How to Create a MySQL Database if it Doesn't Exist - Very Easily

This is so easy I almost don't believe it, except I've tested it and it works.

$create = mysql_query("CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS databasename");

Crazy easy, no?

Line breaks

OK, so...

I am entering text in a flash text field, which gets sent to a mysql database. This later gets retrieved by php, and folded into a javascript function, so that another swf can use that data.

The problem is, if there are any line breaks in the initial text, then that ends up in the javascript function, and is seen as an error.

So to solve it, I will attempt to get the php file that takes the text out of the database, to convert that line break into something that the javascript function can stand, and that the swf can interpret.

Continuation -

Yeah, that worked. First I tried nl2br, which is supposed to put html linebreak tags where the line breaks are, although I din't see this effect. But this would have required me to make changes to my flash file.

So I used:

$lineBreaks = Array("\n","\r");
$iQuestion = ...get text from MySQL database
$oQuestion = str_replace($lineBreaks,'\u000d',$iQuestion);

$lineBreaks is an array of possible ways in which the line breaks may come down, I wasn't sure if this would differ depending on the user's operating system etc.

Getting data from MySQL

Today, I have been mostly... not getting data from a MySQL database.

I thought I had this sorted already - I had a script that could send data to a php script, then receive a query string and format the data as a URL variable.

As usual, when you try to actually use it for something - it turns out to be more complicated.

First of all, using capital letters in the query string that PHP is outputting is apparently not a good idea! Can you imagine?!? It took me three hours just to pin the problem down to that!

So then I though I had the problem sorted, but no.

I think it might be something to do with the length of the query string...

More on this later?