Extremely newbie needs help with data base

[BernardoEscoffie]

Hi, this is my problem:

My client needs a form in flash with this fields:

Full name
e-mail
phone number (optional)
genre (male or female radio buttons)
comments

And wants it to create a data base (txt file, or access or something, the easiest way for my client).
Ok, I am an empiric web designer, and knows something about html and the flash actionscript, but i am clueless about php or pearl or cgi or any other.

My questions are:

*What aplications I need, just Flash and Dreamweaver, or there is another I need to buy?

*Do I need a server to test it, or I can test it on my HDD?

*And obviously, how i make it work?

Please, I realy need that help

Thank you.

[Jesse]

You'll need a text editor like notpad or something similar for the PHP/CGI.

You can test PHP and CGI on your local machine only if you run a webserver locally. Go to http://www.appache.org for a great free one which supports PHP and CGI.

Then basically all you have to do is create text fields in flash with variable names and create the PHP script which accepts variables with those names and outputs them to a file (not a database, that's more difficult, stick with a text file if you're a beginner).

See this thread which discussed a very similar thing (Excell not Access): http://www.actionscripts.org/forums/showthread.php3?threadid=1268

And also this threads:
http://www.actionscripts.org/forums/showthread.php3?threadid=851
http://www.actionscripts.org/forums/showthread.php3?threadid=749 (CGI)

Cheers

Jesse

[BernardoEscoffie]

Thanks a lot, you saved my neck, don´t know anything about apache or another server app, but i tested it on a free site and it works after a lot of trys. But you gived me the bases. Thanks