PHP Coders?

[Jedikiller]

Anyone here have PHP experience? I'm working on doing a small project for school and I may need some help along the way with a few things. Mainly, the questions will be about the proper functions to use in certain situations. I have so far been able to debug all my errors myself.

My first question is this: let's say I have the user list off their favorite animals. The list is displayed on their user page. I want to be able to click the name of the animal and have it search for other users who have the same animal listed in their profiles. I already have a search function implemented, so that does not need to be created. I am asking how to create these links without manually setting each of them up on the user's page. I'm not sure if I've explained this adequately- please ask for clarification should it be needed.

My second question is this: does a PHP session stay within the file, or is it strictly contained to the <?php> tags, as in each enclosure is a completely separate session? Like if I called my database at the start of the file, established some variables, etc., then closed the tags, and later reopened them further down the file, could I call variables established in the start of the file? It will be a real hassle to design something nice-looking if I have to make PHP print everything

Hope some of you can assist me with these! Thanks!

[Jedikiller]

Ah, good. That's what I figured, but I just wanted to make sure.

[Jedikiller]

I'm interested in getting into the GD library. What I essentially want to do is display a name, defined in the URL of the image path, over a nametag image (like one of those Hello My Name Is things). Any ideas how to do this? none of the stuff I've looked at really tells you what everything does and what you need to do to use it.

Thanks!

[Soap Mactavish]

is php like a scripting language or something?

[Jedikiller]

Yes. It is what the forums are written in.

[Soap Mactavish]

thought that was HTML.

[Soap Mactavish]

ok i think i get it now. php interprets the data sent to you and HTML displays it. right?