I have a few general questions I would like to have a better understanding on.
For a project I have been spending my free time on, I am attempting to display a ladder-based rankings table for a weekly-based chess tournament on a website. To do this, I have created a MYSQL database to hold each player's wins/losses/tournament wins. I understand that in order to display this data onto a html-based website, I need to use php to connect the database and the site.
I also have a very shallow understanding of php as a server-side language, and not a client-side one. Basically to me, this means that php can only be understood by the online server hosting the site, and not by the web browser (such as Google Chrome) itself. Consequently, this means that I can't simply run a .php file by opening it in Notepad++ and choosing "Run in Chrome". That will not work - I can only test php files by first saving them into the website directory and viewing them online. Is this the correct way of thinking about this?
My second question is more straightforward - and it involves the steps required to connect my website and the MYSQL server. Here is my first attempt:
<?php
//Connect to database
$db = mysql_connect("a2412233_ss","a2412233_ss", 'My_Password');
if (! $db){
die("Database connection failed: " . mysql_error());
}
else
echo("Success!");
?>
<html>
<head>
<Title> MySQL Table Connection </Title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
Two problems with this that I would love to get cleared up:
1) When I click the link to this file from my index.html on the website, the php file downloads rather than opening up on the browser window like a normal webpage should. So clearly something is wrong there.
2) Secondly, I am uncomfortable with the fact that written this way, anyone can view my database info/password by viewing this page source. So there has to be a better way of doing this where that php isn't visible by viewing the source.
Thank you all for the clarification and kick in the right direction! Slowly getting this html/MYSQL/php stuff figured out.
