HTTP parsing XML

I'm trying to do a simple database where you list products and then you click to get details of a product. I got the listing down (no problem), but where do I go from there???

I can do it with ASP, PHP, MySQL, MS Access, but I am TOTALLY lost with XML. I've been through so many web sites and they all seem to be "What is XML" crap, but none of them show you how to build a dynamic site with your XML data.

What do you mean by dynamic? I know that you can call XML files from HTML, and ofcourse do something with the data. Is this what you want?

I would like to create a small products database (right now 6 items). And basically the first page will list all the items and the second page will give you details on 1 specific item.

So totally I want to only create two html pages and have them dynamically built based on what the user clicked.

I know how to do this with PHP and MySQL, but I'm very new to XML and I haven't figured out how to retrieve data from the address bar.

Example with PHP:
page 1's link
href="mysite.com/products.php?id=39283"

page 2 php code
$prod_id = $_GET['id'];
mysql_query("SELECT * FROM products WHERE id=$prod_id");

... from there my details page is built based on what the user picked.

Maybe XML Data Island is what you need. XML Data ISland will let you load XML files via HTML. Here, have a look at:
http://forums.devshed.com/t139758/s.html

Did it help?

I do know how to do a data island. I can successful display the data on the first page. The challenge is sending and recieving data to another page.

I have been reading your posts and I think there may be some confusion. XML is a markup language used for data. It really doesn't transmit/receive and it isn't a scripting language like PHP. An XML file contains all of your data with your own tags. You could then create an XSL sheet to define/describe your tags.

If you are looking for something to act upon a selection, you would need something like PGP or Javascript. I don't think XML is what you want for that.

Regards,

#jlk

I think I know what you're looking for.

What I think you mean is the ability to say 'read more' on a product and that will pass something along the lines of product.html?productid=1 and that will pull out just the product from the data that is product ID 1.

There's something about XQuery that will do this for you, or at least let you pull out data based on a statement - it's like the SQL of XML. (Though I think that's possible too...)

Anyways, there's two main problems with using XQueries: 1) I don't know where you actually put the XQuery data (in an XML doc, in HTML, in its own tag, not a clue) and 2) I don't know how you transfer the data from that lil' tag up top into your XQuery data.

Happy hunting.