Week 9 - PHP Part 3

Question 1

What are PHP Require and Include used for?

How are they different?

Answer 1

PHP Include is a function used for resuing PHP code such as menus.

Where include allows for the website to continue running, require means that it must be filled in otherwise there will be a fatal error and the website will crash.

Question 2

How can we manage and maintain states between clients and servers?

Answer 2

Query strings, sessions and hidden fields.

Question 3

State

Answer 3

The behaviour and interaction of a user during a web browser session.

Question 4

Query Strings

Answer 4

A string of characters used to transfer data between PHP scripts to maintain state of a user.

They are found in the URL and have many parts to them which allow for specific information from a database to be received and allow this to work.

Question 5

What do you need to pass information between websites using query strings?

Answer 5

• ? after the URL
• name = value pairs
• & separating the name = value pairs

Question 6

Sessions

Answer 6

An amount of time where PHP script will maintain the state on a web server.

Question 7

Why do we want to maintain state information?

Answer 7

It ensures that the user’s experience and usability of the website will be as streamline as possible.

For example: not having to re-enter in their details on every subpage of a webpage.

Question 8

Why is query string passing used?

Answer 8

So that we can pass information between PHP scripts.

Question 9

Was HTTP stateful or stateless?

Answer 9

HTTP was a stateless protocol until cookies were introduced which made them stateful.

Question 10

Hidden Input

Answer 10

A hidden field in a form which allows for data to be stored without the user seeing it.

Typically used for storing database records which need to be updated when form in submitted.