Help? Need to output groups of data by limiting the dataset?

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srg_rector
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun 4. Apr 2010, 03:02

Help? Need to output groups of data by limiting the dataset?

Post by srg_rector »

I have looked over the documentation for PHP and I think I can use it to make the website I want. I’m not sure exactly where to look or what to look for to implement it.
Software I am using: MS Office 2003 & Adobe CS3 (Dreamweaver), Notepad++, Eclipse SDK Version: 3.5.2 (with PHPEclipse but have not figured out how to use it yet). I am using a Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit machine and an Apache web server for hosting.
I’m not sure what DB program would be best for this application. I know Excel very well, I have used Access in the past but have forgotten most of it.

My goal is to have a database of book information (author, title, format, language, description, links to amazon.com, misc other info) and be able to tell the PHP code to display only the specific books/formats/languages I wish.

Example:
Display All books: Author #1, Book #1, in English, in all formats – sorted by format type
Display All books: Author #1, Book #1, in all languages, in Video-DVD format – Sorted by Language
Display All books: Author #1, Book #1, in English, In Hardcover – Sorted by ISBN/ISSN number
Display All Books: Author #1, Books 1-7, in Spanish, in all formats – sorted by format

I am going to use CSS formatting on the data returned. The pages I will produce will be static web pages. I will be using the same book data on multiple pages and would like to be able to output the book info by specifying the limitations on the full listing (as above), rather than tell it to take a specific book and output the data. That way I can update the database and not have to worry if I remove a record that is no longer valid. The PHP code would find all records that matched the limitations I list rather than have a link to a specific row of data.

Where should I start? There is so much information out there that I am being overwhelmed learning about stuff I really don’t need right now. Once I master what I need to do this job, I will have time to learn how to do all those other things.

Is there a PHP script/code that does what I need or comes close to this? Can I use Excel for the database?

Thank you for your time and effort!
SR
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