Ultimate Guestbook Tutorial: How to build a Guestbook with a honeypot, error checking, IP banning, pagination, e-mail notification and smilies with PHP and mySQL

Only 3 things left to do. Show our guestbook entries, show smilies and install our pagination. How about we finish off this tutorial in that order then!

Make a new file in the templates folder called entries.php. Then open up skin.php and:

Under:

<tr>
		<td valign="top"><?php include('form.php');?></td>
	</tr>

Add:

<tr>
		<td height="10"></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td valign="top"><?php include('entries.php'); ?></td>
	</tr>

All this does is link the entries.php file into the skin.php file. Now lets open up our entries.php file:

<?php
	$query = mysql_query("SELECT *, UNIX_TIMESTAMP(`date`) as date FROM `entries` ORDER BY `date` DESC");
?>
<table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
	<?php
		while($row = mysql_fetch_array($query)){
		$i++;
		if(($i % 2) == 0){
			$class = 'class="entry1"';
			$classbg = 'class="entriesbg1"';
		} else {
			$class = 'class="entry2"';
			$classbg = 'class="entriesbg2"';
		}
	?>
	<tr>
		<td valign="top" <?php echo $classbg; ?>>
		<table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
			<tr>
				<td valign="top" align="right">#<?php echo $row['id']; ?> Posted on: <?php echo date("d/m/y g:i a", $row['date']); ?></td>
			</tr>
			<tr>
				<td valign="top">
				<table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" <?php echo $class; ?>>
					<tr>
						<td valign="top"><span>Name:</span></td>
						<td valign="bottom" width="100%"><?php echo stripslashes($row['name']); ?></td>
					</tr>
					<tr>
						<td valign="top" nowrap="nowrap"><span>E-Mail:</span></td>
						<td valign="bottom" width="100%"><?php echo stripslashes($row['email']); ?></td>
					</tr>
					<?php
						if(strlen($row['website']) > 0){
							if(substr(strtolower($row['website']), 0, 7) != 'http://'){
								$website = 'http://'.$row['website'];
							} else {
								$website = $row['website'];
							}
					?>
					<tr>
						<td valign="top" nowrap="nowrap"><span>Website:</span></td>
						<td valign="bottom" width="100%"><a href="<?php echo stripslashes($website); ?>" target="_blank"><?php echo substr($website,0,30); ?></a></td>
					</tr>
					<?php
						}
					?>
					<tr>
						<td valign="top" colspan="2"><span>Message:</span></td>
					</tr>
					<tr>
						<td valign="top" colspan="2"><?php echo stripslashes($row['message']); ?></td>
					</tr>
				</table>
				</td>
			</tr>
		</table>
		</td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td valign="top" height="10"></td>
	</tr>
	<?php } ?>
</table>

There is alot of CSS going on here, so here is the new CSS i added, add it to your stylesheet, or add your own:

.entries {
	padding: 10px 10px 0px 10px;
	border: #999999 solid 1px;
	font-size: 14px;
	background: #333333;
}

.entriesbg2 {
	padding: 10px;
	border: #999999 solid 1px;
	font-size: 14px;
	background: #111111;
}

.entriesbg1 {
	padding: 10px;
	border: #999999 solid 1px;
	font-size: 14px;
	background: #555555;
}

.entrytitle {
	font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, Courier;
}

.entrysmall {
	font-size: 12px;
}

.entry1 {
	padding: 5px;
	margin: 2px;
	border: #222222 solid 1px;
	background: url('../images/entry2.jpg') repeat-x #000000;
}

.entry2 {
	padding: 5px;
	margin: 2px;
	border: #555555 solid 1px;
	background: url('../images/entry1.jpg') repeat-x #333333;
}

a {
	color: #FFFFFF;
	text-decoration: none;
}

a:hover {
	text-decoration: underline;
}

Correct, there are some images i used. You can get them from the source pack, or make your own background images. Just make a folder in the templates folder called images, and drop the entry1.jpg and entry2.jpg files in there.

Now time for some explanation, as usual i will be using the line number to explain what is going on; but for the most part it does not require any explanation.

2: This is our SQL statement, which gets all of the entries, orders them by the date (newest first) and converts the mysql timestamp to a unix_timestamp, something php can understand.

6: This sets up a while statement, which runs through each logical row in the array, or the output that the SQL query generated.

7: Sets up a variable called $i which is self incrementing, meaning each time the while loop iterates (runs through) it increases its value by 1. Which is helpful for lines 8-14

8-14: This section helps us get alternating row colours. Well not really colours, in our case its styles. It uses the modulus operator, %. Which basically shows the remainder of a division. For example: What is the remainder or 3 going into 15. It would be 0, because 3×5 = 15, so it fits perfectly. But 3 % 5 would return 2. Because 3 only goes in once, leaving a remainder of 2. You get it?

Then the relevant classes are stored into variables, which will be overwritten each iteration.

17: Shows how we use this alternating rows. It simply outputs the variable and in turn chooses the right style.

20: This is the first line that shows us how to access our new array. We stored the SQL array into the variable $row. So now it can be accessed via: $row['id']; Each time the loop runs through the array steps through, so its like reading the table row by row, the variables don’t change, just the values.

34: This checks if there is a value for the website, if not it won’t display the title/section.

35: This checks to see if there is ‘http://’ at the front of the website address. If not then it will add it.

43: This line just shows a partial segment of the website URL, as we don’t want a 200 character long website address destroying our theme style!

That’s pretty much it! Also note the stripslashes. We put the text in with slashes, so we should remove them in order to show the information. Play around with the style, the style is pretty dark and evil at the moment, so if you like rainbow colours go style it up! Next we will get some smilies into the messages!