Lesson 16 - Putting PHP interfaces into practice - GuestBook

In the previous lesson, Interfaces and abstract classes in PHP, we went over the theoretical aspects of interfaces and abstract classes. Now, as is tradition here at ICT.social, we're going to put what we learned to proper use.

Guestbook

We'll program a simple guestbook or rather a shout-board. I'm sure you all have seen widgets like this somewhere on the web. They're a spot on the website, where the last couple of messages are displayed along with a form that submits a new message. To protect us from spam, our messenger will use a captcha (an antispam mechanism). Our captcha will require an interface because we're going to make it modular.

Create a new project folder, wherein you'll create a "classes" folder and an index.php file.

Database

First and foremost, we'll set up the database. Create a new table and name it "message". This table will contain guestbook messages, and will have the following columns:

• message_id (int, primary, AI)
• created (DATETIME)
• name (varchar 50)
• content (TEXT)

Add the table using PHPMyAdmin:

Alternatively, you can use the following creation script:

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