Convert Microsoft to LINUX: PHP/PhpMyAdmin


There are numerous good PHP tutorials on the web, please look at this one for starters:   PHP Tutorial

If you already know Perl, PHP is easy as it is very similar. You can create functions and even classes. PHP can be totally object oriented. Three of the web pages I have here are using PHP in combination with a MySQL database. These are the   Commands ,   MySQL/Distro List   and the   Bicycle Trips   page.   Here  is the code for the Bicycle Trips page, note the nice function at the end of the section. The other two pages use the same code but do not call the function to display the navigation links.
Here  is the code for the MySQL Distro List page. Note, how it displays a form at the end to update the database and do some preliminary checking.

Another really great tool to use for managing, building and creating databases is PHPMyAdmin . Go to a web page and type:
http://localhost/phpmyadmin
You should see immediatley the PHPMyAdmin page and be prompted to login. If you do not install it with the following commands on Ubuntu/Debian Distros:
apt-get install mysql-client*
apt-get install mysql-server*
apt-get install phpmyadmin*
If PHP and perl are not already there, the above should install them too along with the Apache and Apache2 webserver. Note, you automatically get the webserver configured for phpmyadmin .

You may find, after installing you still get the 404 not found error when typing:
http://localhost/phpmyadmin
In that case, just use the default Apache2 phpmyadmin setup file by typing:
sudo ln -s /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf /etc/apache2/conf.d/phpmyadmin.conf
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

If you are on Fedora Red Hat just use the yum command instead of the apt-get command, i.e.:
yum install mysql-client*
yum install mysql-server*
yum install phpmyadmin*

You can convert your Micorsoft Access Database to a MySQL database in the following way. First export your Microsoft Access Database as a CSV Comma seperated variable file. You can then import this same file into the MySQL Database you have created with PhpMyAdmin. Note you want to use the same keys, field names, lengths and character types as you did in the Microsoft Access Database.

Note, you must be very careful when you export your file from Microsoft Access. Choose to export is as a CSV file but do not open it in Excel or Access. Immediately change it to a text file using the Microsoft GUI or the DOS command prompt to rename it with a .txt extension as in Linux_tab.txt You can now use this file to import into your MySQL Database using PHPMyAdmin.