Help with language, dev tool selection

[vasilijepetkovic]

I have a problem that I have to solve programmatically and since HTML
is pretty much the only code I have been exposed to I need an advice on
how to develop the programmatic solution to the problem I have.

In the nutshell, it'd be great if you can give me guidance in terms
of:

1) What programming language to use
2) What development tools to use
3) Tips on how to code the solution

So, here is my challenge:

I have a flat text file, 30000 records, each record has two columns,
the columns are tab separated.

The file looks like this (approximately)

Sarajevo 431104-133111
Mostar 441242-133421
Zagreb 432322-134423


The first value is a name of a town, and the second value represent
longitude-latitude in degrees, minutes and seconds.

For each record I have to create an html file that will be named as the
name of the town (i.e. Sarajevo.html). The content of the file will be
rather simple; in the first row it will contain the header (i.e.
"This page displays longitude-latitude information") - The second
row will have the following word: "Grad" - and the third row will
contain the name of the city and the fourth row will have the
longitude-latitude info.

The program also needs to prompt me (before it starts spitting the html
pages) and ask what test should be entered in line one (I would than
manually enter "This page displays longitude-latitude information")
and it also need to prompt me about the text that should be entered in
line two (I'd go and manually enter "grad").

I'd greatly appreciate any coment and/or guidance.


Best,

Vasilije Petkovic Vasa

 

[vasilijepetkovic]

Further clarification:

The pages will have to be pure static html pages (so no datasource will
be driving generation of the pages).

Therefore, I'd have to create
30,000 files.

It's my understanding that almost every host should be
able to serve a simple and static html code.

Best,
Vasa

 

[Maciej Dziardziel]

1) What programming language to use

This is trivial task, whatever language you choose, will do it.
Python too, and its also simple and popular, so i can recommend it.

2) What development tools to use

You don't need nothing beyond python interpreter.

3) Tips on how to code the solution

Read the python tutorial (www.python.org) and thats probably all you need to
know.

For each record I have to create an html file that will be named as the
name of the town (i.e. Sarajevo.html). The content of the file will be
rather simple; in the first row it will contain the header (i.e.
"This page displays longitude-latitude information") - The second
row will have the following word: "Grad" - and the third row will
contain the name of the city and the fourth row will have the
longitude-latitude info.

Its maybe 10-20 lines of trivial code, so i suggest you to read python
tutorial, unless its only do-it-once operation.

Do you really need to create 30k files? this will take a lot of time
(creating a file is time-consuming operation on creation, sending them to
server too) and disk space greedy - even if file has 300 bytes, it may take
4kb or more on disk, depending on filesystem and its settings.
Perhaps collecting names starting with the same letter in single file will
be enough.

 

[daftspaniel]

Hi Vasilije,

Try the Python 411 Podcast for a good introduction.

http://www.awaretek.com/plf.html

Cheers,
Davy Mitchell

http://www.latedecember.com

 

[Larry Bates]

1) Python can do this easily
2) No tools required
3) Don't do it the way you describe.

Here's what I would do:

Load the information that you have in the text file
into a MySQL database (MySQL import has tab delimited
as its default so it is easy) and write a few lines of
PHP to serve up the HTML pages dynamically. I say PHP
and MySQL because almost every Internet Service
Provider installs those tools for free when you host a
website. If you are self hosting, use Python to create
the pages dynamically as they are required. Besides,
it will take you almost as long to upload the 30000
html pages to your webserver as to write this entire
application.

-Larry Bates

 

[Fredrik Lundh]

I have a flat text file, 30000 records, each record has two columns,
the columns are tab separated.

The file looks like this (approximately)

Sarajevo 431104-133111

(when did they move sarajevo to italy?)

Mostar 441242-133421
Zagreb 432322-134423

here's a straightforward Python solution:

HEADER = "This page displays longitude-latitude information"
SUBHEADER = "Grad"

for line in open("datafile.txt"):

town, latlong = line.split()
lat, long = latlong.split("-")

f = open(town + ".html", "w")
f.write(HEADER + "\n")
f.write(SUBHEADER + "\n")
f.write(town + "\n")
f.write(long + " " + lat + "\n")
f.close()

# end

tweak as necessary. see the Python tutorial for help:

http://docs.python.org/tut/tut.html

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