doing searches - need help really quickly

[GilesW]

hello, a client im doing a webpage for wants me to add a search type thing on the site - the site is fully flash. what the search is for is for choosing the "colour" or "sex" of the animal (its for alpacas) so instead of browsing though all of the things o\for sales, you can narow them down to what you want.

and example of this is on another alpaca page which is\: [url]http://www.pinjarraalpacas.com/saleslist/index.shtml[/url]

I would really appriciate a quick responce - or any for that matter, because this is a very important part of the webpage - and it has to be done in flash (not html like the site I gave you)

thanks again.

Giles

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Referring URLs
[url]http://www.pinjarraalpacas.com/saleslist/index.shtml[/url]

[GilesW]

please!! :(

i really need to know how to do this

[url]www.nuclearfusion.com.au[/url]
BEST SITE EVER!!!! ;)
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[Peter Blumenthal]

Could you explain a little more about how the site works Giles? Is the
content currently dynamic? Can your aplaca farming client add and remove
entries himself as his animals are born and sold? Are the entries likely to
number in the tens, hundreds, thousands...?

You will notice that the search in the example you gave is querying a
database via cgi to return the appropriate results. You are going to need
something similar I think. Somewhere you need a record of each animal, and
it's attributes - type, colour, age etc. You could use mySQL and PHP for
example to store and retrieve records. If you aren't expecting too many
entries, you could probably store the data flat, ie as a textfile. Your
search is then done on those attributes, searching for characteristics the
user has specified.

You could do it entirely in Flash, using arrays or objects to store the
attributes for each animal. This would then mean a lot of work to update
though, as you'de need to edit the flash file every time, re-upload the swf
etc.

So please tell us a bit more about the scope of the project and how you have
approached it so far.

cheers,

}`¬P

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[GilesW]

Thank you so much for your responce!

ok, well she has about, I think, about 60 alpacas in her farm - mabey abit more, or less.

The content is currently just flash - no dynamic stuff at all.

(heres what I'm working on: [url]http://nuclearfusion.com.au/alpacaindex.htm[/url])

What I am wanting to do, is when a person clicks on the "sales" button (to enter the sales page) then, in the rectangular box where the pic of the grass currently is, will be a search box. The person doesnt have to do a search but can view everything if they want to (everything will be below)

Because you said it would be hard top do it in flash, I was think mabey I could make it so that when the person searches, It opens a new html page (no flash) with the search results.

If this isnt 2 hard, could you please explain to me how to do it.

With the database, what programe do I need to use, can I use exel, I have never worked with microsofta access before.

Thanks for you help, and sorry if I am getting you frustrated :(



[url]www.nuclearfusion.com.au[/url]
BEST SITE EVER!!!! ;)
myemailaddress

[GilesW]

ive decided to make it an html page, with a flash nav at the top - this should be easier?

[url]www.nuclearfusion.com.au[/url]
BEST SITE EVER!!!! ;)
myemailaddress

[Peter Blumenthal]

--
---------------------------------------
[url]http://www.phageinteractive.com[/url]
PhageInteractive Ltd.
remove mm_ to mail
---------------------------------------
'I wish we lived in a world where it was possible to be religious and think
at the same time.' - Jonh Graves

>
> What I am wanting to do, is when a person clicks on the "sales" button (to

enter the sales page) then, in the rectangular box where the pic of the
grass currently is, will be a search box. The person doesnt have to do a
search but can view everything if they want to (everything will be below)

>
> Because you said it would be hard top do it in flash, I was think mabey I

could make it so that when the person searches, It opens a new html page (no
flash) with the search results.

It's not that it's difficult to do in Flash. It's just that if you were to
use Flash *alone*, instead of in conjunction with a database, every time an
animal was sold or born you would have to edit the actual fla, output a new
swf and upload it to the your server. Even then some return visitors will
just see their old, cached copy of the site. To open an html page with the
results, you are still going need data to search and some kind of script to
search it with and write it out to the html page.

> If this isnt 2 hard, could you please explain to me how to do it.

None of the steps are too difficult in themselves, but books are written
questions like this - it can't be fully answered here :|
If i were you i would look at storing the data in an xml document. This has
the advantage of being easily updateable, and if well structured, easy to
search.

> With the database, what programe do I need to use, can I use exel, I have

never worked with microsofta access before.

In general i would go for mySQL, as it's robust, well supported, free and
will run on windoze and unix boxes. You will need a middleware scripting
language, and i would suggest PHP for exactly the same reasons.

> Thanks for you help, and sorry if I am getting you frustrated :(

No sweat, and no frustration either :)

}`¬P

[Jens Jebens]

It's not nescessarily easier I would say...

Just google a bit before you ask, "flash dynamic content php mysql" -
third hit for example...

Check ultrashock.com and so on...

Jens


GilesW wrote:

> ive decided to make it an html page, with a flash nav at the top - this should be easier?
>
>
> [url]www.nuclearfusion.com.au[/url]
> BEST SITE EVER!!!! ;)
> myemailaddress

[Pete Hughes webforumsuser@macromedia.com]

If you have made a static Flash site containing descriptions of 60 different alpacas, which will be changing over time, you have made a mistake. You should be thinking very much in terms of one standard 'alpaca description' page, reading in a list of data for all of the alpacas, then displaying one alpaca at a time on request. This would be little more than a dynamically loaded slide show for which you should be able to find plenty of help already given. The list that you load could be spit out from a database, although if you need to keep it basic the list can be a text file maintained by hand. Regardless of where it comes from, once this list is loaded in to Flash you can do all the searching you want.

[GilesW]

Thanks for all your help, but I think I am way way over my head... :S

I dont no what to do at all, i might see my teacher when i go back to school, hopefully he can help

thanks for your help again

[url]www.nuclearfusion.com.au[/url]
BEST SITE EVER!!!! ;)
myemailaddress