A Quick TourAbout phpLensPhpLens is all about working smart and reusing your code. It makes database stuff that was hard to do in PHP easy. We can prototype and design from the Web browser using the Grid Builder, then generate the final PHP code.
ScriptingHere is the simplest phpLens script: (which we will explain in the Your First phpLens Script section). 01: <?php
02: include('./phplens.inc.php');
03: session_start();
04: $lens = PHPLensPConnect('prodLens', 'select * from Products',
05: 'mysql', 'localhost', 'userid', 'password', 'database');
06: $lens->Render();
07: $lens->Close();
08: ?>
This produces the following result: : Dynamic Editing using Your BrowserOne of the things that we all hate to do is uploading our files to the Web server.
PhpLens shortcuts the upload process. Dynamic editing allows you to edit your database in your Web browser.
The red
You can also click the gray
The two green If you change any of the dynamic settings, you can regenerate your PHP code quickly by using the Generate PHP Code feature. BuilderThis builds your grids with a few mouse-clicks. No coding is required to use phpLens with the Grid Builder, phplens/gridbuilder/.
Just select your database and table from the top menu, and a data grid is created for the selected table. You can dynamically edit the settings, then click on Generate PHP Code , create a new .php file, and copy & paste the generated code. This is a real time saver because no typing (except the .php file name) is required. Note that in phpLens 2.0, an alternative to the grid builder (but with a similar UI) is the applet Builder, accessible from phplens/builder/. Parts of phpLensLet's make sure you understand the terminology we are going to use for the rest of the manual. We can divide the above screen into the following areas:
The Grid is the left table. Each record in the Grid is assigned a Record Number (RecNo is the short form). In the above picture, one of the records has been selected (RecNo 2), and the remaining fields of the selected record are shown in the Detail Table.
You can scroll the data with the navigation bar, which provides:
New to phpLens 2.0We support three major innovations. 1. Multiple Row Editing in the GridThe first innovation is the new multiple row editing feature. This allows you to edit multiple rows in a grid. This is enabled by setting the editMultiple property:
This could produce the following screen where you can edit multiple records and click on Save to update all the records in one shot:
2. Hot Updates for Popup ListsThe second innovation is popup hot updates. This allows you to define dynamic popups that automatically update based on changes in the data. Look at the above diagram again. Notice that the country field shows 3 countries. If you change the country from USA to Malaysia for example, the state and city fields will automatically query the web server to retrieve a list of Malaysian states and cities. This is configured by defining two properties: lookupLens and phplensDatabase.
$lens->lookupLens = 'state^select distinct state from cities where country = {country}';
$lens->phplensDatabase = 'databasename';
The above example has been simplified because we only show the sql statement used for the state field. For the lookupLens property, {country} is a macro variable which tells phpLens to search for a field by that name and replace the macro variable with the current value of {country}. The phplensDatabase is a property that sets the database connection parameters to use. 3. AppletsThe last innovation is the new applets interface for creating phpLens objects. Formerly with the builder you had to manually merge the source code everytime you changed a phpLens parameter from the dynamic editor. In an applet, we split the PHP code into two files: the applet.inc.php which contains the code is is never modified once created, and applet.imp.inc.php (imp stands for implementation) which is overwritten automatically by phpLens everytime you make a change with the dynamic editor. This requires the directory where the applets reside in to be set to read/write, which is by default the phplens/builder/applets/obj directory. To use an applet in another PHP page, which has an id of "
You can also move the whole confucious directory to another location
once the applet has been created provided the PHPLENS_DIR constant which points
to the location of the phplens directory is predefined in the confucious.inc.php
file (or in an include). Applets can be created using a graphical user interface
similar to the gridbuilder's from phpLens/builder/index.php. Changes from 2.0 to 2.8
Changes in 3.0The new WYSIWYG HTML Editor for fields holding HTML with htmlEditLens. Support for javascript popups in the data grid using the overlib library. See the overlibLens property. Up to 30% improvement in execution speed and HTML generated is much smaller. Support for the latest browsers Konqueror and Safari. Sorting by multiple fields - previously, you could click on title links to sort based on one field. Now you can sort by multiple fields. See showSortCols. The PHPLensArray( ) feature allows you to manipulate an array of session variables instead of database data. This makes it easy to create wizards or forms that manipulate session variables. Better support for CSS. See CSS property and also the dynamic editor CSS color styles. The titleLevel 1-3 properties allow you to have titles that span multiple rows and columns. Useful for reports. See example 970. TerminologyWe use the terms columns and fields interchangeably to mean table fields. The terms search and filter are also interchangeable. This documentation system is maintained using phpLens | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
