PHP - AJAX and MySQL
AJAX can be used for interactive communication with a database.
AJAX Database Example
The following example will demonstrate how a web page can fetch information from a database with AJAX:
Example
Person info will be listed here... |
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Example Explained - The MySQL Database
The database table we use in the example above looks like this:
| id |
FirstName |
LastName |
Age |
Hometown |
Job |
| 1 |
Peter |
Griffin |
41 |
Quahog |
Brewery |
| 2 |
Lois |
Griffin |
40 |
Newport |
Piano Teacher |
| 3 |
Joseph |
Swanson |
39 |
Quahog |
Police Officer |
| 4 |
Glenn |
Quagmire |
41 |
Quahog |
Pilot |
Example Explained - The HTML Page
When a user selects a user in the dropdown list above, a function called "showUser()" is executed. The
function is triggered by the "onchange" event:
<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
function showUser(str)
{
if (str=="")
{
document.getElementById("txtHint").innerHTML="";
return;
}
if (window.XMLHttpRequest)
{// code for IE7+, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari
xmlhttp=new XMLHttpRequest();
}
else
{// code for IE6, IE5
xmlhttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
}
xmlhttp.onreadystatechange=function()
{
if (xmlhttp.readyState==4 && xmlhttp.status==200)
{
document.getElementById("txtHint").innerHTML=xmlhttp.responseText;
}
}
xmlhttp.open("GET","getuser.php?q="+str,true);
xmlhttp.send();
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<form>
<select name="users" onchange="showUser(this.value)">
<option value="">Select a person:</option>
<option value="1">Peter Griffin</option>
<option value="2">Lois Griffin</option>
<option value="3">Glenn Quagmire</option>
<option value="4">Joseph Swanson</option>
</select>
</form>
<br />
<div id="txtHint"><b>Person info will be listed here.</b></div>
</body>
</html> |
The showUser() function does the following:
- Check if a person is selected
- Create an XMLHttpRequest object
- Create the function to be executed when the server response is ready
- Send the request off to a file on the server
- Notice that a parameter (q) is added to the URL (with the content of the
dropdown list)
The PHP File
The page on the server called by the JavaScript above is a PHP file called "getuser.php".
The source code in "getuser.php" runs a query against a MySQL database, and returns the result in an HTML
table:
<?php
$q=$_GET["q"];
$con = mysql_connect('localhost', 'peter', 'abc123');
if (!$con)
{
die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
}
mysql_select_db("ajax_demo", $con);
$sql="SELECT * FROM user WHERE id = '".$q."'";
$result = mysql_query($sql);
echo "<table border='1'>
<tr>
<th>Firstname</th>
<th>Lastname</th>
<th>Age</th>
<th>Hometown</th>
<th>Job</th>
</tr>";
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
echo "<tr>";
echo "<td>" . $row['FirstName'] . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $row['LastName'] . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $row['Age'] . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $row['Hometown'] . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $row['Job'] . "</td>";
echo "</tr>";
}
echo "</table>";
mysql_close($con);
?> |
Explanation: When the query is sent from the JavaScript to the PHP file, the following
happens:
- PHP opens a connection to a MySQL server
- The correct person is found
- An HTML table is created, filled with data, and sent back to the "txtHint"
placeholder
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