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Demos and Sample Projects

Thousands of FLATTEXT scripts are in use across the Internet. Because an increasingly number of scripts that our clients create are addable, we no longer provide an exhaustive list of satisfied users. We do this to prevent people from testing FLATTEXT scripts on client sites that are operational. Some of our clients have posted Kudos that link to their sites. Please do not attempt to post test records on the web sites of our clients. Test the demos below or create your own script and test it for free on our server before licensing it. If you really want to see our client list before ordering contact us and we will send you the URL.

In order to demonstrate the flexibility and power of FLATTEXT scripts, we have constructed a couple of sample projects that highlight just a few of the features of FLATTEXT Scripts. Each of these scenarios contain access to the data files, so that you can completely reproduce what we have done here by creating test scripts with the generator. Other than constructing a custom template page that both projects share and providing correct path and URL information in Step B of the scripts. The scripts that you will test on this page came directly out of the generator with no modifications made to them at all! The wide range of configuration possibilities in the generator greatly reduces the technical information you need to know. It would almost certainly cost several hundred dollars to have a programmer write the script used in Demo One below. You could not find anyone to write a script with the compexity of the one used in Demo Two below for less than several thousand dollars and it would take them countless hours to write and test it (we created it in the generator in less than 15 minutes). These two projects were selected because the fully span the range of simplicity and complexity. There are countless scripts and options between these two, so be sure to check them out, too.

Demo Project One

You work for a national organization for the humanities and the arts. You recently conducted a survey of all museums across the United States and you have contact information for over 7,000 museums in all 50 states of the US. Your information is in Excel and looks like the following:

ExcelMuseum

Your boss would like people to be able to search by words in the name, city, and state fields, but wants the state field to be a select field that lists all 50 states in the menu to avoid any confusion about format. She also wants them displayed in a table that spans across the screen sorted by the name of the museum and with only 25 museums (max) showing per page. Since the data will be maintained in Excel, this database will not need to be addable online.

Here is what you need to do:

  • Save your Excel spreadsheet as a tab delimited text file (use Save As option)
  • Open the text file that you just saved using a basic text editor and select about 20 lines and copy them using the Edit -> Copy option.
  • Go to http://flattext.com and create a new script.
  • On the second page, select the option to build a script around existing data and on the page that follows, paste your 20 line sample data into the large textarea.
  • Go through the creation process, adding only those options that you will need for this specific script.
  • When done, put your whole data file on your web site according to instructions that came with your script, modify all parts of Step B of the script, and point your search snippets to your script.
Here is what you have:

Name:
City:
State:
The full data file for this test script is available here. It is sorted numerically by Zip code.

This entire demo project took us less than 30 minutes to write, build, test, and install. We made absolutely no changes to the script other than setting path information. Directly out of the generator it did what we asked it to do. If we did need to make changes, we could do so easily. Doing something like this may take you a little longer than 30 minutes, but the more scripts you work with the faster the process will go.

Demo Project Two

This project is similar to the above project, with the following exceptions. The initial 7,000+ records that were in our Excel file only constitute the initial set of data and museums. You will need to be able to add and edit records to your database directly through a form interface using a password. However, those institutions that missed the survey will be encouraged to add their museum listing to our online database. The problem is that we don't trust everyone who may want to post to our database. We want to see what the user is trying to post before adding that record to our database. This can be done with a Class D script (script classes are set under the Add Options in the generator). Class D scripts write all records that general users are trying to add to your database to a temporary file that you can scroll through and approve or reject records individually or in batches. You have been instructed to create a database that will not allow a record to be posted unless it contains data that looks correct in each field (users can't leave anything blank except the FAX field when adding a record). Also, the boss has decided that when doing searches, the user should be allowed to select more than one state from the select pull-down list. She has also decided that she doesn't like how the records are displayed across the screen. She now wants them displayed down the screen in standard address format with each record numbered. She is also concerned about data theft and has decided that no more than 100 listings should be returned for any single search. To your amazement, she also wants you to change the order that the results are displayed. She no longer wants them listed in alphabetical order by name, but rather sorted first by the city field, then by the name of the museum.

Everything mentioned above can be accomplished in less than 10 minutes by editing the script that was created in the demo above and changing its Search and Add properties. Adding or changing this information manually in the script could take days if you are not very familiar with Perl.

At the end of the process, you will get a series of HTML snippets, which you will need to put into any web pages of your choice. Again, we made absolutely no changes to the script other than configurations in Step B to match the directory structure of our server. The test pages below point to a script directly out of our generator.


New Search Interface: This interface does everything that your boss asked (you will need to hold down Ctrl while clicking to select more than one state):
Name:
City:
State:


Master Add Interface: Since your staff need to be able to add records directly, you would use this interface. For testing purposes, the password is listed below. Feel free to give it a try!

Your current master password is: editmuseums

Master Password:
Name:
Address:
City:
State:
Zip:
Phone:
Fax:



Master Edit/Delete Interface: Since your staff needs the ability to edit records in the online database, use this interface:
Your master password is: editmuseums

The edit/delete interface is patterned after your custom search interface.
Edit and delete buttons appear only if correct password is entered (it is case sensitive).

Password:
Name:
City:
State:



Temporary File Interface: This is the interface that you will make available to people over the web generally. It allows them to post a record to a temporary file. You will scroll through this temporary file and accept, reject, delete, or mark for editing records that users post.

This snippet lets your users add records to a temporary file, which serves as a filter that allows you approve all entries before they are written to your data file. The snippets further down this page allow you to scroll through the temporary file and lets you accept, delete, hold, or mark a record for editing after adding it.

Name:
Address:
City:
State:
Zip:
Phone:
Fax:



Scroll Through Temporary File: Enter your password and this interface lets you administer the temporary file. The file contains an IP stamp, which is not added to the database, but may let you know if a single person has posted multiple records in a single session. When you mark a record for editing, it adds it to the database and lets you quickly edit it using the snippet further down this page.

Your current master password is: editmuseums

Password:



Search for Records that You Marked for Editing: Enter your password and you can quickly edit any record that you marked as needing it.

Your current master password is: editmuseums
Password:

Since this demo is interactive, you are encouraged to add, edit, and delete as many records as you like. We will occasionally refresh the data file on our end, so feel free to test it to the point of familiarity. This demo does not use the same data file as in Demo One. New records are added at the end of the file. You can view the main data file here and if you are curious about the structure of the temporary file, add a record to it and view it here (if it is empty, add a record using the appropriate interface).


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