how do I create a searchable address book on a website?

searchable website address book

[Evrman]

I'm working on a website for a housing development that wants to include the members of it's community in a searchable address book on their website. I haven't been able to find anything that is simple enough for me to work with. I was working with PHP to construct it but have been having a terrible time with it.

I've been told that there is a way I can set one up to use an Excel file as a database, which would be ideal for my uses seeing as how the client sent me an excel file with all their members in it.

Does anyone have a clue as to how I can do this simply? Thanks so much!

[rocknbil]

Welcome aboard Evrman - the first question you need to ask, are the builders familiar with the privacy issues and liabilities they are taking on with this move? Even if it's behind a log in area, there has to be the ability to opt out, etc.

For integration into a web site you are likely going to want to export the Excel as a delimited file and upload it to the site, allowing programming to parse it and populate a database. There are API's for direct integration with Excel, but I've never used them, imprting/exporting makes it easier.

Don't know of any freebies or otherwise, but should be fairly trivial for a moderately experienced coder to put together, if they decide to move forward with it.

[Evrman]

Thanks rocknbil! I appreciate the help. I've made it painfully clear to the client why I don't think it's a good idea to include all of the communities info in the directory, but they still want to push forward.

I've gotta figure out more of the programming end of things I suppose. I typically do simple web design but my boss is pushing me in the direction of programming lately. I have an existing database with tables created already, my big problem is I don't know how to get the info from the Excel file into the database. I'm sure this is a very trivial issue for someone with more experience but being so new to it I don't have the first clue as to how to get rolling in that direction.

I really appreciate your suggestions and advice!

[MrHaan]

Maybe you can search for Excel-to-MySQL on google. You can have a look at the 2nd result, I haven't tried it but it maybe works for you.

sorry for my bad English

[Evrman]

Thank you MrHaan! I'll check into it and your English is probably better than mine.

[mack]

You can also export the data from excel as a deliminated (as rocknbil suggested) .csv file. You will be able to import this right into mysql using the phpmyadmin tool.

Mack.

[tangor]

Do speak to your client as regards releasing personal (private?) information on the web. There might be legal issues... and you might get caught in that by direction of the website owners. Beware the bus under which you might be thrown. Meanwhile, Excel to cvs is trivial as that is a function of Excel's SAVE AS. Reading flat files in cvs format via Perl, PHP, or ASP is simple. MySQL makes that possible as well with a bit more bells and whistles, though you must maintain all security (sanitize) access to the database to prevent SQL injection attacks on your server.