Thanks for all of the help I've received. It sounds like storing
everything in the database might be the best option here.
The database I will most likely use is MySQL. If I choose not to build
a web-based administrative interface at this stage, what are my
other options for uploading the data? Are there any good visual
administrative tools?
Also, if the entire story is contained within a single field of a
record, how can I break it up into multiple pages, such as after a
certain number of words?
Steven
-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Bernard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2000 5:06 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: Upload and retrieval of stories?
There are a multitude of ways to do this sort of thing. I'll list a couple
to get you thinking and then, if you have further questions, elaborate, as
I'm sure others will as well.
1) Use form fields. The author would have to enter his story via the form,
manually.
2) Use form fields. The author could enter descriptors such as title,
keywords, etc. But have the body of the story uploaded via a "file" form
field. Unless you have, or will build, conversion capabilities I would have
the bodies uploaded as ASCII text files. For some document file types
conversion is trivial while others are more difficult.
3) Upload all information as an XML document. This can be facilitated using
WDDX. You could use either of the above methods with this or just send a
single document. In example #1 you would convert to WDDX either at the
client, via JavaScript/WDDX functions, or at the server. Example #2 would
work in much the same way except you would probably want to do the
conversion to ASCII text, if necessary, before encapsulating everything in
XML/WDDX. If everything is sent as a single WDDX document, via a file upload
(HTTP or FTP), you can either store it in the database or as a file. I
haven't tried this, pipe in anybody, but, depending on your database, you
may be able to query the XML data. I don't mean just pull the record, I mean
use SQL queries that actually search on the XML entities within the record.
I know that Oracle and MS SQL Server can do this to some degree but, I'm not
sure that it will work with WDDX.
Using a database is going to be extremely more effective and efficient than
a file based system. Querying a file structure is an I/O intensive
operation. Databases are meant for this sort of thing, so I'd use one.
Once you've made your template you can easily query the database for stories
and dynamically insert the content into the template for display at the
client.
I hope this gives you some ideas. I'm sure there are many other ways of
doing this but, these came to mind first. There are a lot of great people on
this list so you'll be good to go.
Steve
-----Original Message-----
From: Steven Katz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2000 7:00 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Upload and retrieval of stories?
Hi all,
I'm developing a site that will feature short- to medium-length
stories from lesser-known authors. I have designed a page that will
serve as a template, into which I will insert the material contributed
from the authors. I would rather that this process of inserting
content not be a manual one. In fact, I would like the programmatic
solution to include a web-based administrative interface. Normally,
this might consist of some forms and CF or PHP, allowing the user to
upload content to a database, where the material could then also be
made available to the templates for the dynamic creation of pages.
However, form fields seem to have a rather small character limit,
preventing one from simply pasting an entire story into them. This
isn't really what I want to do anyway. Has anyone devised a good
process for accomplishing something similar? Perhaps there's no reason
to store this material in a database, anyway? I'd be very interested
to hear your suggestions.
Thanks,
Steven
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