Can't write to Joomla Database? - php

Question

I am using Joomla 3.0 (it is up to date), and sorcerer. I have a form that I want to submit the entered data to a table in the database that I created. For some reason it will not write to the table, and I am pretty sure it can't find the database.
Since I am using sorcerer, I don't need to include code to connect to the database, it is supposed to be done automatically. I have tried countless variations of code and nothing is working. This seems like it should be pretty simple.
I am new to PHP/SQL coding, so maybe there is something wrong with my code, but after trying so many different things, I am wondering if there is another reason I can't write to the table.
Here is my HTML form and php. Essentially, I want to check if the username entered here in the form exists in the users table in my database. If it does exist and the checkbox is on, enter the username and message into the out_of_office table. If the checkbox is unchecked, delete the row from the table. But, as of now I can't even write to the table, so I figured I should get that part working properly first.
<form method="post" action="">
<p>Out of Office <input name="onoff" type="checkbox" value="ON"></p>
<p><label>Custom Out of Office Message</label>
<input type="text" name="custommessage" size="30" maxlength="25"/></p>
<p><label>Enter Username</label>
<input type="text" name="enterusername" size="30" maxlength="25"/></p>
<p><input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit" /></p>
</form>
<?php
$username = $_POST['enterusername'];
$message = $_POST['custommessage'];
$query = "INSERT INTO out_of_office VALUES ('$username', '$message')";
mysql_query($query) or die ('Error');
echo "data entered";
?>
When I go to the page on my web site I get a white page that says "Error".
Like I said, I have tried a lot of code for the PHP but nothing works. Please help!

Answer 1

Right, rather than having all your code in an article, you should make a small module which you can then import into your article.
Here is the documentation on how to develop a basic module. In addition to this, you can also use a module generator
Once you have yourself a basic module, you're going to want to start using Joomla coding standards for getting $_POST data. Have a read of the following on how to do this:
http://docs.joomla.org/Inserting,_Updating_and_Removing_data_using_JDatabase
As for your database query, again, you will need to looking into specific coding standards. Read more about this here:
http://docs.joomla.org/Inserting,_Updating_and_Removing_data_using_JDatabase
Here is an example of what your database query would look like
$db = JFactory::getDbo();
$query = $db->getQuery(true);
$columns = array('username', 'message');
$values = array($db->quote($username), $db->quote($message));
$query
->insert($db->quoteName('out_of_office'))
->columns($db->quoteName($columns))
->values(implode(',', $values));
$db->setQuery($query);
$db->execute();
Just something to get you started off. Good luck.
Hope this helps