Custom Scripts

[RichP]

Hi,

A couple of questions if anyone can shed any light on my problems !

1) How do i create a custom script in actinic ?

I need to have my own script, that actinic will process before updating to the website. It would be like have my own version of the shopping cart script, that actinic would process, creating another script which it would then updare to the web server, in much the same way it does with it's own script.

2) How do you write plugin's for actinic ?

In trying to solve the problem above , is there any way to writea plug-in to extend actinic so that you can create your own pages from the internal actinic databases ?

I need to create an xml file of all of the products in the actinic database. How can i do this ?

I have tried linking the products to an excel sheet or access database, and whilst this works, it seems it wont CREATE a new product, it will only updating existing linked ones. Is this correct ?

Thanks

Richard.

[RuralWeb]

Dont want much do you!

[RichP]

Ha!

Mal,

I have looked over and over for a way to accomplish this, and can't find a nice solution.

I can write my own piece of code to read the actinic database, and create the xml file i need, but then when i give it to the client they will have to run a seperate process outside of actinic.

I could include the entire actinic access db as an extra file and upload it to the website, which would give me what i need, but the user would have an 8MB file upload every time he updated his site.

The perfect solution for me was to link the products to a spreadsheet. This was fine, except that when i create a new product in actinic it doesnt enter it in the spreadsheet.

I cant believe anyone would implement this type of feature and not allow the code to update the spreadsheet. This renders this function almost useless.

Maybee i'm implementing the external link incorrectly ? or does actinic really not insert new products into the spreadsheet ?

There must be a way to do this........

[NormanRouxel]

Actinic has the entire PHP language built-in and available at page compile time for you to do as you please.

Something like (NB Pseudo code)

<actinic:block if="PageType == "Search"">
  <actinic:block php="true">
  // php code to open file
  </actinic:block>
  <actinic:block type=EntireSectionList>
    <actinic: block type=ProductList>
      <actinic:block php="true">
      // php code to write product XML
      </actinic:block>
    </actinic:block>
  </actinic:block>
  <actinic:block php="true">
  // php code to close file
  </actinic:block>
</actinic:block>

The outer block means that the inner stuff is only done once (when the Search page is created).

Numerous prior posts apply. E.g. http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=32892

[RichP]

Thanks NormanRouxel this is what I need. Thanks...........

[Jan]

We have an RSS product feed in our product mash tool as well. Might be worth looking at if this doesn't work out for you - you can automate generation by combining it with our automation product and then if you added the filename to the additional files list, Actinic would upload it for you when it changed.

Regards,