In article <6p3dl.98596$>,
"Kabuki Armadillo" <> wrote:
> I'm an html / css hobbyist. Was persuaded to set up a friend's business
> "brochure" site.
>
> Now he wants interactivity -- specifically would like to edit online lists
> of clients, perhaps in some sort of spreadsheet form. The idea is that his
> staff would update online lists of students for the various first aid
> courses he teaches.
>
> He doesn't want to deal with the html behind the scenes -- just the text /
> data.
>
> Is such a thing possible without programming? I don't want to learn
> programming for just this guy.
>
> I was wondering if there was some server-side solution. I have used
> javascripts from script farms for some simple stuff. Is there a way to
> accomplish this with javascript? Say download the file, edit and then upload
> it again "invisibly"?
>
> The other approach I'm thinking is to simply recommend one of the many free
> file-hosting sites.
>
> Or, perhaps someone knows of an online service that offers this?
>
> Thoughts, suggestions?
>
You don't have to learn programming but you will be able to solve this
if you have a php script in your name.html to process a csv file.
It works like this, your client alters a spreadsheet how he likes,
exports it or saves it as a CSV (comma separated values) file. This
latter is a text file that is formatted a simple way with each row
represented by a line and each cell on the row represented by comma
separated text.
This CSV file is uploaded with the name "name.csv" to the server (you or
your client can do this easily). Ready and waiting for it is an html
file that you have prepared, inside of which is some code that looks
like this:
<?php
$filename = "1-9.csv"; //here's the filename
$id = fopen($filename, "r"); //open the file
while ($data = fgetcsv($id, filesize($filename))) //start a loop
$table[] = $data; //put each line into its own entry in the $table array
fclose($id); //close file
echo "<table id=\"spreadsheet\" cellspacing=\"0\">";
echo "<tr><th>TOPIC</th><th>REFERENCE</th></tr>";
foreach($table as $row)
{
echo "<tr>";
foreach($row as $data)
echo "<td>$data </td>";
echo "</tr>\n";
}
echo "</table>\n";
?>
When this part of the html file is being scanned by the server (it will
be set up to note php code), it will then make up the html table
properly grabbing all the values in the CSV file.
You then end up with a proper html table, just what is wanted.
Here is an example of the sort of thing that results using pretty well
the code above. On the server, there is a file called a.csv and a file
called a.html. The html file you can see in View Source except that
where the table is, the actual one has the code above, it has been
executed already by the time it reaches the browser:
<http://www.khs.org.au/historian_database/a.html>
Ignore the javascript on it as this is just for an inessential striping
effect.
You might be able to get some help tailoring your particular php
requirement to your context at php.alt. Once set, you won't need to
fiddle with it.
And, you can either have the client upload the CSV file (which he will
prepare from his spreadsheet program, it is just a matter of a saving it
in as CSV) or he can send it or the original spreadsheet to you to do. I
always prefer this latter so I can run an eye out over it for any
anomalies (there are a few hiccups that can happen when saving as CSV..
but don't let this frighten you.).
--
dorayme
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