Forgive me for asking such a general question but I am kind of flooded with options and could really use some opinions on how you would proceede, maybe this can be a bit of a discussion with some points/counter points.
So I am currently working on a new website for a friend's art gallery.
The new website is a mysql backed cms (processwire), the old website is old school hard coded php.
The current items or artworks are hard coded into a function:
artinfo($field1,$field2,$field3,$field4,$field5,$field6,)
This is just a function that takes several string values and does some formatting to display them on a page.
artinfo('abeles-conundrum.jpg','Sigmund Abeles','Conundrum','Lithograph','34 x 24 inches','$1600','');
So where I am getting stuck is here. I will have access to their filemaker database that has many fields but no images, and their current admin has all of the images with the names that are on the website.
What I am thinking that I will try to do is use the data on their current website to relate the info in the db to the images.
The reason why I am also not reusing the old images is that they are currently fairly small (max 400px), and would like to use higher res images (around 1200px).
I do have a utility that I built in c# using the html agility pack to pull the relavant fields, but I do also have access to the raw php files as well.
Related
I am working on an online time card system to replace the paper time cards. What I have done is create a webpage in PHP that takes the time in and out along with job description and other values the user inputs and stores them in a MySQL database. Everything is working just fine.
What I would like to work on next is to take the information from the database for the specific user and week and have it fill in a PDF template file I have created from scanning the old paper time card and making it into a PDF form. I dont know if this is possible I have been researching it online and all I can come up with is how to generate a new PDF file. I am hoping someone here can point me to a source of information on how to do this.
Here is an example of exactly what I want to do http://try.fillpdf-service.com/
Hi congratulation for you about done the 1st step in time,
You can use very complete pdf generator php class TCPDF
It started in 2002, TCPDF is now one of the world's most active Open Source projects, used daily by millions of users and included in thousands of CMS and Web applications.
http://www.tcpdf.org/ for genarating your pdf what kind your want this class has very useful documnet and simple to use
Cheers,
Farzam
Take a look ath this
http://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/
It can be invoked as a command line tool and among the other functions let fill form fields, (on an already existing PDF you supply).
Maybe FPDF is quite old, but still good to handle for PDF generation. Just take a Template PDF (create as you like) and put the informations you want on it. You will have to place your data on the specific positions, see the tutorial section for a better understanding.
Another popular solution is to use Zend_PDF from well known Zend Framework, but I think FPDF would be a tick easier to work with if you are not very experienced.
Recently I've been working on a little side project, aimed at being a wallpaper site. It'll mainly consist of my own photos, but I may implement some kind of upload system for other users to submit their own.
Essentially, I can make a page that takes an ID from the URL, e.g., 284 from /wallpaper?id=284. I can easily pop a .jpg after it and make a different image load depending on the ID. The annoying thing is, I'd like to also have a title/description accompany the photos, and I don't want to also have a title attribute in the URL at it would be easy to tamper with, even if not doing any damage.
I'm guessing this is to do with PHP tables (judging by the name and the sudden realisation that not much would be possible without something like it), which I can use as I'm currently running on a local WAMP server. I should also be able to when and if I upload this to an online server.
I'm basically asking how I can create some kind of document or table containing information that can be retrieved using some kind of ID.
Thanks
I'm currently doing a task where I'm taking forms from a local government body, and converting them so that they are able to have a PDF generated dynamically via FPDF based on passed parameters. Currently the only copies of these documents are in read-only pdf files. What I'm wondering is if there is a way to have these files read somehow to where these documents could be converted into FPDF format somehow? Normally I'd just create them manually, but with 50 files to convert, and with some being multiple page forms, it'll probably take months, and hence looking for a quicker way.
The short answer is you're stuck. As far as I and my many hours of research know there's no such process. I would love to be proven wrong.
I recently went through a similar situation with insurance forms. I used the free trial of Adobe Live Cycle Designer to build out the forms. It basically turns the old pdf into a flat background image you can draw form fields over. Then I used PDF Toolkit and PDFTK-PHP to populate the fields.
The process wasn't ideal but it worked out well enough. I setup 20 forms consisting of about 50 pages with filling code and some other operations in a week.
I'm developing an image gallery for one of my customers, they want a very minimal, simple and easy user experience. The image gallery must contain a title and description of each image, we have created a app to upload the images and set titles and descriptions this is stored in a mySQL database. We're developing this site with php.
Before I go off and develop this, does anyone know of any opensource galleries that tie into a mySQL database with similar functionality? Or maybe this approach is naive? Maybe I should approach this from a different direction and not use a mySQL backend..
Any advice is very welcome.
Josh
This one looks decent: http://gallery.menalto.com/. It supports MySQL and a bunch of other DBs.
For something this simple, you could get by without a database (however I doubt you would be able to have a title and description for the images without using a flat-file database; not recommended). To do it without a database, try this: http://spgm.sourceforge.net/.
However, if you already have written the uploader which works with MySQL, I would go with the database option and tweak it if necessary to work with the first link I posted.
Just today I've started using Drupal for a site I'm designing/developing. For my own site http://jwm-art.net I wrote a user-unfriendly CMS in PHP. My brief experience with Drupal is making me want to convert from the CMS I wrote. A CMS whose sole method (other than comments) of automatically publishing content is by logging in via SSH and using NANO to create a plain text file in a format like so*:
head<<END_HEAD
title = Audio
keywords= open,source,audio,sequencing,sampling,synthesis
descr = Music, noise, and audio, created by James W. Morris.
parent = home
END_HEAD
main<<END_MAIN
text<<END_TEXT
Digital music, noise, and audio made exclusively with
#=xlink=http://www.linux-sound.org#:Linux Audio Software#_=#.
END_TEXT
image=gfb#--#;Accompanying image for penonpaper-c#right
ilink=audio_2008
br=
ilink=audio_2007
br=
ilink=audio_2006
END_MAIN
info=text<<END_TEXT
I've been making PC based music since the early nineties -
fortunately most of it only exists as tape recordings.
END_TEXT
( http://jwm-art.net/dark.php?p=audio - There's just over 400 pages on there. )
*The jounal-entry form which takes some of the work out of it, has mysteriously broken. And it still required SSH access to copy the file to the main dat dir and to check I had actually remembered the format correctly and the code hadn't mis-formatted anything (which it always does).
I don't want to drop all the old content (just some), but how much work would be involved in converting it, factoring into account I've been using Drupal for a day, have not written any PHP for a couple of years, and have zero knowledge of SQL?
How would I map the abstraction in the text file above so that a user can select these elements in the page-publishing mechanism to create a page?
How might a team of developers tackle this? How do-able is it for one guy in his spare time?
You would parse the text with PHP and use the Drupal API to save it as a node object.
http://api.drupal.org/api/function/node_save
See this similar issue, programmatically creating Drupal nodes:
recipe for adding Drupal node records
Drupal 5: CCK fields in custom content type
Essentially, you create the $node object and assign values. node_save($node) will do the rest of the work for you, a Drupal function that creates the content record and lets other modules add data if need be.
You could also employ XML RPC services, if that's possible on your setup.
Since you have not written any PHP for a long time, and you are probably in a hurry, I suggest you this approach:
Download and install this Drupal module: http://drupal.org/project/node_import
This module imports data - nodes, users, taxonomy entries etc.- into Drupal from CVS files.
read its documentations and spend some time to learn how to use it.
Convert your blog into CVS files. unfortunately, I cannot help you much on this, because your blog entries have a complex structure. I think writing a code that converts it into CVS files takes same time as creating CVS files manually.
Use Node Import module to import data into your new website.
Of course some issues will remain that you have to do them manually; like creating menus etc.