Embedded database search form

[maxtrac]

Could you recommend a simple software or service which can be used to create a web-based database with a search form? The code would be embedded into a placeholder.

Example: A Chamber of Commerce website needs a search form to find businesses by name or category.

I am able to create mySQL databases, but writing raw PHP code for search forms is out of my reach. I'm trying to find the Xara vs. Dreamweaver equivalent solution for databases.

Thank you for your advice...

PS: I know this is not directly related to XWD, but just like widgets, it would be a great addition to our tool box.

[stlewis]

Hi

Have a go with php/mysql! There is plenty of stuff on the net. As long as the businesses are only in one category, you have two tables - business and category, with the key to category (let's say 'categoryid') in the business table.

You then need a form, where a dropdown is populated from the Category table. The form then passes the data from the name field and the dropdown to a second php script which returns a list to the search results page.

Each php script using a database has to:
- connect to the database - giving a username and password
- create a query like "SELECT * FROM tblbusiness WHERE tblbusiness.categoryid = (the value from the search)"
- run the query to create the recordset
- a DO...WHILE loop which runs through the recordset and displays the data in a table or list, or populating the dropdown in the search form

You will need logic in the searchresults script to look at the incoming field data to see if you have either/or/and so you search only for those requests.

BTW you will also need admin pages to add, edit and delete the categories and the businesses.

I tend to use a mix of Dreamweaver, text editor and query tool like FlySpeed) to do this, but only cos DW does a lot of donkeywork - it is not essential. I am not aware of any tools which make this stuff really easy, for less than the cost of Dreamweaver. Alpha Five looks clever but you need the server product which I think only runs on Windows - not Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP, and together they cost a heap.

Good luck.

[w00dy]

Try: http://www.appgini.com It's awesome!

[samrc]

Thanks for the link Woody.
That app looks like a time saver! Might have to give it a try.

[maxtrac]

Greetings!

I found a "free" database service which seems to do the trick. Everything is done online and it can be embedded on a placeholder.

http://www.infodome.com/

Here is their demo code for public view:

<object id="MDBEmbeddedForm" name="MDBEmbeddedForm" data="https://secure.infodome.com/app/MDBEmbeddedForm.swf"align="middle" width="100%" height="100%" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"><param value="https://secure.infodome.com/app/MDBEmbeddedForm.swf" name="movie"/><param value="high" name="quality"/><param value="#869ca7" name="bgcolor"/><param value="guid=da935983ab1b30a5c06a070f78e36c46&tbar= 1&isIE=false" name="flashvars"/><param value="sameDomain" name="allowScriptAccess"/><param value="false" name="SeamlessTabbing"/><param value="transparent" name="wmode"/></object>

[Teedee]

[QUOTE=maxtrac;368692]Could you recommend a simple software or service which can be used to create a web-based database with a search form? The code would be embedded into a placeholder.

You can also try http://www.codecanyon.net/category/p...e-abstractions

[zumwalt]

Depending on your needs, you might take a look at this: http://caspio.com