If you haven't already seen part 1 of this tutorial then watch it here.

For the second part of this tutorial you will learn how to create a cookie to log the admin user in and create the tables for your news system.

Ok so first of all we are going to modify the file from the first tutorial.

Modify:

if($_POST['username == $username AND $_POST['password'] == $password)
{
echo '<a href="newpost.php">New Post</a>';
}

To

if($_POST['username == $username AND $_POST['password'] == $password)
{
setcookie("username", $username, time()+3600);
setcookie("password", $password, time()+3600);
echo '<a href="newpost.php">New Post</a>';
}

The two new bits of code that we add are setcookie("username", $username, time()+3600); and setcookie("password", $password, time()+3600);. What we are doing here is creating a cookie called username and assigning the value of $username to it and time()+3600 will make the cookie expire in 1 hour.

Create the news table

Insert the following MySQL code into phpMyAdmin or any kind of MySQL software that you are using

CREATE TABLE `news_system` (
`id` INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY ,
`author` VARCHAR( 50 ) NOT NULL ,
`date` VARCHAR( 20 ) NOT NULL ,
`title` VARCHAR( 100 ) NOT NULL ,
`post` TEXT NOT NULL
) ENGINE = MYISAM ;

Connect To The Database

Create a file called dbconnect.php in the parent directory to the admin folder.

Enter the following code into dbconnect.php

<?php
$host = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$db = "news_system";

$conn = mysql_connect($host, $username, $password);
mysql_select_db($db);
?>

Change the variables $host, $username, $password and $db.
Most of the time localhost is what the host will be so if you're unsure then don't change this.

Create News Submission Form

Create a file called newpost.php and insert the following code below into the newpost.php file.

Make the form

Now that are tables have been created in our database the next thing to do is to add a HTML form and PHP code to process the form.

Our HTML Form:

<form method="POST">
Author: <input type="text" name="author"><br>
Title: <input type="text" name="title"><br>
Post:<br>
<textarea name="post" cols="30" rows="7"> </textarea><br>
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Publish Post">
</form>

PHP Code:

<?php
require("../dbconnect.php");
//if submit button has been pressed
if($_POST['submit']){
//retrieve form text fields
$author = $_POST['author'];
$title = $_POST['title'];
$post = $_POST['post'];

//get the date
$date = date('d/m/Y');

//post information to database
$query = mysql_query("INSERT INTO news_system VALUES('','$author','$date','$title','$post')");

if($query){
echo "Post was successfully added to the database";
}
else {
echo "Post was not added";
}
}

?>

In the next post you will learn how to display the latest 5 posts.

If something isn't clear or you would like something to be included in the next post then please leave your comments.

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