<body>
<p>Please add a new user below.</p>
<form action=“user-save.php” method=“post”>
<p>Username: <input type=“text” name=
“name”/></p>
<p>Password: <input type=“text” name=
“pass”/></p>
<p>First Name: <input type=“text” name=
“first”/></p>
<p>Last Name: <input type=“text” name=
“last”/></p>
<p>Title: <input type=“text” name=
“title”/></p>
<p><input type=“submit” name=“action”
value=“Save”/> <input type=“submit”
name=“action” value=“Cancel”/></p>
</form>
</body>
</html>

Next, make the input form for a suggestion. A suggestion will be a

large block of text. It will also belong to a particular section of the style
guide. The section options will be limited to General, HTML, CSS, PHP,
and SQL. The below code should be put in suggestion-new.html.

<html>
<head><title>Add Suggestion</title></head>
<body>
<p>Please add a suggestion for the Style Guide
below.</p>
<form action=“suggestion-save.php”
method=“post”>
<p>Section:
<select name=“section”>
<option>General</option>
<option>HTML</option>
<option>CSS</option>
<option>PHP</option>
<option>SQL</option>
</select></p>
 HTML  •   13

<p><textarea name=“suggestion” cols=“80”

rows=“40”></textarea></p>
<p><input type=“submit” name=“submit”
value=“Save”/> <input type=“submit” name=
“submit” value=“Cancel”/></p>
</body>
</html>

And finally, the index page. Our hypothetical management has de-
cided that our page should have our company logo and name. They have
provided us with a logo file to use: a white pen on a transparent back-
ground. Prominently displayed should be the hypothetical company name:
Pendity Software. Put the following into a file named index.html:

<html>
<head><title>Pendity Software Style Guide
</title></head>
<body>
<div><img src=“logo.png”/><p>Pendity
Software</p></div>
<div><h1>Pendity Software</h1>
<h2>Style Guide</h2></div>
<div>
<p><a href=“suggestion-new.html”>New
Suggestion</a></p>
<p>Admin Only!<br/>
<a href=“user-new.html”>New User</a>
</p></div>
<div>This is the page for the style guide.
</body>
</html>

Obviously, the index page is incomplete. We’ll get back to that. For
now, let’s see how it looks.
First, the index (Figure 1.5):
Wow. That looks terrible. At least the links are there. Click through
to each of those pages. (You will need to use the browser’s Back button to
14  •   CREATING DATA-DRIVEN WEBSITES

Figure 1.5.  “index.html” displayed in a web browser

return to the index page. What happens if you try to submit either form?)
It’s time to move on to the next chapter.

FURTHER READING

This section encompasses only a very small subset of the complete HTML spec.
It contains the most basic explanation of the most common HTML elements
and ideas.
The full HTML 5 specification can be found here:
https://www.w3.org/html/
The Mozilla Development Network has many tutorials and references for HTML:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML
 Index

Amazon, 49 color, 23–26

Apache, xii display, 32
Arithmetic operators, 81 font, 26–28
Array, 79–80 length values, 25
Assignment operators, 82 overflow, 32
Attribute selectors, 18 position, 33–34
Attributes, 5–6 size, 28–29
Author style sheets, 21 text-overflow, 33
AUTO_INCREMENT, 53 visibility, 32
AVG(), 58 selectors, 16–21
specificity, 22
BETWEEN keyword, 70 syntax, 17
BIGINT, 53 working with difficult browsers,
BINARY, 54 37–38
bind_param(), 92–93 CHAR, 54
BLOB, 55 CHAR_LENGTH(), 70
Block elements, 6–7 Class/id selectors, 18
<body> element, 3–4 Closing tag, 4
border, 31 Code order, 23
border-collapse, 31 Color, CSS, 23–26
border-color, 30–31 Comments
border-style, 30 in CSS (/*, */), 37
border-width, 29–30 in HTML (<!--, -->), 11
Box model, 29–31, 34–36 Comparison operators, 82
box-sizing, 31 CONCAT(), 70
COUNT(), 63–64, 72
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) CROSS JOIN, 62
box model, 29–31, 34–36 CSS. See Cascading Style Sheets
code order, 23
comments (/*, */), 37 Data types, in MySQL
importance, 21–22 BINARY, 54
project, 38–46 BLOB, 55
properties CHAR, 54
122  •   Index

