Html Loser Here

Well I'm in highschool, and I was volunteered by the Librarian to make a website for her... well I didn't slap her and say no... (I should have..) So she wants to beable to make a .txt file and save it onto the webserver so they can update there booklist every week easily. They also just want to make it to where you click on the book title and then information pops up below it all from the .txt file, would this be possible for me to accomplish?


So the Question all in the same:

Could I use a .txt file on a website and when you click one link a "flash" image or something simular appears below it with information on the book, and could this be done without much edditing to the document

(she must be atleast 80 y/o I shoulda just put her out of her missery...)

Yes I am a leecher, but im trying to gain some respect. Been leeching around these forums for a few years without an account.

 

there are script out there for library book management. most likely written in PHP.

Using a database to store the books would also allow her to have the ISBN number, author and title stored separately so searches could be done (instead of control-f in a text file)

Don't expect to get far with only HTML, by all means you can just have an iframe or equivalent link to the txt file, but it wont look nice.

 

Well it doesnt all have to be html, the only program we have in my class though in Dreamweaver and i've only used it once and that was 2 years ago in my first year of Advance Techonologies. If I could learn a bit of JAVA or JAVAscript (I dont know which would be needed) do you believe this would be possible, and the Library database saves the file as a .txt, I could ask her to save it as another file type mabey even a .pdf

 

Check your file types. PDF is an Adobe Portable Document Format. If you don't understand that, think of it as a Word document.

Since the library already has a database, why not use it? Why waste time exporting a txt file and then importing it?


PHP would be an easy option for you. There are many tutorials out there on great websites which will show you how to connect to a database, get a list of the books and display them.

You can even search the database for books by ISBN number, Title, author, date written and borrowed status.

 

I'll see what I can do, I dont know exactly what the librarian has planned out atm, thank you very much for your help