Building WML Sites

Cellular phones supporting
WAP are slowly, but constantly spreading. Therefore,
it could be time for you to start building your WML
pages to access internet databases. As such, we will
show you how to build PHP/WML pages to access a MySQL
database which contains professors’ receiving hours
and exams timetables for a University. I’m testing
a beta service of this kind, prepared with Vitaveska
Lanfranchi, at www.scidecom.it.

There are some things you need
to know before starting. First, we are assuming that:

1. You have correctly installed PHP and MySQL, and
   you have some experience in programminng with both languages.
   Your database needs to be properly installed as
   well.
2. You have some knowledge of SQL; I suggest reading Database
   Normalization and Design Techniques.
3. You are running Apache and you can write .htaccess
   files; or you are running IIS and you can add mappings
   (or you can ask the system administrator to do
   it for you).
4. You have some experience with WML; I suggest
   reading Introduction
   to WML, Apache, and PHP.

The first step is telling your
server to process WML pages with PHP. Let’s see how
to do it.

Setting up the server

If you are using Apache, you
have to look for a .htaccess file in your home directory.
Then, you need to write the following lines in it:
<limit get post>

AddType application/x-httpd-php3 .wml

</limit>

If you don’t have a file .htaccess,
simply write these lines in a text editor and save
the result as .htaccess in your home directory.