Drawing text from database...

[zainabSULE]

Hi

So, here's the scenario. Am doing this page... this one's actually my personal page, and on it, there's a place to read dynamic poetry. I have close to 300 poems stored on my PC in word format. What I want to happen is that on the website, these poems change with every visit to the page.

I understand this is PHP based, and I do quite a lot of stuff with php... but i've ne'er tried this one. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
Zainab

[SituationSoap]

Are the poems in Word documents or stored in a database? Do you want them to appear sequentially, or at random?

You'll have to give a bit more information if you want this to work.

[zainabSULE]

hi

i don't have a database yet on the site. All the poems are in word format on my PC alone. Its not yet online. What I wanna do is make this poetry available online, and also have a place where viewers can comment.

So how do I even insert this poetry from MS Word to the database in the first place? I know a lot about dbases, but not when it comes to text...

ThanKs...
Z

[a2K]

You could assign each poem to a variable (or store them in a database) and then create a random number say 1-10 via PHP. If $number = 1 echo $poem1. And so on and so forth.

[zainabSULE]

@ A2K. That's to advanced for me... I'm new to developing with php. I am primarily a person built born and bred at Design & Graphics.

Besides, ALL the poems are in just 1 Word file. More than 200. So how do I now break them down??

Thanks...
zainab

[a2K]

I don't know of any other way then to manually do it. My solution really isn't that advanced. Actually I tried the simplest way I could think of

<?php
srand(time());
$random = (rand()&#37;9);
echo("random number between 0 and 9 is: $random");
if($random==0){
echo $poem1;
}
else if ($random == 1){
echo $poem2;
}
//Keep doing that
?>

Untested

[zainabSULE]

ok... i'l try that.. but it kinda looks hard... but i use php my admin for my coding. so from d looks of it i have to seperate each poem and label it 0-1...

seems....

thanks.

PS: is there any other option???

[a2K]

I don't know of any other way. Maybe others could help, or simply put it all in a database, which from the sound of it is what you want, I just presented a simplified version.

PS. If you put the poems in variables then dont put it in the file you output stuff. For readibility, put those poems in a seperate file then do include();

[zainabSULE]

Hi... thanks... ur reply was very helpful. i'm going to try it... its just that since am not a php guru i might have some difficulties.. but i knw u'll be there to help all the way...


Z

[a2K]

If you ever have any PHP problems just post back in this thread if it is relevant to this thread, or feel free to make another thread.

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