Put a Face to your Database

Dataface is an Open Source application for developers, which is used for

creating frontend in PHP for MySQL in minutes with all those functionalities. It

automatically generates a webpage with appropriates forms, lists and menus,

which helps users to interact with the database without having to remember any

SQL command.

You can configure its features and behavior by modifying its configuration

file. If in future you have the requirement to modify the database, for eg,

adding one more column to it, you don't have to care about the frontend part.

This is because the page associated to it will automatically get updated as they

are dynamically generated using the database schema. This will reduce the effort

of maintaining the website. Let's see how you can make data driven applications

using Dataface.

Setup



Before starting you need to have PHP 4.3 and MySQL 3.2.3 or higher version

installed on your Linux system. If you do not have these packages installed on

the system, then you can simply download XAMPP package and install it. Download

'dataface-0.7.1.tar' file from the Dataface website, unpack this file and place

it in Web server root directory. Make the 'templates_c' directory writable by

the Web server which you will find inside Dataface directory. You can do so by

the following command:

# chmod 777 Dataface/templates_c

Now, check if the installation is successfully done. You can do it by simply

writing the following path on your Web browser:

http://your-web-server-ipaddress/path-of-dataface-directory/dataface_info.php

If it is successfully installed on the system, then you will see installation

status as 'INSTALLED CORRECTLY.' It also provides you with some additional

information. It shows you the path to template directory and the path to

template compile directory.

Use myPHPAdim to create a sample database for testing purpose	Whenever a table is created in myPHPAdim, it also creates the SQL codes simultaneously

Creating database



Before starting with the frontend part, let's make a simple test database.

Create database using PHPMyAdmin and type the desired table name in the 'Create

new database field.' For eg, we gave the name of the database as 'test_database.'

Now click on Create. Click on Structure button and provide a suitable name for

your table ( say, 'test_table'), give the number of columns and click on Go.

Now, specify the field names, the field types and size, etc and finally click on

Save. This will create a code which you can see after clicking on Save. After we

have created the database and the table that will be required, we will move on

to the next part that is the frontend design or the face.

Select the records-to-change from left side pane and then to replace value of particular field use 'Add Field to update'	Apart from the row view of data, it also provides a detailed view of a query result to the users

Creating the frontend



For this, make up a directory for example 'mysite' inside your Web server

directory . This you can do by issuing the following command:

# mkdir mysite

After you make the directory, make a PHP file named 'index.php', and place

the following content into it:

require_once '/path/to/dataface/dataface-public-api.php';



df_init(__FILE__, 'http://yourdo


main.com/dataface');


$app =& Dataface_Application::getInstance();


$app->display();


?>

Here the first line is for importing all the public functions from the 'dataface-public-api.php',

while the next line initializes the application for the current directory and

specifies the URL of the dataface installation. The third one is used to obtain

an instance of the application object.

After this make another file named 'conf.ini', which will contain the datab

ase connection information and the table name that will be used. Write the

following set of lines to this newly created file:>

<_database>



host = "localhost"


user = "rootr"


password = ""


name = "test_database"


<_tables>


Table = "table”

Now your website is ready, browse the index.php through your browser. The

conf.ini contains the user-id and password which need to be restricted from

other users. So, add '.htaccess' file so that the Apache Web server should not

save this file on the server.

Deny from all

And finally you have a website that is fully secure and up. Apart from

inserting, deleting and modifying data you can also search for a specified



data. You can also export the data in CVS format which you can use at other
places.