when placed in the address bar at the top of a web browser, and run for the
first time, will produce a table containing our highscore list. The table will
appear like so:
#
Name
Score
1
none
0
2
none
0
3
none
0
4
none
0
5
none
0
6
none
0
7
none
0
8
none
0
9
none
0
10
none
0
When you run that command for the first time, the file that stores the scores
will be created. This file is a simple text file that uses special PHP encoded
strings to store our data. We are passing several values to the PHP script itself.
filename: This is the name of the file, including path, that will store
the scores for a game. For example, for a game called "Funhouse"
you would set filename to be scores/funhouse.sco. The name is up to you, but
use a different name for different games.
scoresize: This is the number of scores to keep in the list. In the above
example, we are using a 10 score database, so scoresize is equal to 10.
action: The action parameter is very important. It can be set to INSERT,
CLEAR, or VIEW. When it's set to VIEW, then our PHP script simply reads the
list from the database and makes no changes. When action is set to CLEAR,
all the entries in the table are cleared (name=none, score=0). I'll get to
INSERT in a minute.
viewtype: This parameter can be set to either "HTML" or "FLASH".
When it's set to HTML, then it returns the formatted table displayed above.
However, when it's set to FLASH, then it returns a stream of Flash variables.