[My Solution] Re: Mailing Labels from MySQL database on web
Thanks for all the ideas. Here is a list of the basic paths suggested along with the comments given for each method. Nobody claimed any of these was really good and hoped someone would suggest a better approach. 1. Use MS Word's mail merge and MS Query with MyODBC as the data source. - Only good for Windows & MacOSX and requires fairly high end user knowledge to download and install MyODBC and set up MS Query. 2. Use PHP to generate VBScript to control MS Word. - Difficult to set up. 3. Use PHP to build a PDF on the server in the proper Avery label format. - Nobody suggested a PDF file builder for PHP, but suggested there were cgi-scripts available for this purpose. 4. Use one of the reporting packages which can be found at sites like freshmeat.net or sourceforge.net, but nobody responding had tried this. - Nobody suggested a particular package or stated how well this might work. 5. Use PHP to create the CSV file and present it as an HTTP right-click download link on the web page. - This might be a good solution which could work with most any word processor. 6. Use PHP to dynamically produce an HTML page formatted to work with your labels and print it right from there. - Dependent upon which browser and printer is being used, i.e. not very device independent. Number 1 & 5 seemed like the best of what was suggested for my purposes. I decided to take path #1 and it seems to work pretty well. I've written up instructions for the end user to follow and will give it a try as soon as I get MySQL permissions straightened out. It turns out my ISP sets up only an admin user for the MySQL database on our site and this user does not have GRANT privileges. Mailing label printing works fine when MyODBC is set up using the admin account. I have a Support Ticket in with my ISP to create a couple of users with only the necessary privileges. Once this happens, I will pass it on the the Club Secretary and see if this is really a workable solution. -Landy - Original Message - From: "Landy Atkinson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 2:25 PM Subject: Mailing Labels from MySQL database on web I have a club roster database set up on our web site in which the underlying data is in a MySQL database. I am using PHP to access the data and display it on a web page as a phone list, e-mail list, > directory etc. Now what I need is to give the club secretary a way > to print mailing labels. What is the best way to approach this? As a temporary measure, I > used an auxiliary program (MySQL-Front running on a Windows PC) to > create a CSV file which I e-mailed to the secretary along with > instructions on how to use the file in mail merge document in MS Word to create labels. I thought about writing PHP code to create a CSV formatted output on a web page which the secretary could copy and paste into a document for the mail merge, but it seems there should be a better way. Any suggestions? -Landy -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe:http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe:http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Mailing Labels from MySQL database on web
I have a club roster database set up on our web site in which the underlying data is in a MySQL database. I am using PHP to access the data and display it on a web page as a phone list, e-mail list, directory etc. Now what I need it to give the club secretary a way to print mailing labels. What is the best way to approach this? As a temporary measure, I used an auxiliary program (MySQL-Front running on a PC) to create a CSV file on my PC which I e-mailed to the secretary along with instructions on how to use the file in mail merge document in MS Word to create labels. I thought about writing PHP code to create a CSV formatted output on a web page which the secretary could copy and paste into a document for the mail merge, but it seems there should be a better way. Any suggestions? -Landy -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe:http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Text formatting of articles pulled from database??
I am setting u a simple article storage/retrieval system and have set up a MySQL database with a few VARCHAR fields for author, date, source and a BLOB field for article. I have also set up two pages, one for editing/adding new articles and a second one for viewing the articles. The adding/deleting page uses a with to allow someone to copy past the text into the "article" field. This seems to work just fine and if I display the text back in a field, formatting works as I expect. Paragraphs are separated by a line of white space and the text wraps to the size of the . I am trying to display the article on a second page which is formatted to look nice. I would like to avoid the borders and fixed height (with scroll bars) of the field and instead put the text into an auto height table cell with fixed width=500 so the text still wraps nicely on the screen. I've set up a table with 3 columns to allow me to display the title, author, date, etc. nicely at the top and then defined a table cell that spans the 3 columns to hold the article. echo "$article"; The text displays, but the paragraph breaks are gone and all the text is just run together into one long paragraph. Any suggestions on how to get $article to display and keep the white space between paragraphs that it has when displayed in a like echo "$article"; For an example, see http://www.cobblekids.org/Pages/Articles/Article_View4b.php and click on an article title. Thanks, -Landy - Before posting, please check: http://www.mysql.com/manual.php (the manual) http://lists.mysql.com/ (the list archive) To request this thread, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Trouble unsubscribing? Try: http://lists.mysql.com/php/unsubscribe.php
