trying to set up a data base search

[brandofamily]

Here is the a portion of the e-mail I got from a friend who has me run her site...
"Also our safe homes directory is ready. How I would like it to be is that people who are in the safehomes can access with a password. Then they can enter a name they are checking on, and it will verify yes or no. Is that possible or too complicated?"

Anyone have any ideas? How do I enter them? How would I do the search?

My thought was I could have one image on the page and do a keyword search for the name in the image key words. The only problem is that I'm limited in the number of keywords in an image and I do not know how I would display if the name was on the list... So I really need help... If I had an iamge for each entry I could put one keyword on each image and display that image as the search result...
Please chime in with thoughts... I'm out of them...

[jfriend]

I'm having a hard time understanding what you're really trying to do here. If you can explain a little more, I'm happy to offer some thoughts.

[brandofamily]

The web site is set up to promote raising drug and alcohol free children. Parents sign up to part of the safe homes network. What they are looking for is a way for members to search a data base for other members.
The member logs in, enters a name into the search field, and the search either pulls up the membership info for that person or returns a message stating the indicated name does not belong to a current member.'Hope that's clear...

[jfriend]

The web site is set up to promote raising drug and alcohol free children. Parents sign up to part of the safe homes network. What they are looking for is a way for members to search a data base for other members.
The member logs in, enters a name into the search field, and the search either pulls up the membership info for that person or returns a message stating the indicated name does not belong to a current member.'Hope that's clear...

Are you asking how you would use Smugmug to solve this problem? Or are you asking generically how one with the ability to build a general purpose web application and database would solve this problem?

And rougly how many members are there?

[brandofamily]

I'm trying to do this on a SM site... I'm guessing 200-250 members...

[jfriend]

I'm trying to do this on a SM site... I'm guessing 200-250 members...

I don't know how to do it with keywords. If the listing of names is not secret, you could just put the list of names and info about them into a giant javascript dictionary of objects and then use client side javascript and HTML to search it and show results. You'd have to manually edit the JS anytime you wanted to add a new entry to the list.

If the data is secret, I guess you could put most of the code in the global JS file, but keep the data itself in an album description of a password protected gallery. The password for the gallery would be the password protection on the system and then the gallery itself would be the form. In this case, you'd have to manually edit the album description anytime you wanted to add a new entry.

You can't put all the code into the album description because the album description processing doesn't handle all characters flawlessly and I've had issues with + sign characters getting messed up in code in album descriptions. But, the data declaration (the list of names and other information) could be contained in the album description if you needed that data safeguarded.

An issue with trying to use search of keywords is that I've not found a way to use keyword searches with password protected galleries. It appears that as soon as you protect a gallery with a password, you can no longer use keyword searching on that gallery.

[brandofamily]

I'm more of a hacker and code copier. Any help you could give me on this one would be appreciated. I get the concept of what you are talking about. But actually coding it is way beyond me. Thanks

[jfriend]

I'm more of a hacker and code copier. Any help you could give me on this one would be appreciated. I get the concept of what you are talking about. But actually coding it is way beyond me. Thanks

I can take a crack at it for you - probably later tonight. Are you OK with the data being in an album description and manually adding/removing data elements from a giant javascript declaration as the data needs to be maintained?

Can you describe more of the workings of the app? You want the user to enter a password (we'll use a gallery password for that I guess). You then want the user to enter a name to search? Is this a person's name in first name, last name format? Do you want them to be able to search either first or last name? Anything else that has to be searchable? Are you OK with whole name matches only?

What other data do you want to enter into the system and display for each name that matches?

[brandofamily]

"Are you OK with the data being in an album description and manually adding/removing data elements from a giant javascript declaration as the data needs to be maintained?" That sounds like it will be fine.

"Can you describe more of the workings of the app?"U
ser to enters a password
User to enter a name to search
Last name, first name format
Can they search either full name or just last name?
Whole name matches onlyis fine.

Other data in the system and display for each name that matches would probably include address and phone number...
So maybe 4 fields... Last name, first name, address, phone number...
only searching by name though...

[brandofamily]

found this little tutorial but I'm not sure how to get the JS out after downloading the files

http://cssglobe.com/lab/searchfield/

I can view the JS using FF WD, but I'm not sure what I would use from it...

[brandofamily]

I used the link I posted and came up with this page

http://www.brandolinoimaging.com/gallery/2997788_xDfqo

The search database is in the JS....
It works OK, but the only way to see the "hit" is in the dropdown suggestions...
Any ideas?
Thanks

[brandofamily]

Any luck with this concept John?

[jfriend]

Any luck with this concept John? I just haven't had time. I might have a chance tomorrow to put some time into it, but I'm not sure.

[brandofamily]

Thanks

[jfriend]

Thanks

Brandon, I don't think this is something I'm going to be able to tackle. Sorry.

[brandofamily]

Brandon, I don't think this is something I'm going to be able to tackle. Sorry.
Thanks for trying. I'll find another way around it...:D