Seeking advice on technology to use

[Dvaeer]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm looking for some advice on sorting and presenting data in a simple php website. I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction.

 

Site background:

• An activity holiday website
  
• About 100 holidays in different countries and different categories
  
• Site uses php includes
  
• Each holiday on a single page at a unique url
  
• All handcoded
  
• All developed locally and uploaded through FTP, no CMS, no database
  
• The site receives low amounts of traffic and is on a shared server
  

 

A simple setup, but for me very effective so far.

 

What I'd like to do:

Create a page where visitors can make a selection of holidays based on things like country, type, duration and price. I'm imagining visitors selecting a number of criteria, pressing a button and receiving a list of pages on the site that match their criteria.

 

You may now be thinking, that's a piece of cake, why are you asking here?

 

My current skills

HTML, CSS and some PHP. I'm also comfortable with Excel 

Obviously I need to learn something new. The question is which technology?

 

What would you recommend I learn in my scenario? What do you think would be the simplest way of doing what I want?

 

At the moment I'm thinking along the lines of:

• An XML file with the criteria for each holiday in it and access this through PHP (not sure if this is do-able/sensible), but I think I would like simplicity of it;
  
• A mySQL database (big learning curve for me I think, but will do it if it's the best route);
  
• An SQLite database (maybe more suitable for my needs than mySQL);
  
• Something else?
  

 

Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

Thank you

 

Dave

[freelance84]

 

I'd learn mysql if i were you... it isn't very hard and once you've grasped it things like what you are suggesting will be a doddle... especially if you have all the data you want to search by...

 

XML is, pardon my french, a right bitch sometimes. Especially when you want to modify the contents. Also it is no way near as fast as a database.

 

If you need any assistance i'm open for some freelance work over the next month..

[thehippy]

I would also recommend putting some effort into learning MySQL.  One of the few things I agree with what Oracle has done for the MySQL community is to put some dev time with the MySQL Workbench application.  An application that is used to administer, model and interact with MySQL databases.  MySQL for the most part installs like any other software, using MySQL Workbench eases the learning curve of interacting with it, which beginners seem to see as the biggest hurdle.

 

You mentioned XML, its a fine technology on its own but PHP's support for it has been, let me say inconsistent in the most tactful way possible.  It is certainly possible for PHP and XML to work, there are just so many deficiencies in its usage I cannot recommend it.

 

sqlite is a fine database, has a small footprint, its quick but its a bit old school in its usage, you may find MySQL easier to grasp given that you're an excel user.  I do not believe there is a similar tool to MySQL Workbench for sqlite either, perhaps some commercial software but I've seen nothing free or open source.

[Dvaeer]

@freelance84 @thehippy: Thank you very much for your replies, much appreciated. Looking into MySQL and Workbench now

[PFMaBiSmAd]

XML - you wouldn't use xml as a database (it was originally intended to transfer data between dissimilar systems.) The extra overhead and amount of specific coding required to use it as a database is not worth it.

 

By using an actual database, you can concentrate on forming the queries that you need to retrieve the data that you want and let the database engine do the work of finding that data for you.

[Dvaeer]

Thanks @PFMaBiSmAd. I'll forget about XML for now

[KevinM1]

As far as data exchange formats go, JSON is also easier to deal with than XML.