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Form and output question
ManonvonSuperock
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I've nearly no experience with programming and was wondering what the easiest way of achieving this goal would be:
I'm having to produce multiple forms that abide by a certain template. One part of these forms contains anywhere from 1-6 of approx. 30 specific blocks of text.
What I want is something like a checkbox list of those blocks of text so that I can select which ones apply and then have it output those blocks in a predefined order ready for wordprocessing.
If this can be done with HTML/java maybe or even with Spreadsheet or Database Office software, that would be great.
How would one go about doing this?
I'm having to produce multiple forms that abide by a certain template. One part of these forms contains anywhere from 1-6 of approx. 30 specific blocks of text.
What I want is something like a checkbox list of those blocks of text so that I can select which ones apply and then have it output those blocks in a predefined order ready for wordprocessing.
If this can be done with HTML/java maybe or even with Spreadsheet or Database Office software, that would be great.
How would one go about doing this?
ManonvonSuperock on
0
Posts
It's possible with PHP & HTML to achieve something like this, so I imagine Javascript could do it too. I've no experience with Javascript but i'm sure it would be pefectly possible to make it more dynamic than the PHP would be (PHP scripts are run server side then the generated content passed to the browser as a static page, Javascript is done locally as a dynamic page as far as I'm aware)
It's certainly possible inside Microsoft Access to achieve that with forms.
Depends on what you're trying to achieve and which medium is best suited though.
and the user wants a form with snake, bear, chicken, and dog (but not the other 36 animals).
so the user would select those and then it would output a word processing file, like an .rtf for example.
Possibly the easiest way would be to use something like Access, store the blocks of text in a DB, make a form to select what you want, and then have the selected form options generate a report.
Only thing is I don't really know what the core functionality limitations are for Access. The last time I had to make an Access app I did most of the work with VBA rather than trying to deal with the built in functions/macros.
So really if Access can't do what you need with stock functionality at the end of the day you're just going to have to choose whichever option you find easiest to learn/code in to do it. Or offload it on someone else.
First page would be a form with a bunch of checkboxes, like so:
<form>
<check box HTML>
THIS IS A PARAGRAPH OF TEXT.
<check box HTML>
ANOTHER PARAGRAPH OF TEXT.
</form>
Submitting the form sends the data to the second page. The PHP on the second page catches the selected checkboxes and uses those to determine which paragraphs to display on the page. Then you can copy those paragraphs into a word processor of your choice.
Does that sound workable? It might be a lot harder to create than it sounds, given that you've never programmed before. :P
A quick google search brought me this, which I might be able to butcher the tutorial for and get what I need.
Is this the easiest way to do go about it, or would it be better to do so through an Office suite?
Is there a way to automatically have it output an .rtf instead of display the results in the browser?
Unless you feel like reading this 12MB spec or delving into PHP libraries, I wouldn't recommend it.