Akom of Cazic Thule

I haven't done any web developing in a couple years. Nothing major anyway. My brother is getting married pretty soon and the place they want to register at has no gift registry fuction at their website, but all of their merchandise is listed. My idea is to create a simple registry site for them, with links to the items they wanted.

The simple thing I need to do is have a button that a visitor can press once they have purchased an item which will mark the item as purchased. I know that I could probably accomplish this with PHP and MySQL... but it seems like there should be a much simpler way to go about it. Is it possible to have a button actually alter the site? The site will only be given out to people invited to the wedding, so abuse won't be a problem, I don't think.

I've considered other options, but this seems like it would be the most user-friendly (some of the visitors aren't the most computer savy bunch).

So... any ideas?

lokase

The only other suggestion I could make would be to store the gift registry inforamtion in an XML file that is hosted on the server.

The xml would act as a simple storage device instead of a big clunky database. This would save you from having to setup and run a database on your server, not to mention figuring out connection strings, sql statements and probably a small data access architecture.

Your code simply has to iterate through the XML file until it finds the proper record, then its as easy as using the DOM (or another xml library) to make the change to the data.

Good luck on hack =).

Cheers,

__________________

Forest Stalker of the 80th Season
Quiet and stealthy Lokase slips into the forest to resume the hunt.

Akom of Cazic Thule

Woof... I have no experience with XML hehe. Oh well... time to do some research.


Thanks.

Sanchek

There's nothing clunky about using a database. XML is just a flat file system (an inefficient one, at that). There's nothing about it that's as fast as an indexed database.

It really only shines when you need data to inherently describe its own structure and be flexible for interoperability between different systems.

Kelraz Bladesinger

One thing to be careful about is someone randomly clicking on things they didn't purchase. Like I could say I bought all sorts of things due to internet incompetancy and clicking the wrong box. Having a login of sorts could help that.

Roliel

Databases are definitely faster and more versatile than XML, but it's not like this a very requiring project. If your brother's getting enough gifts that you need an index, I want to marry somebody in your family.

Edit: Forgot to add, XML can be a total pain in the ass if you're dealing with special characters, and quotes can be the devil. If you really just want something simple, a spreadsheet's not a terrible idea.

__________________
-Roliel

Malse

XML is super overkill and an entirely innappropriate answer for storage anyway. You can probably get a quick ASP or PHP package [1] that writes your data to a flat "database" that would work fine for that sort of data size. I'd also recommend at least some sort of authentication, even just an "enter your name" field so you can sort through it when a net.kid finds it so you know that they aren't really getting 5 gifts from "Jack Meoffgud"


[1] They may even have it built in. I know TCL for Apache came with a simple CSV flat database system that was presented as a coherent hash table to your program. It worked great for anything up to a few thousand entries of average web form data.

Sanchek

Maybe you could find simple shopping cart app that supports inventory, set all the inventory quantities to 1, and change all the nomenclature to gift registry stuff.

lokase

He wanted different approaches, I gave him one.

I am sure an XML solution would work, MUCH more quickly than a database solution, that is why I suggested it. We are not talking about a big system here. Its basically a CHECK LIST. There are a lot easier and quicker solutions out there for a check list than setting up a database and ensuing code, XML is but just one.

Instead of tearing down the XML solution I provided, why not suggest one of your own?.

I still think a database solution is still way over blown for what he is looking for.

Cheers,

__________________

Forest Stalker of the 80th Season
Quiet and stealthy Lokase slips into the forest to resume the hunt.

Akom of Cazic Thule

Well, thanks for all the pointers everyone. I was sitting there thinking... man... it seems like someone should have already done this. Sure enough... a number of companies had. I found one that works well.. you link to whatever items you want... it keeps track of items purchased... and best of all, it saved me from a butt load of work. Cool.

I took the easy way out and just registered a domain and had it re-direct to the URL for the registry. Soooo much easier.

Thanks again everyone!