Some advice on a flat file database project please

raykula

Hi folks:

What I am looking for is a very simple database that would have about 12 or 15 fields and hold about 50 records. Name, address, phone, etc. are the typical fields and possibly one “comments” type field that could handle at maximum, a few hundred characters.

It will need to be a web application and secure behind htaccess on an ISP server. I suppose that I could park the data file above browser access in the directory, but it would need some kind of secure login..

From the application, I would like to be able to call a list of all available records probably sorted by last name, be able to select an individual one to view in an html page as well as add, delete and edit the records on-line.

That’s about it! I have very limited programming experience and it is becoming dated, but I think that this would be an interesting project for me to tackle and see how far my persistence and modest talent might take me.

The ISP provides two MYSQL databases as part of the package on their server, but hey are both committed to other web applications, so I have been trying to find a flat file type solution that might lend itself to this application.

I have successfully implemented a few PERL CGI scripts however have absolutely no PHP experience, fairly proficient in HTML and a bit of VB.

I have searched through a number of the script sites in an attempt to find something that I could use as a launch point for this and I have not been successful. I expect that I might find something like this in a PHP tutorial somewhere since it is probably a reasonably decent “starter” project. Most of the scripts that I have found use MYSQL or another database, and so don’t lend themselves to this.

I would think that there would be a “members” database or even a guestbook type application that would have some of the elements that I will need.

So to the question! Would anyone have stumbled across something that would help me get out of the starting gate on this project? And secondly are there any potholes that I could fall into considering the design that I have described?

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

Ray

searain

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=php+flat+text+file+data&btnG=Search&meta=

raykula

Thanks for the reply Searain. I have done a bunch of searching and found a number of applications that were “sort of” in the right ballpark. Mostly they are guestbook apps. I was hoping that someone out there might just have stumbled across something specific to point me to that was a bit closer to the mark.

I have discovered enough tutorials and scripts by now that I am reasonably confident that I can create a form and flat text file to capture the contents. The difficulty that I will encounter and for which I have not discovered anything helpful as yet, will be to select a record for editing, make the changes and save it back to the file again.

Thanks again.

Ray

eerok

Maybe this will help:

http://www.php-mysql-tutorial.com/cms-php-mysql.php?PHPSESSID=6d835de557d23e4c0ffabae8f6fe5234

Even though this tutorial uses mysql, it still gives you a model of a simple cms.

edit: I also happened to find this (while looking for something else):

http://lukeplant.me.uk/resources/flatfile/index.html

searain

The simple way might be to find some csv file read/write scripts. CSV file is more database like.

There are a lot of scripts dealing with CSV file. Most of them may have something to do with transfer data to MySQL or vice versa.

Maybe you can search for the "CSV file and PHP" and add "not MySQL" as your search. You may find what exactly you want.

You can transfer your initial database from Excel to CSV easily and upload it to your system, use the read/write scripts to handle that CSV file.

raykula

Thanks to eerok for the link. From a functionality perspective it is very close to what I am after. Now armed with a few new ideas, the challenge for me will be to see if I can code something that will work. (This forum probably hasn’t heard the last from me!)

And thanks again to searain. I had been using searches with “flat file” as a keyword but it never occurred to me to try CSV. I’ll see what it yields. And while I’m at it I’ll use the CMS acronym that eerok dropped. I wasn’t familiar with that and it could turn up something too.

Thanks to you both.

Ray