Dynamic Web Content

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Notes From Ch. 1

 * The HyperText Transfer Protocol determines how content is handled on the Internet.


 * Client/Server: Your browser is the client and the a computer running Apache (or some other web server) is the server.


 * TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) are the protocols that govern how data are trasnmitted across the network (TCP) and how different networks communicate with each other (IP).


 * HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is a collection of tags used to describe a web page's static content and layout. There are lots of good HTML tutorials on the Web. Just Google "HTML Tutorial" or try this one for starters: HTML Tutorial.

PHP Test 
 * PHP is a server-side programming language. PHP is embedded in the page's HTML and allows the page to have dynamic content.  Here's a simple example from the PHP Tutorial on the PHP web site:


 * Apache is an open-source web server. It receives browser requests and returns an HTML-coded web page to the browser. If the HTML contains PHP code, the server interprets it and changes the content of the web page.


 * MySQL is an open-source relational database based on SQL (Structured Query Language). A relational database organizes data into tables that are interrelated by the certain shared columns (attributes). For example, the following tables are related via their shared school attribute.

How the Internet Works

 * See How the Internet Works for a brief overview of the nuts and bolts.

Without PHP/MySQL
The user types a URL into a browser. The URL is used to route the page to the correct server. The server looks up the page (directory.html) on its hard disk and returns the HTML-marked-up page to the browser.

With PHP/MySQL
The user types a URL into a browser. The URL is used to route the page to the correct server. The server looks up the page (login.php) on its hard disk. Because this is a PHP file, the server invokes the PHP interpreter, which interprets and acts on the page's PHP code. In this case it asks the MySQL database to check the username and password and returns an appropriate HTML-marked-up page to the browser.