Guided: Build a CMS in PHP

These guided steps will give you a basic framework and background in database creation and access, as well as database interactions with PHP (creating, reading, updating, and deleting items).

info> There are solutions for each task located in the solutions folder if you get stuck at any point throughout the lab, In this step, you will be working on creating the database to store our data. (In this case you are storing HTML that will be used to render the pages of the CMS.) You will create both the database itself, and the Pages table. Next you'll need to create a table to store our contact info for the CMS. This script creates the pages table with 3 columns - id, title, and content. You’ll notice that id is set to auto_increment and is also a primary key. title is a varchar or string limited to 255 characters, and content is a blob type which can take much longer content. Now it's time to create the config file. The config file is where your application will find important details - like admin username and password, and mysql connection information.

Next, you will create the main class file for Pages. This will include functions for creating, reading, updating, and deleting Pages (also known as CRUD.)

To keep things simple, you'll use static classes, but this could be easily expandable to proper class structure and include things like data validation and relationships with other entities. The Page class will take care of the database interactions - inserting, updating, deleting, and retrieving. You'll be using static classes here just for the sake of simplicity. In a real-world application, you would want to get acquainted with proper object-oriented programming, as well as security checks and SQL injection prevention. Each of these functions is quite readable and straight-forward in logic.

Here you are going to create a basic static function to fetch a page by its id. The next function you will need is getList. This will provide us an easy way to retrieve a list of pages from the database table so you can display them. Just like it sounds - you need to have the ability to edit or update an existing Page.

In this step you will be creating the user-facing web pages that will form the interface of the Content Management System. These are dynamic pages, and the pages that include forms also include form processing functionality on the same page. This is done for simplicity sake, but in a real-world scenario you would likely put form processing in various class files.

info> Before you can view any of these pages in the web browser, you'll need to copy all the files to the Apache web root. It is recommended you do this at the very end of the lab, where you'll find the instructions on how to do this. You’ll need to create a page that the admin will see after logging in. It will have a list of existing pages, as well as the ability to create new pages, or edit / delete existing ones. Note: These pages are intentionally very bare-bones so you can easily get a grasp of the underlying concepts. You will notice that each page includes session_start(), which carries over the previous session data (i.e. ensuring the user stays logged in, if he is logged in.) You will also see that on this admin page, you are checking to see if the user is logged in. If not, they are redirected to the login.

Now you can begin adding CRUD operations to our admin page. Let’s start with the create functionality so you can add new Pages to the site. You need to be able to delete pages as well. The public index page will have a listing of links to the pages that have been created in the CMS, as well as a link to login (for the admin.) The last page you need to create in this step is the "View" page. This functionality lets the user actually see the page that was created in the CMS!

Finally, you’ll implement the user management functionality - login and logout. These are the user-facing form pages, similar to the others you made for pages, but much simpler since you aren’t implementing an entire user management system - just logging in and out with predefined user credentials. User management is super simple here - the admin username and password are stored in plain text in the config file. Obviously not production ready - but you get the idea! And last but not least - you need to be able to log out as well.

With your files copied over, you can now view them in the browser! Enter the following URL in the address bar of the browser tab below:

localhost/index.php

Next to the address bar, be sure to click the Open in new browser tab button, otherwise the login functionality may not work. You should now be able to create, edit, view, and delete your own pages through the basic CMS you created in PHP. Well done!

In this lab, you walked through the basic concepts of MySQL and PHP interactivity. These are important building blocks to building websites and web apps using PHP. In a real world scenario, you will likely be interacting with various PHP frameworks such as CakePHP or Laravel, and perhaps different databases like PostgreSQL.

In addition, many real-world apps have back-ends built in a server language like PHP, with front-ends built out in React or Angular. But these basic building blocks of PHP and MySQL, as demonstrated with this simple Content Management System, will give you a deeper understanding of the moving parts as you dive deeper and explore more advanced frameworks and methodologies.