Project design

[Dave Griffiths]

Hi all

I have coded some JavaScript as well as XHTML and now have a project that
will help me learn to code better. An end to the means shall we say.

The project will display data (Duty rosta for Doctors) in the browser, the
page is dynamically created with JavaScript, at this point in time I
assign values to the variables in the JavaScript and they appear in the
correct places in the browser, and all the required data processes work,
no black magic there.

I have created an Excel sheet that the user data is inputted through,
completely automated and works well, now!! can I get JavaScript read the
data from the server side excel sheet into these variables, if so how, or
do I need to start looking into another language here, I program in Visual
Basic 5 and a little C++ but thought this is a XHTML/JavaScript related
problem.

A few plain english pointers would be apprectiated on how others would
attack the problem.

Thanks
DaveG

[Yann-Erwan Perio]

Dave Griffiths wrote:

I have created an Excel sheet that the user data is inputted through,
completely automated and works well, now!! can I get JavaScript read the
data from the server side excel sheet into these variables, if so how, or
do I need to start looking into another language here, I program in Visual
Basic 5 and a little C++ but thought this is a XHTML/JavaScript related
problem.

You've gone for a strange architecture, why use an Excel spreadsheet as
a database?

Anyway, client-side javascript wouldn't be able to read the server-side
Excel file, at least not in a normal environment (IE in a secure
environment would probably be able to do it).

You need therefore server-side scripting, either (1) to read the Excel
file and send the whole HTML file with preset values, or (2) to interact
more or less in the background with the Excel file.

If you have ASP (Active Server Pages), then use it, it'll be easy to
automate Excel from the server, either using VBScript or JScript, with
the CreateObject method of the Server object.
Regards,
Yep.

[Dave Griffiths]

On Wed, 19 Nov 2003 23:31:23 +0100, Yann-Erwan Perio wrote:

Dave Griffiths wrote:

I have created an Excel sheet that the user data is inputted through,
completely automated and works well, now!! can I get JavaScript read
the data from the server side excel sheet into these variables, if so
how, or do I need to start looking into another language here, I
program in Visual Basic 5 and a little C++ but thought this is a
XHTML/JavaScript related problem.

You've gone for a strange architecture, why use an Excel spreadsheet as
a database?

Anyway, client-side javascript wouldn't be able to read the server-side
Excel file, at least not in a normal environment (IE in a secure
environment would probably be able to do it).

You need therefore server-side scripting, either (1) to read the Excel
file and send the whole HTML file with preset values, or (2) to interact
more or less in the background with the Excel file.

If you have ASP (Active Server Pages), then use it, it'll be easy to
automate Excel from the server, either using VBScript or JScript, with
the CreateObject method of the Server object.
Regards,
Yep.

Thanks

Tell me which way you would have gone about this, I'm really open to
suggestions and would like to know the "correct" method of implementing
such a task, I really do not have any great idea's here and the excel
sheet was the easiest option to get somethings visable for the users
originally, now we want to publish it on our intranet and if the excel
sheet needs to go then so be it.

I have never used ASP but that is now my next port of call, thanks again.

DaveG

[Yann-Erwan Perio]

Dave Griffiths wrote:

Hi Dave, sorry for the late answer.

Tell me which way you would have gone about this, I'm really open to
suggestions and would like to know the "correct" method of implementing
such a task, I really do not have any great idea's here and the excel
sheet was the easiest option to get somethings visable for the users
originally, now we want to publish it on our intranet and if the excel
sheet needs to go then so be it.

Ah, I originally thought data were contained in the spreadsheet, not
that they were inputted by the user, I didn't think it enough :-) Well,
that's another matter, and since you couldn't apparently use web-based
solutions from the beginning (with forms), the only other alternatives I
see would have been to use forms, in Access - which makes it mandatory
for the user to have Access installed and understood - not always possible.

I can now imagine you need to use Excel as the data source, the solution
you want to set up doesn't look bad, and you should be okay using ASP to
access the data. Now, I can only suggest you take a strong defensive
approach while parsing the Excel data, since users can easily change the
Excel format, adding/deleting colums, masking/renaming stuff, changing
cells type etc.

For this sort of scriting, VBScript/ASP might be better than
JScript/ASP, though I believe you could also encapsulate some
validation/retrieval code into macros (I've never automated Excel macros
in the past).
Good luck,
Yep.