Data types, in MySQL (Continued ) FROM clause, 62

DATE, 56 FROM_UNIXTIME(), 57, 71
DATETIME, 56 function keyword, 87–88
ENUM, 55 Functions
NULL, 57–58 MySQL
numeric, 52–54 aggregate, 71–72
SET, 56 date, 71
string, 54 string, 70–71
TEXT, 55 PHP
TIME, 57 empty(), 86
TIMESTAMP, 56–57 header(), 87
VARBINARY, 54 htmlspecialchars(), 86
VARCHAR, 54 implode(), 87
Database, 49–51. See also MySQL isset(), 86
DATE, 56 nl2br(), 86
DATE_FORMAT(), 71 password_hash(), 87
DATETIME, 56 password_verify(), 87
DECIMAL, 53–54
Declaration block, 17 $_GET, 93–94
DELETE statement, 66–67 global keyword, 88
Display property, 32 GROUP BY clause, 63–64
DISTINCT, 72 GROUP_CONCAT(), 72
<div> element, 6
DOUBLE, 53 HAVING clause, 64
<head> element, 3
eBay, 49 header(), 87
echo, 84 Header elements, 6
Element selectors, 18 Horizontal rule, 6
Elements, HTML, 3–5 HTML. See Hypertext markup
empty(), 86 language
Entities, HTML, 9–11 <html> element, 3
ENUM, 55 htmlspecialchars(), 86
Equals sign (=), 69 Hypertext markup language
(HTML), 1–2
fetch_array(), 90–91 attributes, 5–6
fetch_assoc(), 90–91 comments (<!--, -->), 11
fetch_row(), 90–91 elements, 4–5
Field, MySQL, 50–51 block, 6–7
FLOAT, 53 inline, 7–8
font-family, 26–27 form, 8–9
font-size, 27 entities, 9–11
font-style, 27 fundamentals, 3–4
font-weight, 27 project, 11–14
for, foreach, 85 properties, 5–6
form element, 8–9 tags, 4–5
 Index  •   123

Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP), 77 LEFT JOIN, 62–63

declaring own functions in, Length values, CSS, 25
87–89 LIKE keyword, 70
functions. See Functions, PHP LIMIT clause, 65
$_GET, 93–94 <link> element, 16–17
language constructs, 84–86 Linux, xi
mysqli, 89–90 List items, 6–7
mysqli_result, 90–91 LOCATE(), 71
mysqli_stmt, 92–93 Logical operators, 83
operators. See Operators LPAD(), 71
$_POST, 93–94
project, 95–115 macOS, xi
reasons for, 77 MAX(), 58, 71
$_SESSION, 95 max-height, 29
strings, 81 max-width, 29
syntax, 78 MEDIUMINT, 53
variables, 78–79 MIN(), 58, 71
array, 79–80 min-height, 29
objects, 80 min-width, 29
scalar, 79 MySQL, 49
data types. See Data types, in
if, else if, else, 84 MySQL
implode(), 87 functions. See Functions
!important, 21–22 indexes, 67–69
IN keyword, 70 operators, 69–72
include, 86 phpMyAdmin, 50
include_once, 86 project, 72–75
Increment operators, 82 reasons for, 49–50
Index, 67–69 statements
PRIMARY, 68 DELETE, 66–67
UNIQUE, 68 INSERT, 59–61
initial keyword, 37–38 SELECT, 61–65
Inline elements, 7–8 UPDATE, 65–66
INNER JOIN, 62–63 structure of, 50–52
<input> element, 9 mysqli class, 80, 89–90
INSERT statement, 59–61 mysqli_result object, 90–91
INT, 53 mysqli_stmt class, 92–93
Integer types, 53
Internet Explorer (IE), 37 nl2br(), 86
Internet Information Services NOT NULL, 57
(IIS), xii NOW(), 71
isset(), 86 NULL, 57
NULL value, 57–58
Languages, xi. See also CSS; Numeric data types, 52–54
HTML; MySQL; PHP $num_rows, 90
124  •   Index

Objects, 80 session_start(), 95
Opening tag, 4 SET, 56
Operators Size properties, 28–29
arithmetic, 81 SMALLINT, 53
assignment, 82 Specificity, 22
comparison, 82 Strings
increment, 82 in MySQL, 54
logical, 83 in PHP, 81–82
string, 80 SUBSTRING(), 71
ORDER BY clause, 64–65, 72 Superglobal, 93–94
Ordered list, 6–7 switch (and case), 85
Overflow, 32 <table> element, 6–7

padding, 31 Tables, 50–52

Paragraph, 6–7 Tags, 4–5
password_hash(), 87 TEXT, 55
password_verify(), 87 text-align, 27
Passwords, 51 text-decoration, 27
PHP. See Hypertext Preprocessor text-overflow, 33
phpMyAdmin, 50 <textarea> element, 9
Positioning properties, 33–34 TIME, 57
$_POST, 93–94 TIMESTAMP, 56–57
Preformatted text, 6 TINYINT, 53
PRIMARY index, 68 Type juggling, 81
print, 84
print_r(), 80 UNIQUE index, 68
Properties, HTML, 5–6 UNIX_TIMESTAMP(), 57, 71
Pseudo-classes, 19 Unordered list, 6–7
UNSIGNED, 52–53
Relational database, 49 UPDATE statement, 65–66
REPLACE(), 71 User agent style sheets, 21
require, 86 User style sheets, 21
require_once, 86
RIGHT JOIN, 62–63 VARBINARY, 54
Rows, 50–51 VARCHAR, 54, 57
vertical-align, 27–28
Sanitizing, 92 Visibility property, 32
Scalar, 79
<select> element, 9 Web development, xi
SELECT statement, 61–65 Well-formed document, 5
Selectors, 16–21 WHERE clause, 63–64
SEPARATOR, 72 while, do ... while, 84–85
Server, 50–51 white-space, 28
$_SESSION, 95 Windows, xi
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