TheFegMag is a web portal for showbiz industry to find and team up with creative talent available. We designed the website brand, and developed the using PHP/mySQL.

Built in function of ‘mysql_list_fields’ can be used to check if column exists in table, this function returns fields in table as result set that be traversed to check if particular column exists.

Below is simple function to check if particular column exists in your MySql table.

//checkField function takes table name and column name as parameter

<?php

function checkField($tableName,$columnName)
{
//Global variable, $db for database name, these variable are common in whole application so stored in a global variable, alternatively you can pass this as parameters of function.

global $db;

//Getting table fields through mysql built in function, passing db name and table name
$tableFields = mysql_list_fields($db, $tableName);

//loop to traverse tableFields result set
for($i=0;$i<mysql_num_fields($tableFields);$i++){

//Using mysql_field_name function to compare with column name passed. If they are same function returns 1

if(mysql_field_name($tableFields, $i)==$columnName)
return 1;
} //end of loop
} //end of function

?>

We at Genex Business Solutions are committed to excellence in web development and use the latest techniques to develop web sites, which are modern, expandable, flexible, and fast! We have been working with PHP/mySQL/JavaScript/HTML/CSS on Linux (preferably) or Windows from more than a decade.

Most of our clients are not even interested to know how we build a website, what technologies do we use and what is our method. However since we are a development company, we are always pushing to adopt the best way to develop our websites or software’s.

Since last two years we have been concentrating on expandable PHP webs which use modern MVC (Model-View-Controller, WikiPedia Link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-view-controller ) development architecture. Having an MVC model allows us to develop, skin able websites. The design, and application layer are in separate files. This makes front end and back end of the website independent for changes and modifications. Hence you can continually upgrade your website with freedom.

Modern web2.0 is more interactive than ever before in the history of web. The use of AJAX and DIV to create independent data components within a webpage has given website navigation and user friendliness a new meaning. Since web pages these days interact in many ways with a user, we require standard models to control the working of the user, and provide security. This is unachievable without a solid framework for your website.

By following MVC architecture and working in an object oriented format, we just not develop a website. We develop a base for you to grow on it and expand. Adding new modules are easy and it does not disturb existing functionality of the site.

Front end of the web site which is also called user interface is so flexible that you can allow your users to change the interface attributes (colors, fonts, images etc) as per their likes. Or you can allow them to select from multiple color themes, which you have already organized for them.

To us modern web architecture (MVC) just not gives you benefits but in fact is necessary for any quality website today. Increased online traffic and immense Internet competition is demanding innovative websites!

There are some Open Source PHP frameworks available for developers to work with them. The best of which we found are as follows:

Code Igniter http://www.codeigniter.com
Cake PHP http://www.cakephp.org

The development framework we follow at Genex Business Solutions is originally developed from scratch in-house. Its similar to Code Igniter as it follows strict MVC architecture. It’s all about quality, speed with accuracy.

Example Site built with Genex PHP MVC framework.
DueDaily.com (Under Testing, not released on actual domain)

You can visit the site at
http://www.genexbs.com/demo/dd/

All the famous websites today are using MVC development architecture, no matter what is their choice of programming language. The fire started by Gmail has taken over the Internet market and all big sites have already released their upgraded websites having AJAX and all that creativity of it.

We look forward to release more information on our framework in future. Keep visiting back.

Jalho - Just a little help online is in labs these days, its going to be free online event management portal for public to easily setup and manage their events, invite guests and service providers. Handling recurring events is integral part of any event management system, while writing cron job for event refresh I came across an interesting feature of MySQL that helps easily copying one row to new one, which actually saved me lot of time.

Below is query to easily copy row :

insert into table(col1,col2,col3,col4) select (col1,col2,col3,col4) from table where condition;

Another interesting feature was ability to insert different values in columns, as with each refresh event start date changed so I have wrote query to copy other columns as it is but insert new date in event start date.

insert into table(col1,col2,col3,col4,event_start_date) select (col1,col2,col3,col4,'2008-02-19') from table where condition;

Its better to pass column list to avoid errors of duplicate id in query, however if your table dont have any auto increment / primary key or you want to copy in different table you can pass and select "*" instead of columns. That will copy all columns including any auto incremented values.