Chapter 10. Winestore Customer Management

only for RuBoard - do not distribute or recompile

This chapter is the first of four that outline the case study winestore application. It contains an overview of the complete application, as well as the customer management scripts for the winestore. We also introduce the include files that store common functionality used throughout the application.

The material presented here doesn't fully explain the scripts from the online winestore. The descriptions are outlines, and careful reading of the scripts is required to fully understand the functionality. Also, we avoid duplicating our discussions of the principles and basic techniques for building web database applications. Chapter 2 through Chapter 9 are required background reading to fully understand the implementations outlined here.

The online winestore illustrates the practice of developing web database applications and isn't a production e-commerce application. It is a complete application but doesn't have all the features of a full production system. Such a system would include features such as credit-card processing, a password change facility, prompts that confirm whether a user wishes to proceed with updates or orders, more comprehensive search features, and an administrative interface. However, we plan to add additional features to the online examples, and updates are available from the book's web site at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/webdbapps/ or at the authors' site, http://www.webdatabasebook.com.

We recommend downloading and installing the online winestore on a local machine by following the instructions in Appendix A and Chapter 3. The best way to understand the code is to have a local copy of the application, to open the scripts in an editor, and to walk through the scripts while using the application with a browser. Modifications of the scripts are encouraged. Suggestions are welcome by email to hugh@computer.org.

The scripts outlined in this chapter perform the following functions:

Becoming a member: The complete customer <form> based on the simplified version presented in Chapter 6 and 8.
Updating customer details: This functionality is integrated into the script used for becoming a member, and is again an extension of the customer <form> from Chapter 6 and Chapter 8.
Checking customer details: The complete validation and database management processes for updating and creating new customers. These processes extend the customer <form> introduced in Chapter 6 by applying the validation techniques from Chapter 7. The process includes creating and storing passwords using the encryption techniques discussed in Chapter 9.
Providing a customer receipt: A receipt page that presents the results of the customer membership processing and avoids the reload problem discussed in Chapter 6.
Logging in: Authenticating a user and using sessions to track the user login status. This is an application of the techniques discussed in Chapter 8 and Chapter 9.
Miscellaneous database functions and common functions: An introduction to the include.inc file used throughout the winestore application, as well as the customer error handler implemented using the PHP error library.

only for RuBoard - do not distribute or recompile