Flat File Question

[highnoon]

After reading the forums articles, I understand that Version 7.0 will not support flat files. These questions are for Version 6.0+.

1) With flat files, if I wanted a different event calendar on each of my web pages (say 1,000+ pages) could I have a different flat file for each page? Is a flat file filename used as a parameter in the javascript embedded on web page?

Background: I have users with personal pages, and I have a method of creating specific events tailored to each user. I would like to create a simple flat file for each user of no more than 100 events. In this way, I can quickly build these text files without needing to import and deal with mySQL integration. Only my script that constructs the text file would write to it. The web visitor would not update or write to the text file.


2) What is the overhead of using flat files? Is it mainly that the PHP script has to do more processing (e.g. text file load, text file parsing, etc.)? What is the "extra" processing involved in using a flat file? I assume that < 100 events is not many, but each time the page loads, would the PHP calendar script read the entire text file in order to display on the web page?

[Brian]

1) There isn't a variable to assign the flat-file name on the fly. Version 6 wasn't designed to be used in this way. You would need separate installation for each user. There may be other licensing questions with this type of installation...

2) Each time the page loads, the calendar script must read and parse the entire text file in order to display on the web page.

[highnoon]

Originally Posted by Brian

1) There isn't a variable to assign the flat-file name on the fly. Version 6 wasn't designed to be used in this way. You would need separate installation for each user. There may be other licensing questions with this type of installation...

2) Each time the page loads, the calendar script must read and parse the entire text file in order to display on the web page.

The user doesn't edit events. I just want to customize an event list for each user. It would be display only. The only difference between 1,000 users coming to see my site with a static calendar is that I have a different dataset for each user.

The personal event information is generated by my own database and scripts. I only want to use the Easy PHP as a presentation layer to display the data.

[highnoon]

Originally Posted by Brian

1) There isn't a variable to assign the flat-file name on the fly. Version 6 wasn't designed to be used in this way. You would need separate installation for each user. There may be other licensing questions with this type of installation...

2) Each time the page loads, the calendar script must read and parse the entire text file in order to display on the web page.

Another solution for me may be this:

I see event planners can filter / find events in the demo.

1) Can visitors who don't have username / password access also filter and find events to be displayed?

2) Can I pass information to the PHP script indicating what categories and other filtering information the visitor will see on their calendar?

Thanks

[Brian]

1) Yes. You don't need to log in to view the calendar and non-logged users can use the filter plugin.

2) Yes. Use the $showCat variable. (Search the instructions for showCat).