Newbie - How to display info from a .dat file? - html

I'm pretty new to this so I'm not sure if this is a simple request or not but here goes:
I am working on a school website and under each program page is a list of course codes. What I'm looking for is when I click on said course code (ex. HEL2106), to have a lightbox-type of popup that displays program info about said course code. What I have is a .dat file that has all the course codes and descriptions in it, so I would like to use some sort of HTML/CSS/JS that will pop this up and display the correct info about the clicked course from the .dat file.
I'm not 100% sure on how to go about this so if anyone has any suggestions at all, that would be really helpful.
If you need any other details from me, let me know.
Thanks,
(File Info* The .dat file is pretty much just a notepad document with each course code & description in sequence)

Just to let you know, you need to search and learn about a lot of things first.
For data access on a website, you need access to a database. If you don't know about SQL (or any other query language), Query, Database, Tables, Server ... then you should start there.
To read those databases, you need to write code (ASP.NET, PHP, etc) that runs on a web server (Apache, IIS, etc).
If you want to create a website, I recommend you start working with WordPress, Joomla or other CMS (Content Management System) for you to familiarize with a lot of things before jumping to the advance stuff.
YouTube is a very good friend and teacher! :) Start by looking some tutorials there. Hope this will guide you to what you need.

I have no idea what your level of experience is based off your question so I will assume you have a basic understanding of HTML,CSS and JS. If not, then I would recommend Exel Gamboa's answer.
It sounds like you're looking for something like http://fancybox.net/
Of course, it is typically used for displaying images but it could be easily modified for your purpose.
Now about your .dat file. When storing data for large websites, it's typically best to use SQL for databases. This allows you to access data and store it in an organized manner.
As a final recommendation I'd take a look at using a CMS for your website. (Wordpress, WolfCMS, perch, etc...)
Hope this helps.

Related

database recommendation for an offline html cookbook

I am currently planning to transfer my cooking recipies from a word document into an offline webpage. I have a (very) basic understanding of html, css and javascript, but never really got in contact with a database.
Can you recommend any database that I can use for my project?
My requirements are:
ideally future-proof -> widespread usage, state of the art and exportable for future use
broad applicability (maybe useable in future projects), not just for cooking books
no php, since the page is offline a server should no be necessary
no need for a fancy user interface. I would prefer to just enter and change the data directly in the database, like entering text in excel. I do not want to use commands like "update" or "insert" to add data.
I read about Excel, MS-Access, mySQL, MariaDB, …
Can anyone recommend a database for my purpose? This would really help me out! I am lost in the jungle of opportunities.
Thank you in advance
Best regards
REn0
Edit: I uploaded an image to clarify my idea. Unfortunatly stackoverflow does not allow me to embed it into the post, thats why I only posted the link
https://i.stack.imgur.com/6nvx1.png
One of the tenets of Rails is you shouldn't really care what database you're using: that's all abstracted for you. I know it's kind of diverging from your skillset, but Rails would be a great approach for an application like this, especially if you want to deploy to a server instead of running it locally down the road.
Check out some 12 in 12 tutorials by Mackenzie Child, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhdzE1yNs-0

XML content management

Hi there everyone this is my first time posting here, I am a student working for a really small company and I am in charge of developing the company's website.
Since I am only here for two more months, the boss wants to be able to change some content of the website without having to do any code.
He mentioned the idea of having an XML file he can update online, that will update the content of parts of the website. He does not want anything to do with third party websites.
So I was just wondering if this is even possible, I have no experience with XML, and really have no idea of where to start. All suggestions are welcome. Thanks in advance
Try a server-side include (SSI) with the something like the following tag:
<!--#include virtual="sitecontents/content_name_1.txt" -->
You can update the individual files (they don't necessarily have to include HTML tags) instead of trying to process an XML document. Much less development time and, frankly, much easier to maintain.
I did something similar to this for my website but used a database-driven concept. I have a secure area where I can enter in data via forms into the various database tables and then the information is automatically updated on the site via PHP. Takes awhile to get it all in place and working but has been worth the effort.
Now that I'm think about it, you can do this with XML as well. I played around with it a bit before developing the database-driven site. If you're not familiar with XML though it might be a stretch to get it done in the short time you have. You will also need to know XSLT which can be confusing at times. It is needed to connect to the XML file (data source) and then to parse the data and transform the information into something that looks good.

