My native language is not English, but Spanish, so I apologize. Well, I am developing my own content management system, but I am an amateur, not a professional developer. My first CMS was enterely written in PHP and MySQL. Several months ago, I discovered xajax, that was such an improvement over plain PHP!
I was looking for an autosave script in xajax. I found a very good script in Jetlogs, but I wanted it in xajax. So I kept searching, until I found this. It was a VERY GOOD script, but, can I improve it? Why it has to write a file in the server? Why not in a database?
I show you two methods:
- one for a simple form: textarea method
- another for a FCKEditor version 2
So, my script will autosave the record into the database.
First of all, we have to create de database. This is the code:
CREATE TABLE `test_db`.`draft` (
`id` INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY ,
`title` TEXT NULL ,
`content` LONGTEXT NULL ,
) ENGINE = MYISAM
As you can see, test_db is the database, draft is the table, and id, title and content are the fields of the table. Of course, I asume you have privileges for creating the database and the table.
The first segment of the script is this:
session_start();
unset($_SESSION['article_id']);
require_once('../xajax/xajax_core/xajax.inc.php');
$xajax = new xajax();
I create a session, but I destroy any previous session from previous instances. So, the first time the page loads, $_SESSION['article_id'] will be empty.
Be careful with the paths: in my server, the xajax library is in ../xajax/xajax_core/xajax.inc.php.
The function's name is savetodb (which stands for Save To DataBase; easy, isn't it?). Well, here is the function:
function savetodb($form) {
$title = $form["title"];
$editor = $form["editor1"];
$host = 'localhost';
$username = 'my_user';
$password = 'my_pass';
$database = 'test_db';
$connect = mysql_connect($host, $username, $password);
mysql_select_db($database, $connect);
if (!isset($_SESSION['article_id'])) {
$sql = "INSERT INTO draft (`title`, `content`) VALUES ('$title', '$editor')";
$result = mysql_query($sql, $connect);
$_SESSION['article_id'] = mysql_insert_id($connect);
} else {
$article_id = $_SESSION['article_id'];
$sql = "UPDATE draft SET `title`='$title',`content`='$editor' WHERE `id`='$article_id'";
$result = mysql_query($sql, $connect);
}
// Instantiate the object xajaxResponse
$objResponse = new xajaxResponse();
$objResponse->assign("autosavemsg","innerHTML", "<br />Record saved to database successfully!");
return $objResponse;
}
$xajax->registerFunction('savetodb');
$xajax->processRequest();
?>
The first 3 lines will retrieve data from the xajax.getFormValues() function (We will see it later).
The next lines are only for the database; in this example it is easier and more comprehensive, but you can include() a config file, if you want.
The next part is about the logics behind the SQL sentence:
- If there is no
$_SESSION['article_id']defined, the user has just loaded the page. There is no record. As you cannot write in a non existing row, thisINSERTcommand will create the row, and will retrieve the id of this row through themysql_insert_id()function. This id will be stored in a SESSION VARIABLE, that's why I created the session at the beginning of the script. This session variable will be stored unless we unset it (if we reload the page, for instance). - If there is a defined
$_SESSION['article_id'], it will mean that there is a row, and this row has an identifier: Do you remember the id field (primary_key and auto_increment) we created in the first step? This id is created automatically by the server, and through themysql_insert_id()function we have it. So, the SQL sentence will onlyUPDATEthe existing record.
The next lines will end the xajax function.
This is the HTML code. I tried to keep it as simple as I could:
</head>
<body>
<form name="form" id="form" enctype="multipart/form-data">
<?php
echo '<label>Title</label><input type="text" name="title" id="title"><br />';
echo '<textarea name="editor1"></textarea>' ;
?>
<input type="button" name="save" onclick="xajax_savetodb(xajax.getFormValues('form'));" value="Save to Database">
</form>
<div id="autosavemsg"></div>
<script language="Javascript">
//Interval
var AutoSaveTime=20000;
//time object
var AutoSaveTimer;
SetAutoSave();
function SetAutoSave() {
AutoSaveTimer=setInterval("xajax_savetodb(xajax.getFormValues('form'));",AutoSaveTime);
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
OK, only the important things:
- We call for the creation of all JS scripts:
<?php $xajax->printJavascript('../xajax'); ?> - After we created the form, we call for the xajax function:
- And the most important thing: this Javascript code is a loop that will run every 20 sec. the callback to xajax function. Do you notice that it is the same function?:
xajax_savetodb(xajax.getFormValues('form'));
So, by using the
getFormValues()function, we can SEND the data from the form to the xajax functionsavetodb()and process the content (in this example, title and content), but you can define whatever you want.
You can download the complete code from main.php. This README was only an explanation
Do you want to use the FCKEditor version? Check main_editor.php.
-
First, for the newbies, be carefull with the paths: for me, I have to write:
require_once('../xajax/xajax_core/xajax.inc.php'); echo $xajax->getJavascript('../xajax'); -
Second: the folder cache must have read and write access permissions.
If the script does not work, I recommend the use of the debug feature:
$xajax = new xajax();
// this is the flag:
$xajax->setFlag('debug', true);
$xajax->registerFunction('autosave');
Thank you all.