Making Website Load from External File

[Mat]

Sorry if the heading is misleading.

I am trying to create a simple website with a list of all my albums (i'm up to 183). It would just serve the purpose of my friends being able to see what I have, and have bought recently.

What I'd like to be able to do is simply update a list of the cds instead of having to update the HTML file, and then have the HTML file read the list from that other file. I'm sure there is a way to do it, just unsure which language/setup I should be using. I've been looking at PHP and XML, but have found the info all a bit advanced, as I have no knowledge of either.

So I was just wondering what you guys/gals think will do the job.

All help welcomed and appreciated.

Mat

[btoth]

You could use PHP to just read from a flat file... have each line in the file be a record of sorts ended with a newline character. Should be pretty easy to do that way. It depends on how organized you want the file to be. iTunes uses XML, so you could also parse that too, but I haven't done XML in PHP to be of any help.

[Mat]

thanks btoth

I spoke to my Uni tutor and he showed me how to do it in PHP, it seems pretty easy, I just discovered that my ISP's web space doesn't have a PHP server running on it anyway. Doesn't matter I'll just do it the old fashioned way. HTML.

Thanks for the input mate.

[Pengu]

check out www.webhostingtalk.com
in the forums there are offers/request for free webhosts all the time.

[Mat]

Cool, thanks man.

I found out the line of coded needed to do what I wanted. In case anyone is interested, it is:

<?php include("file.extension"); ?>

So easy, and that file can be just about anything.

Thanks for your help peeps.

[michaelsanford]

Yeah, include(); the function I use most in PHP by far.