PHP / jQuery based school project - php

Question

I'm developing a parents evening booking system as part of my A level programming project, but I've just gotten stuck.
I'll try explain the project the best I can in this post, so I can give you guys a clear picture of what the application does.
So far:
I have created a sort of language selector function with php, which gets the users language selection before logging in based upon a cookie. Here's the code for the script (Yes, very messy right now, but i'll fix it later on):
function check_language() {
//directory name for the custom defined languages.
$dir = 'languages';
//set a default language
$default = 'english';
//make sure that we have a language selected...
if (!isset($_COOKIE["lang"])){
//if there is no cookie set, set one.
setcookie("lang", "english", time()+3600*24*365);
}else{
$lang = ($_COOKIE["lang"]);
}
//build the path string.
$path = $dir."/".$lang.".php";
if (file_exists($path)) {
//return the selected language pack directory.
return $path;
}else{
//protect the server, by returning the default language path...
return $dir."/".$default.".php";
}
}
Whenever I want my PHP script to access language files, I call the function I have created and then include the language file on the page like so:
$lang = check_language();
include_once($lang);
english.php file...
$txt['languagename'] = "English";
//text for the index page...
$txt['titletext'] = 'Parents evening booking system';
$txt['welcometext1'] = 'Welcome to the parents evening booking system for ';
welsh.php file...
$txt['languagename'] = "Cymraeg";
//text am y tudalen index...
$txt['titletext'] = 'System bwcio noson rhieni';
$txt['welcometext1'] = 'Croeso i system bwcio noson rhieni ';
So for example, if the users cookie contains 'welsh', the file welsh.php would be included, and I would have access to an associative array ($txt), with the supplied translations.
That part of my script works perfectly so far.
Now i'm coding the admin page, and I need an option to be able to add a school year to the database through the admin panel.
This is where i'm a bit confused on what to do, as the string ('year 10' for example) would be 'blwyddyn 10' in welsh. So this means I would need to add another element to the associate array for all language files with a string for the required language so it could be accessed in the script. (if this makes any sense at all).
I have created a table in the database for all languages like so:
languageid name filename
1 English english.php
2 Welsh welsh.php
Then I wrote this code to connect to the database and create an input box for each language in the database, along with a "translation id key" input box.
include'/inc/functions.php');
ConnectToDB();
$query = "SELECT * FROM languages WHERE 1";
$result = mysql_query($query);
$languages = array();
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
$languages[] = $row['name'];
}
echo 'Translation key id: <input type="text" name="languagetermkey"/>';
echo '</br>';
foreach($languages as $item){
echo 'Year name ('.$item. " string):";
echo '<input type="text" name="'.$item.'String'.'"/>'; //e.g "EnglishString"
echo "</br>";
}
Now if I wanted to add the terms above (the text from both input boxes) into my language files ("english.php" and "welsh.php") how would I go about sending an array with an ajax post request?
Previously I have been using this code, but I guess it won't work for what I want to do this time :(
$.ajax({
type: 'post',
url: 'add_class.php',
data: 'classname=' + "test",
error: function(){
alert('There was a problem adding the class !');
},
success: function() {
alert("Class has been added successfuly");
}
});
Is this the right way to go about doing this sort of thing ? If not, can somebody guide me towards the right direction on what to do? i'm just a bit confused and this is my first time using jQuery.
I know this post is long, and I do appreciate people's efforts for reading the whole thing.
Thanks in advance for any replies (Y)

Answer 1

For the bit about sending the array with AJAX, you can serialize a form and pass that, meaning you can access it just as if it was a normal POST from PHP.
$.ajax({
type: 'post',
url: 'add_class.php',
data: $('#formID').serialize(),
error: function(){
alert('There was a problem adding the class !');
},
success: function() {
alert("Class has been added successfuly");
}
});
For the "Year 10", you can use sprintf or vsprintf like this - example showing both sprintf and vsprintf.
$year = 'Year %d';
$yearWelsh = 'Blwyddyn %d';
echo sprintf($year, 10) . ', or in Welsh, we say ' . vsprintf($yearWelsh, array(10));

Answer 2

If I understand correctly, you want to change the language cookie when a new language is selected. You can use jQuery to set this cookie and then load the page. Php can then select the right language file.
Of course there are numerous other ways to do the same thing. Hope this helps though.

Answer 3

$.ajax is a more complicated though valid method to send an ajax request via jquery. You are looking for something like this - jQuery getJSON or jQuery get. Scheme is the same:
$.get('{queryURL}, data, function(response) { /* do something with the response */ });
The data variable may be an array, object or string created by jQuery's form.serialize().