GEDCOM to HTML and RDF

I was wondering if anyone knew of an application that would take a GEDCOM genealogy file and convert it to HTML format for viewing and publishing on the web. I'd like to have separate html files for each individual and perhaps additional files for other content as well. I know there are some tools out there but I was wondering if anyone used any tools and could advise on this. I'm not sure what format to look for such applications. They could be Python or php files that one can edit, or even JavaScript (maybe) or just executable files.
The next issue might be appropriate for a topic in itself. Export of GEDCOM to RDF. My interest here would be to align the information with specific vocabularies, such as BIO or REL which both are extended from FOAF.
Thanks,
Bruce
Like Rob Kam said, Ged2Html was the most popular such program for a long time.
GRAMPS can also create static HTML sites and has the advantage of being free software and having a native XML format which you could easily modify to fit your needs.
Several years ago, I created a simple Java program to turn gedcom into xml. I then used xslt to generate html and rdf. The html I generate is pretty rudimentary, so it would probably be better to look elsewhere for that, but the rdf might be useful to you:
http://jay.askren.net/Projects/SemWeb/
There are a number of these. All listed at http://www.cyndislist.com/gedcom/gedcom-to-web-page-conversion/
Ged2html used to be the most popular and most versatile, but is now no longer being developed. It's an executable, with output customisable through its own scripting syntax.
Family Historian http://www.family-historian.co.uk will create exactly what you are looking for, eg one file per person using the built in Web Site creator. As will a couple of the other Major genealogy packages. I have not seen anything for the RDF part of your question.
I have since tried to produce a Genealogy application using Semantic MediaWiki - MediaWiki, the software behind Wikipedia, and Semantic MediaWiki includes various extensions related to the Semantic Web. I thought it is very easy to use with the forms and the ability to upload a GEDCOM but some feedback from people into genealogy said that it appeared too technical and didn't seem to offer anything new.
So, now the issue is whether to stay with MediaWiki and make it more user friendly or create an entirely new application that allows for adding and updating data in a triple store as well as displaying. I'm not sure how to generate a family tree graphical view of the data, like on sites like ancestry.com, where one can click on a box to see details about the person and update that info or one could click on a right or left arrow around a box to navigate the tree. The data comes from SPARQL queries sent to the data set/triple store both when displaying the initial view and when navigating the tree, where an Ajax call is needed to get more data.
Bruce

MySQL-based wiki that is suitable for custom applications?

I develop an online, Flash-based multiplayer game. It is a complex game, and requires a lot of documentation to fully explain it to our users. Ideally, I would like to find MySQL-based wiki software that can provide these editable documentation pages outside of Flash (in the HTML realm) but also within Flash for convenience, and so that players can refer to the information without interrupting their game or having to switch back-and-forth between browser tabs. I am expecting that I would need to do a lot of the work on the Flash side myself, as far as formatting, for example, but I would like to feel comfortable in querying the wiki's database to get info directly. I guess this means that I need a wiki that is structured relatively "flat" or intuitively so that I can do things like:
Run a MySQL query that returns a list of all the articles (their titles and IDs) in the wiki
For each article ID in the wiki, return the associated content
This may mean that I have to limit the kinds of formatting I put into the wiki -- things like tables would probably be omitted since they would be very difficult, if not impossible, for me to do on the Flash side. And that is fine!
Basically I am just looking for suggestions for wiki software that is pretty easy to use, but mostly is technically simple enough on the back-end that interfacing with it directly via MySQL is not difficult. When interfacing with the database directly, I only need to READ data. Any time the wiki would be edited or added to would be done via the wiki's actual front-end application.
Thanks for any suggestions!
MediaWiki is the best-known and best-supported MySQL-based Wiki, used for plenty of complex game documentation projects like MinecraftWiki. The database is not all that simple, but it's well documented and basic read operations aren't too hard. For example, here's how to fetch the current content of the page "MyPage":
SELECT old_text FROM page,revision,text WHERE page.page_title="MyPage" AND
page.page_id=revision.rev_page AND revision.rev_text_id=text.old_id;
(And yes, old_text is the current content of the page. Don't ask me why!)
Your main problem will be figuring out how to parse MediaWiki markup, there are plenty of parsers for it but I'm not aware of anything that would work in Flash.

How do you database access (I/O) to/from Magento Commerce?

So, I want to import, export and modify the database. I have read that I have to do that by XML, but I don't really understand their doc system and I haven't found any good tutorials out there that explain this. I am slowly reading the very expensive and short book which is somewhat answering my questions, but I crave more.
As a second question, I want to have a order system where I can send out information or emails with my own code. I assume this would be some type of plug-in that would override or be called at a certain time. Any info would be helpful.
Some parts of the magento data can be imported/exported via the backend (System->Import/Export), namely products and customers.
If you want to deal with the complete DB - use your DB tool of choice (I prefer mysqldump).
When dealing with exported CSV.. use OpenOffice, from my experience it deals better with the separation characters than Excel.
As for your second question - as far as I understood, you will have to develop a module if you want to do something different than the existing functionality and keep the original mail functions. If you don't want to/have to keep the original functions, you can opt to overwrite the module, which is much easier as far as I can see. Google search for "overriding magento module" should turn up atleast one decent tutorial.
I found what I was looking for here:
(on magento site: Resources -> Magento Core API -> Product API or whichever API you want)
The problem is there is no Order API yet (or none that I've seen)
http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/doc/webservices-api/api/catalog_product#examples
This details how you'd write an external php script and obtain,edit or delete products (or anything else with an API).
Modules still look daunting, but I am reading through the (very thin) magento book (the only one available).
I hope this helps someone else.