Using a database in html without a server - html

I have a question regarding the client-side possibilities of a html webpage. I am currently working on my masters-thesis in aerospace engineering and plan to develop a design-catalog for inspiration. I chose html for this purpose, because I have a basic understanding, want to learn more and love the possibility of changing the style (e.g. width, height, padding, …) of all elements with a single command.
Unfortunately, there is no way of installing a local server or any other kind of software on the university computers. Besides, there is no way I get my colleagues (supervisor, Professor) to run additional software just to look at my catalog. Publishing the webpage on the intranet or internet is totally out of the question. The only possibility I have is using a browser (Firefox) and an Editor.
I thought about two different approaches:
Consider having a (Windows) folder containing images. Is it in any way possible to load all images of this specific folder into a webpage without using a server-side or installing any kind of software?
This would be even better: Is it in any way possible to make a website load data from a database into its own html code? I would like to be able to load only specific elements, e.g. all Designs with 2 Degrees of Freedom, or only load all images.
Any kind of database! I don't care if it is mySQL, MariaDB, Excel or even a CSV file or something completely different.
Security of the code is not an issue. The data is sensitive, but I have full control over the database and code. It is a no point planned to publish the webpage or host it somewhere.
I would appreciate any kind of comment whether this is in any way possible, or whether I definitely need a server (e.g. xampp) to realize my approaches. If there is no possibility I would need to implement every image by hand or scratch the idea of the design catalogue.
Thank you in advance!
Best regards, REn0

Related

Can I make CNC Editor with HTML5?

I would like to make my own CNC Editor.
I am looking for some guidance. I don’t know if it is even possible with HTML5. But it would be great if I can. If possible, please list what I should research and learn.
I don’t need it to be online accessible, I will only have it on my computer. I will be accessing it via local network from multiple different computers. I don’t want it accessing the internet, because it’s not always available.
Desired Features:
⁃ Read and Write files with different extensions (all files used are easily opened in notepad)
⁃ Store and retrieve data from a simple database file.
⁃ Make calculations
⁃ Have a text Editor window
⁃ Have a Display area for simple vector graphics depending on data loaded and provided by user.
It is possible but requires a lot of work. I would say that these are technologies you would need to master in order to pull this off:
Node.js (use express.js) - for storing and retrieving files from database and for reading/writing local files with extensions you want (server-side)
Vue.js or Angular.js or React - for building frontend interface to manipulate your vector graphics. It can also do calculations and It's good with svgs and that kind of stuff.
Electron.js (not mandatory) - it wraps it in native-app like experience. This framework actually gives you ability to write desktop apps for any os and arch.
So as I said, It would be a lot of work but its possible in the end.
Funny coincidence is that my brother is planning to build CNC machine so I might be doing this as well in next couple of months. Feel free to contact me if you need any further help!
UPDATE: You cant do it with just HTML5. It would be like trying to make wooden space shuttle.

Read EXIF online without need to upload photos

I have an HTML5 site. I want to do following thing:
Walk through files in a folder
Find all images
Get exif file from images
Analyze an exifs (on server)
Correct bad exifs
This is a best scenario, that it can be. I am conscious that 1st and 2second step is possibly done only by selecting this files by user. And 5th step is possible only when the analysis will be done at user's machine. So what is the best way to do it (to get closer as much to the optimal scenario)? What should I use without need to force a user to install anything?
EDIT:
At least I have used free GeckoFX web browser as a basic desktop app. Interface is created in HTML+JS Thx all
You would need to create an application that runs on the computer of the user. You can't create an HTML5 site that does this.
A Chrome HTML5 webapp should be able to do this.
I'm actually looking at this in these days.
Here is a NOT WORKING example ( due to old API specs, I think)
http://benno.id.au/blog/2009/12/30/html5-fileapi-jpegmeta
But should at least give some good insights.
You should use ExifTool.
It is available as a Perl library here:
http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/ExifTool.html
And also as a command-line tool which can be ran by the server (same site).

simple way to quickly edit my website

here's my website:
www.newportclassic.com
do you know of any free, easy to use, content management systems, that will allow me to simply edit the text on my site without having to download the file, open the file, edit the code, save the file, upload the file ???????
I know of a few CMS's that have done well, here are two of them.
Wordpress - free - http://wordpress.org/ - 3.0 is coming soon
Perch - paid - http://grabaperch.com/ - very light and easy
Wikipedia has a very good list of content management systems broken down by language and cost (open source/proprietary) and DBMS. Most of the ones I've used/evaluated in the past have been .NET based, such as DotNetNuke. Pretty much any CMS will give you the ability to edit your HTML without changing any files on your web server. If you're going for simplicity, the Wikipedia list has several that use a flat file instead of a database, so I would start there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_management_systems#File_.2F_Flat_file
As an alternative to installing a CMS on your server, you might be interested in a service like CushyCMS. It allows you to specify what parts of your page are editable by setting an appropriate class in each editable div tag. Then to edit the contents of those div blocks, you log in to the CushyCMS site and make your changes right there. CushyCMS connects via FTP to the server for you and updates the HTML page.
You can use emacs -- it has a mode (tramp) where you can open, edit and save remote files as if they were on your local machine. This makes it really easy to edit files on a webserver.
haven't used it myself but i've heard Surreal CMS is quite good and easy to setup. Here's a tutorial to get you started.
In terms of user friendliness zimplit is hard to beat.
Try their demo.
You can literally edit your website with a wysiwyg interface inside your browser.
Refinery HQ is probably the easiest way to create, edit and update your website. You can upload images and files as you describe in your question.
You can also connect it to your own domain (it's a hosted service). So you'd be able to hook the site you create up to newportclassic.com

