PHP Chat System ??

Hello, I am only inches away from Finishing up my website until I had an Issue creating a simple chat system for my website,

I've Searched all over the place and it seems that the ONLY way is to use AJAX ( I am a total newbie to Ajax )

Is there any way to create a simple Database Driven Chat with PHP/MySql/Javascript ?

If yes, can you guide me with a simple code to start with ?... or better yet a tutorial.


Thanks in advance,
Kind Regards,
Issa Shamoun.

 

If you do not know AJAX, you do not know Javascript enough well to begin with.

 

If you want to use Ajax, which is pretty much the only way here, I, and not only I, recommend using Jquery (http://jquery.com/) which is a pretty neat javascript library.

For a chat application I recommend using json to communicate. (Using the json_encode function in php) If you want to fetch a variable from php, this script will do

$.POST("url/toscript.php", {"postvar1": "value","postvar2":"value","etc":"value"}, function(data){
 //data is now the Json code, echoed by the php file.
 var variable = eval("("+data+")");
 
}); 

Code (markup):

It really isn't that difficult.

 

dude, http://www.phpfreechat.net/ is opensource php chat application, download it and start learning from the code.

 

what is json ? yet another thing to add on for my learning curve ?

 

JSON is JavaScript Object Notation. A method of representing data.

As far as AJAX, jQuery makes it trivial:

$.ajax({
   url: "serverside-code.php",
   context: document.body,
   success: function(){
     //whatever you want done when the data returns from the server;
   } });

Code (markup):

But as freelanceinphp said, there are many PHP chat apps you can find on the web.