[bignester]

I'm starting a project where I'll be making a Movie database. I want it to be accessable over the web. How would I communicate with the database using PHP.

Also what would be the best method to implement user login.

[andutt]

You have a much functional API in PHP to communicate with many kind of databases. The best way to se the syntax of what kind of database you shall use is to look at the php manual.. look here http://se2.php.net/manual/en/... To connect to a mysql-database, you do like this for example...

$link = mysql_connect("$HOST", "$USER","$PASS") or die ("Could not connect to DB");
mysql_select_db("$DB") or die ("Could not select database:$DB check username or password or if database are up and running\n");

$query = "select * from my supertable";
$result   = mysql_query($query) or die ("Failed to execute SQl-query\n");

Fo user authentication you can write your own in php if you like or use apache:s authentication if you are using an apache-webbserver.

Good luck...just post if you get in to trouble..

[bignester]

Alright thanx for the direction now I have a question about sessions and cookies. I want to have users log into the web page. So should I just use a users table that will have a users name and password. How would I check to make sure they loged in with the right pass and name. Also How can I make it so that when they leave and come back They will still be logged in.

[Dolda2000]

The easiest approach is indeed to create a table which stores usernames and (optionally encrypted) passwords. When authenticating users, just compare what they gave in the login form with what is in the database. Then create a session using something like the following:

session_start();
$_SESSION["username"] = $_POST["username"];

After that, you can check the existence of a valid session by checking the value of $_SESSION["username"]. Remember that you must call session_start() on each page that wants to use the session data.
See http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.session-start.php for more info.