Learning PHP was more difficult that I could have ever imagined. I have managed to read and understand the language, but writing my own script from scratch with nothing to reference is going to require more time. Understanding the individual functions and statements was rather straight forward as PHP is mostly written in plain English. The difficult part is knowing where and when to use them.
I started off my learning by going through the Sitepoint book page by page. This was a good starting point as it explained what PHP is, how it works, and the purpose it serves. This introduction helped me understand exactly what goes on when using PHP. The first half of the book was also very easy to follow and explained basic functions and statements in simple terms.
However, after completing the first half of the book, I realised that time was running out; and although I now had a basic understanding of PHP, I had not attempted to create the scripts I needed to meet my requirements. I felt slightly under pressure now as I had spent a considerable amount of time completing tutorials out of the book but had nothing tangible to help meet my deliverables.
This led me to searching the internet for tutorials specific to what I needed. First, it was the log in form which was very frustrating. I come across multiple ways of writing the script and found myself confused as to which way would be the best. I wanted my log in script to be secure but at the same time wanted to avoid delving in too deep, causing my mind to go into meltdown. I feel as though in the end my script is a happy medium.
Moving on to the image uploader; I hit a brick wall when trying to upload the images to a MySQL database rather than a designated folder in the root of the website. I spent hours trying to implement this but after several million tutorials [or so it felt like] and mixing and matching bits of PHP, I gave up. Creating the table in MySQL was easy enough but the PHP needed to upload and download them to display got too complicated. As I was approching the end of my time frame, I was forced to move on.
Looking back I would still like to learn how to upload and download files from a database rather than a folder as it gives you more options. For example, using a database would have allowed me to create a delete function for each individual image by calling the ID set to each image. As my images were uploaded to a folder, you could not differentiate between them to call them individually; therefore I had to settle for a clear all function to allow the user to manage the gallery.
Overall I am happy with my achievements, and now when I come across PHP I can usually understand what is going on. On the downside I would have liked more time to learn it thoroughly, but at least I have some groundings to build upon.
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