Form Handling-Exporting Data

[Arachian]

I have never used PHP before. I am working on a project for a buddy of mine who runs a small business. His site needs a "Registration" page so that if someone wants to take his class, they register on the website and pay a deposit via paypal. He then wants the information from the form exported to a spreadsheet and he wants to have a complimentary email sent to the student saying they have been successfully registered for the class. I was told PHP was the way to go for the server-side handling of the form data. I know this is such a newbie question, but I have no idea where to start. I would greatly appreciate it if someone more experienced in the subject-matter could point me in the right direction! All I know is that I need to download mySQL, Apache web server, and PHP. Am I correct in that statement? If so, what's next? Thanks!

[Barand]

here's one starting point

 

http://php.net/manual/en/getting-started.php

 

or

 

http://www.tizag.com/phpT/

[Christian F.]

There are a couple of other subjects that you really need to study as well, if you're going to be working with financial data. Security is a huge field, and extremely important, in programming. There are also quite a few laws and regulations that enters the field, once we're start to talk about financial data.

 

The subjects which you need to study, as a minimum, are:

• Input validation.
  
• Output escaping.
  
• Encryption.
  
• SSL.
  
• Client side vs. server side information.
  
• Session security.

 

Also, remember: Never trust the client. Whatever information you get from the client can, and will, be manipulated in order to break your system.

Sounds easy, but client-side information can be found in some quite unexpected locations. Such as in $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'], $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'], and so forth.

Edited December 29, 2012 by Christian F.