How do I display the two most recent posts in a textarea using PHP and MySQL?

Question

My plan was to have one textarea at the top where you could type whatever you want and post it, then the two textarea's below it would update. But I have no idea how to do this, please help!

<?php
    if ($_POST['submit']) {
        mysql_connect ("10.246.16.206", "alanay_eu", "hidden")
        or die ('Error: ' . mysql_error());

        mysql_select_db("alanay_eu") or die ('Data error:' . mysql_error());

        $post = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['post']); 

        $query="INSERT INTO Posts (post) VALUES ('$post')";

        mysql_query($query) or die ('Error updating database' . mysql_error());
    }
?>

<center>
  <form method="post" action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>">
      <textarea name="post" rows="12" cols="60" spellcheck="false">
      Example Comment</textarea> <br/>
      <input name="submit" type="submit" value="submit" /> <br/>
      <textarea rows="12" cols="60" spellcheck="false"></textarea> <br/>
      <textarea rows="12" cols="60" spellcheck="false"></textarea>
  </form>
</center>

can you please tell if there is an column in the DB which keeps the Timestamp? if yes, you can query the DB and fetch the top 2 posts — Neo, May 15 '14 at 19:10
No there isn't, I'm still really new to PHP. Could I use something like SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 2? — , May 15 '14 at 19:13

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:09

0

Alter the table and add a timestamp:

ALTER TABLE Posts ADD postDate TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP;

Then order and limit by postDate:

SELECT post FROM Posts ORDER BY postDate DESC LIMIT 2

Iterate through the results and echo out the post inside the textarea tag.

IMPORTANT

mysql_* functions are deprecated, and should no longer be used. Look into mysqli or PDO.

Also, use htmlentities() with $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] to protect against XSS. See this question for more info.

An example using mysqli:

//I usually put the connection in a separate file, and include it as needed
$mysqli = mysqli_connect("myhost","myuser","mypassw","mydb") or die("Error " . mysqli_error($mysqli)); 

$stmt = $mysqli->prepare("SELECT post FROM Posts ORDER BY postDate LIMIT 2"); 
$stmt->execute();
$stmt->bind_result($post);
while($stmt->fetch()) {
    $post = htmlentities($post, ENT_QUOTES, "UTF-8");
    echo "<textarea rows='12' cols='60' spellcheck='false'>$post</textarea> <br/>";
}

edited May 23 '17 at 12:09

Community

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answered May 15 '14 at 19:22

Matthew Johnson

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I implemented that code in the main PHP file and everything went blank. I added the postDate like you said also. :/ – May 15 '14 at 19:33
Turn on error reporting to see the errors (but remove in production environment): `ini_set('display_errors',1); error_reporting(E_ALL);` The connection has to be updated as well: `$mysqli = mysqli_connect("myhost","myuser","mypassw","mybd") or die("Error " . mysqli_error($link));` – Matthew Johnson May 15 '14 at 19:35
The `$link` at the end of the connect line should be `$mysqli`, sorry. – Matthew Johnson May 15 '14 at 19:41
It's somewhat working, but instead of showing the two most recent, it shows the first two I created. :S – May 15 '14 at 19:51
Oops, `ORDER BY postDate DESC`. Default is ascending, which would give you the first. Updated the answer, let me know of any other issues so I can reflect it in the answer also. – Matthew Johnson May 15 '14 at 19:54

How do I display the two most recent posts in a textarea using PHP and MySQL?

1 Answers1