Browser, upload large file

I'm looking for a way to allow a user to upload a large file (~1gb) to my unix server using a web page and browser.
There are a lot of examples that illustrate how to do this with a traditional post request, however this doesn't seem like a good idea when the file is this large.
I'm looking for recommendations on the best approach.
Bonus points if the method includes a way of providing progress information to the user.
For now security is not a major concern, as most users who will be using the service can be trusted. We can also assume that the connection between client and host will not be interrupted (or if it is they have to start over).
We can also assume the user is running a browser of supporting most modern features (JavaScript, Flash, etc)
edit
No language requirements. Just looking for the best solution.
There are several ways to handle this,
1. Flash Uploader
Theres plenty of flash uploaders to improve the users GUI so that they can examine the process and the process factors such as time left, KB Done etc.
This is very good if you understand how to improve Flash source code for later developments.
2. Ajax
Theres a few ways using Ajax and PHP (although PHP Does not support it) you can use Perl module to accomplish the same thing http://pecl.php.net/package/uploadprogress, This is only if you wish to show percentage information etc.
3 Basic Javascript.
This method would be just the regular form, but with some ajax styling so when the form is submitted you can show a basic loader saying please wait while you send us the file...
If your using asp, you can take a look at: http://neatupload.codeplex.com/
Hope theres some good information to get you on your way.
Regards
Not sure about your language requirements, but you can look e.g. into
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/gp.fileupload/
Supports progress information also, btw.
I have used the dojo FileUploader widget to reliably upload audio files greater than a gigabyte with a progress bar. Though you said security was not an issue, I'd like to say that I got HTTPS uploads w/cookie based authentication hooked up flawlessly.
See: http://www.sitepen.com/blog/2008/09/02/the-dojo-toolkit-multi-file-uploader/ and
http://api.dojotoolkit.org/jsdoc/1.3/dojox.form.FileUploader

Editable through admin panel website templates (HTML, CSS, JS..) Good or bad?

This question is for web developers and architects.
How do you think is it a good or bad idea to have a website where you're able to edit all the templates (HTML, CSS, JS, images..) right from the admin panel?
In this case if you update website often, you don't need to search for a local version of your website on you development machine, search for a specific page, make modifications, commit it to source control server, make deployment.. Instead, all you need is just right click on the page or any element on this page, click Edit, update a piece of HTML and click SAVE - 30 seconds maximum - all from your browser ;)
You still can have version control system with this approach and rollback any template which was modified by mistake by 2 mouse clicks on a website.
I personally like this approach and need to know your opinion. So what do you think?
Note, we are talking about big websites which have to be updated often, multilingual ones etc.
Realworld web-applications which use this approach:
Wordpress
vBulletin
Personally, I think it would depend on the complexity of the website.
What you're talking about here is directly editing the structure (and potentially behaviour) of a live website. Sure, it may take longer to make the changes on your development server before rolling them out but if there's any chance of breaking either the appearance or functionality of the site then I'd think definitely think twice.
You shouldn't be allowed to modify the entire layout of your site through the site itself in my opinion. The reasons being the lack of version control and the inability to preview what you are doing, which translate into the inability to come back to an older version. Plus if you modify it locally, you are allowed to make errors that break everything, a luxury you can't always afford if you're doing it directly through the website.
Being able to add/remove content through the website is great though, it would be very painful to update a blog by modifying your HTML each time!
I once created a site that did exactly that. (Well, without any option for source control - had to learn that one the hard way...) Looking back at what I did there, a few things come to mind:
It was a traditional website with information about my sports club, that only changed occasionally, not a web app in the modern sense.
I wanted to be able to apply fixes even though I had no access to my dev machine (because it was a private project, I was at work, and ftp connections were not allowed by the comapny proxy).
For those specific reasons, the approach was a good solution. Today I would use one of the many good frameworks for this purpose (Joomla, Drupal etc) instead of coding it myself.
On important item: I was able to edit the pages that were used to generate the main site, but not the generation program or my admin pages. For those, I had to use my dev machine and upload file changes by ftp.
I think it is a good approach, if done correctly (my implementation certainly wasn't)
Editing HTML/CSS/JS files through your web browser can make things easier, as long as the editing implementation is neat, organized, idiot-proof, and keeps track of revisions.
A major issue to consider is security. The inability to modify actual files from the content management system in most software packages is a security precaution.
Learn to use a version control system effectively and efficiently. Tools like git or bzr can take care of a lot of the tedious stuff automatically, like package building, uploading, etc.
I hate it. Web development, much like the web servers themselves, shouldn't be "comfortable". Web development should be a mother gentle caressing scary experience. It should sound, look, even taste dangerous.
Neophyte web developers should be put through their paces learning the subtler aspects of their chosen text editor before they are even allowed to open a web browser; and not be allowed near a graphical web browser before 6 months of working only using lynx for debugging.
Laziness is our bane. No more, I say.
Edit: This is, perhaps, a bit tangential to the issue at hand. It should also be mentioned that visual identity that is too simple to change will change too often, leading to confused and frustrated users.