[thelist] XML as poor man's database?

Tom Schmidt ildenizen at insightbb.com
Sat Jan 28 20:18:43 CST 2006


Thank you for you advice.

I am thankful that my skills are not suffient to even attempt the building
of a shopping cart!

I am using Typepad as my blogging service.  I am not sure what server or
access to server side scripting they offer.  My plan is to simply use what
they call "advanced template set" and insert some fairly basic html, with
access to a PayPal shopping cart.  That way all the secure work on
transactions are not handled by me, for a nominal percentage of the sales.

Being somewhat of a perfectionist, I just despise the idea of anything
hard-coded into my web page's html.  That was where I thought xml might be
my solution given the limitations of the blog service I have.  Minus of
course my concerns.

Just in case I am able to use php or some other server side scripting (I
have never used that btw), is there a good resource where I can learn the
basics?  Web site, book, etc.?

Thanks again.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Groen" <evolt at markgroen.com>
To: <thelist at lists.evolt.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 28, 2006 10:10 AM
Subject: Re: [thelist] XML as poor man's database?


> On Sat, 2006-01-28 at 09:23 -0600, Tom Schmidt wrote:
> > Novice here, so be gentle.
> > I am helping my wife start up a very small business, with an on-line
presence.  She currently has a Weblog with some faithful readers, and I am
attemtping to wrestle the weblog to do what I want to in order to provide
the basics (images of product, shopping cart, etc. etc.).  I am choosing
this for now since it is a poor man's choice.
> >
> > I am in the process of customizing a page to display her products.  I
*think*, since I don't have access to a server side database, that I can use
an XML file to at least maintain information about the products I want to
display (image file names & locations, descriptions, price, is it sold, and
all that).
> >
> > I have the following concerns, however, and am hoping that I can get
some feedback.
> >
> > 1) What risks am I taking in using XML?  Are there browser and browser
version compatibility issues?
> > 2) I am using JavaScript to load in the XML file (easy solution).
However I now have the same question as before, are there certain XML
parser's that a user/customer may not have access to?
> > 3) I am concerned that for the small number of users who have Javascript
disabled (is this really a small number?), nothing will work on my site.  Is
there a non javascript backup solution for this other than hard-coding all
the information in my HTML?
> > 4) Assuming I can use XML with Javascript, the "ideal" solution would
allow me to both read AND write information to my XML file.  I am not very
hopeful the write front since file access is account/password protected.
Should I just ditch this idea, or are there other viable alternatives for
me?
> >
> > Thank you in advance for any insights you can give me.
>
> I built a javascript shopping cart back in school years ago, and was
> told not to use it for the back end, it was just an exercise. It's just
> too easy to get the Firefox developers toolbar, and insert your own data
> into the javascript that's sent to the server.
>
> Javascript is okay for added whiz-bang, but should not be relied upon
> for your core functionality in an e-commerce solution in other words.
>
> Please tell us what software you are using for the blog, there's a real
> good chance that someone on the list has already done this with the same
> application, and can give you more help. btw, it's generally kind of
> quiet on thelist on the weekend, worth it to see what people say come
> Monday morning before making a decision.
>
> -- 
> cheers,
>
>         Mark
>
> -- 
>
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