Database menu?

[LearningCoder]

Hello,

I am wondering if it is possible to save menu links within a database and then retrieve the links to be displayed within my menu div?

If so, can it be possible that when that link is clicked, it takes you to another page where it shows the relative content to that link, which also displayed data relating to that link?

I hope I have explained myself well enough.

Kind regards,

LC.

[LearningCoder]

Really, no-one?

LC.

[vroom]

I'm not sure exactly what you mean but I'll throw something out there and see if that helps get things moving for you.

You could certainly query a set of links from a database to show on a page:

PHP Code:

$pageid = mysql_real_escape_string(...);
$sql = "select link_url, link_text from menu_links where pageid = '$pageid'";
if ( !$res = mysqli_query($link,$sql) )
   die("ERROR: Unable to query menu links!\n");

$list = array();
while ( $row=mysqli_fetch_assoc($res) )
   $list[] = $row;
mysqli_free_result($res);

foreach ($list as $row)
{
   $link_url = $row['link_url'];
   $link_text = $row['link_text'];

   echo "<a href=\"$link_url\">$link_text</a><br>\n";
} 


Beware, this is not actual code, just typed in on the fly. So there may be some errors in there.

[LearningCoder]

Ah I believe this is what I am looking for. So you retrieve a "nav menu" essentially.

Would it be better to just type a HTML/CSS menu? I basically want maybe 1-2 links which when clicked will open up a page and show the relative content for that link.

I am wondering also about relationships between database tables.

My aim here is to create a gaming site to upload demorecs. I want it to be database driven. Would I have to create a separate table for each game's files? That doesn;t really sound the correct way to me, but i'm not sure.

Thanks for the reply.

Regards,

LC.

[vroom]

Well, I'm not informed enough to suggest what might be better in your situation. However, if you wanted to track a bunch of games and some information for each of those games you'd want something like:

games
------
game_id
game
game_x
game_y
created

gameinfo
--------
info_id
game_id
info_x
info_y
created

Then, you could show a list of games as a "menu" and once you picked a game a list of "info" items as a "menu"... taking you to the page of info, for example.

You could also added an info comment table if you wanted:

infocomment
------------
ic_id
info_id
comment
created_by
created

Hopefully, if you set things up nicely, the HTML/CSS portions are mostly defined outside of your code and you place the table based output into your page.

Hint, it is often nice to accumulate your output instead of echoing in place. If you create a function which returns the output as a string... you can easily move the output to any part of your page or to another page without having to physically move the entire chunk of code.

So, for example:

PHP Code:

$gamemenu = get_game_menu($dblink);   // Prepare list of games as a link list
echo $gamemenu;