Web Development Tutorials

Parsing XML Feed to an Array with XPath

by

Recently while working on a project, I found myself needed to parse several different types of files through the same mechanism (CSV, pipe delimited, XML, and more). I decided that it would be best to get each time of feed to a identical object that could then be run through the same methods regardless of the input type. This tutorial will walk you through using PHP and XPath to parse the values from an XML file and store them into array for later manipulation.

Access a MySQL Database Using PDO

by

This tutorial will show you how to access a mysql database using the PHP Data Objects interface, also known simply as PDO. One big advantage of using PDO versus other methods is the use of prepared statements which offers much better security than the mysql or mysqli libraries. Also PDO can connect to several different … Read more

Sending E-Mail to validate User Sign-up

by

In on of our last tutorials we covered how to verify that a user’s email address is formatted correctly as well as verify that it goes to a valid domain name. That is great, but still not a great way to make sure a user actually owns or uses that e-mail address. This tutorial will walk you through one method of sending the user an e-mail upon signing up that gives them a link to activate their account.

Using jQuery to Reorder a List and Update a Database

by

This tutorial will show you how to use jQuery to allow as list (UL) to be reordered and will also make an AJAX call to a PHP file that will update the database when an item is dropped. I found this useful for a project I was working on recently. The user wanted to be able to change the order that categories displayed in a report. The items are stored in a database with a field called display_order. When the report is generated we simply order by that field.

Simple PHP Website Templates

by

So you have a basic HTML site with 100 pages, what happens when you want to change the title tag? Well, if you aren’t using PHP includes, you will have to update each file. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could make the change to one file and it would update every page? That is what we will accomplish with our basic PHP template tutorial.