Although I don’t normally do this, per a reader request, I’ve made the book’s examples available to be seen and used here. The book has three primary examples, each in an Ajax and non-Ajax form. The pages are:
- dept_form.html
- This page returns all of the employees in a selected department.
- add_employee.html
- This page uses Ajax to add an employee to the database (note: the version running on this site does not actually execute the INSERT query that updates the database.)
- search_form.html
- This page provides a simple search to retrieve employees by last name.
There’s no navigation within or among the pages. You’ll need to click Back to return to this page to see another example. To run one of the examples without Ajax (to see what that’d be like for visitors that can’t use the Ajax version), disable JavaScript in your Web browser.
Posted in JavaScript, MySQL, PHP, Web Development.
Tagged with ajax.
Last updated: December 27, 2011
When I was writing my Effortless E-Commerce with PHP and MySQL book, I naturally did a bunch of research, particularly with regards to the various laws that apply. Understanding the programming behind an e-commerce site is relatively simple; understanding all the applicable laws and implications of doing e-commerce is complex. One of the sites I found to be quite useful was the U.S. Better Business Bureau (BBB).
I’m currently going through some items in my “to read” folder, and am reading, or perhaps re-reading, the Better Business Bureau’s PDF titled “Security & Privacy – Made Simpler“. If you do any e-commerce, or even just Web development, it’s worth reading. It’s a 22-page document that discusses almost every facet of e-commerce, such as:
- Developing a security and privacy plan
- Creating and communicating your security and privacy policies
- Good employee screening and policies
- Common hack/theft strategies
- General Internet security
- Proper handling of customer data
- Payment processing
- What to do in the event of a data breach
- A preview of international e-commerce considerations
The document also has many resources listed in these and other categories. You can download the PDF from that page, but there are also related FAQs and more on the BBB’s site.
Posted in MySQL, PHP.
Tagged with e-commerce, ecom, ecommerce, privacy, security.
Last updated: December 24, 2011
For many of my books, bonus content is made available through the publisher. Sometimes this is material that was intended for the book but had to be cut, such as an appendix or a chapter, and sometimes the material is a true bonus, such as a video screencast. Because it’s not clear for everyone how to access this bonus material, I thought I’d quickly post instructions here.
- Head to Peachpit.com (almost all of my books are published by Peachpit Press)
- Click on Account Sign In at the top of the page.
- If you don’t already have an account with Peachpit.com, click the Create a new one… link to register.
- After you have registered, login.
- On your account page (after logging in), click Registered Products.
- On the Registered Products tab, click Register Another Product.
- Follow the instructions to register the book.
- Return to the Registered Products page.
- For the book in question, click the Access Bonus Content link. That will take you to a page with all the bonus content for a given book.
Besides being able to access bonus content, there are other benefits to registering at Peachpit’s site. And while you’re there, you can also check out my author page, which lists the books I’ve written for Peachpit, the articles I’ve published there, and the blog postings I’ve published there. Both the articles and blog postings are viewable without registration or logging in.
I hope that helps anyone having trouble finding the material they’re looking for.
Posted in C and C++, Flex, JavaScript, MySQL, PHP, Ruby, Web Development.
Tagged with jsdd, phpmysql4, phpvqs4.
Last updated: December 20, 2011
It was recently pointed out to me by a couple of readers that they found my explanation for how to read the PHP manual, presented in Chapter 1 of my “PHP for the Web: Visual QuickStart Guide”, to be confusing. I think that learning how to read the manual is quite important, but I can see now that my presentation of that subject was a bit much at that early stage of the game, at least for absolute beginners. In any case, in that discussion, someone shared a link to a page in the PHP manual titled “How to Read a Function Definition“, which they found to be useful. So I thought I’d share it here!
Posted in PHP.
Last updated: December 15, 2011
