Category: MMD2

Articles for second semester students at the Multimedia Design and Communication Programme @Business Academy Aarhus, Denmark. All materials for the second semester are on Fronter. These links are sources of inspiration: tutorials, how-tos and similar.

PHP: Cookie, Array, Loop

A cookie is saved locally. Therefore different browsers will display whatever the user has saved. At least as long as the cookie is “alive”.

The complete code to this article is available here.

We use cookies in order to save information about or from the user input. If you compare my Firefox and Chrome browsers they will format the Microlite roleplaying web page according to random values, dates and saved input. Computergames use random values in stead of dice. First the character is saved in an associative array.

// ASSOCIATIVE ARRAY
// Define the character array.
// “key” => value
$character = array(
“strength” => rand(3,18),
“dexterity” => rand(3,18),
“mind” => rand(3,18),
“charisma” => rand(3,18),
“class” => $class[rand(0, $classes)],
“race” => $race[rand(0, $races)],
“address” => “Shire”,
“hitpoints” => rand(3,18),
“level” => 1,
);

Above you see the method in action. rand(3,18) is an imitation of the role playing “3d6” (throw 3 sixsided dices). The random generator will give a value between 3 and 18. If you read the rules of Microlite 84 it’s easy to add more character properties.

The cookie

In this case we’ll save the character data in a cookie in the client browser. However a cookie can only store a string. PHP can convert an array to a string:

$toCookie = serialize($character);

Now we can save the data in a cookie via setcookie:

setcookie(“character”, $toCookie, time()+ (60 * 60 * 60 * 24));

After the cookie has been set PHP can use the data. That is next time the page is read. PHP can check whether the cookie exists by isset($var):

if(isset( $_COOKIE[“character”] ) ) {

$charUnSer = unserialize($_COOKIE[“character”]);

}

This will convert the cookie string to an array.

The Loop

In order to echo or print the values of the array to a table:

foreach ($charUnSer as $key => $value)
{
print ”
<tr>
<td> $key </td> <td> $value </td>
</tr>
“;
}

And this loop will then create the character table in the wbbage.

26. October 2014
Principles of PHP
Here is a very short introduction to the principles of PHP. PHP is an acronym for “hypertext preprocessor”. PHP is a serverside language. We use PHP in order to prepare webpages, react to user input – and (on the third semester) to interact with databases.

Many Open Source CMSs use a combination of Apache, PHP and MySQL as an “engine”.

How to write PHP code

A php file is made in a manner similar to a HTML file. You create a file and give it the surname .php. So a file name sample could be:
- myFile.php
The file can contain other forms of code and tags such as JavaScript, CSS or HTML. In the file the php code is nested between a <? and ends with a ?>.

Variables, Strings and numbers

<?php
$a = 10; // a number
$b = “Hello World”; // a string
$c = “Ho, ho, hooo!”; // yes it’s another string
$d = “Santa Claus, says: “; // xmas is near
$combinedStrings = $d . $c; // Santa Claus, says: Ho, ho, hooo!
$e = NULL; // no value set
$f = true; // or false
?>

A variable is defined via the $ character. In the sample code above you can see several variables.

A string starts and ends with a quotation mark as ” or ‘. If you need quotation marks inside a string they should be nested like this:

<? $foo = “<img src=’image.png’ alt=’an image’ />”; ?>

You can create HTML code via PHP – and you can show an image on a web page like this:

<? echo $foo; ?>

or

<? print(“$foo”); ?>

Numbers

Since a variable can be a number, you can use PHP for calculations, such as:

<?
$x = 1;
$y = 19;
echo $x + $y; // should return 20
?>

See this page for more information about PHP and calculations.

Conditions

Arrays

Loops

Includes

<?
include(“myFile.php”);
require(“myFile.php”);
require_once(“myFile.php”);
?>
17. October 2014
WordPress theme with Bootstrap

An excellent tutorial by Zac Gordon: “How to Build a Responsive WordPress Theme with Bootstrap”. You’ll learn to hack a WP theme from scratch with Bootstrap and jQuery enabled.

6. May 2014

Canvas “Op-Art”

Ved hjælp af nogle simple loops kan man lave herlige geometriske former.

10. December 2013

Category: MMD2

PHP: Cookie, Array, Loop

Principles of PHP

WordPress theme with Bootstrap

Canvas “Op-Art”