How To Create an Interactive Program That Updates Entries

The problem is I am not sure how to do this and I am wondering if e-books can handle this?  Any suggestions?  I am ready to start putting it together but I am stuck.  HELP!

This isn't something I've done in an ebook, but have in other forms.

Basically, what you are after is a database of sorts. Since you'll unlikely have an actual database to work from you are left with only two choices. First, you can use a text file to store the data. Second, you can use a cookie to store the data. If you are saving a very limited amount of information the cookie is something that might work.

Did you ever come up with what you needed to achieve your objective?

If so, are you willing to share the method/code/script?

I am trying to do something very similar to what you described.

Thanks,

Sorry for not getting this answer to you sooner. This is relatively seay to do in a scripting language called JavaScript. Any beginning text (I personally like JavaScript A Beginners Guide by John Pollock published by Osborne/McGraw Hill) will show you how to use a form to capture information, assign it to a variable, then write it to the screen when you want to do so.

Although Jeff's idea about using JavaScript to personalize an eBook will work during a session, as soon as you close the program the information is lost. I think what you're looking for is something a little more lasting.

Activ E-Book is perfect for this kind of problem. It's built in Activ Script can be used for reading/writing text files. Using this ability you can capture a clients name and then store the name in an external text file on the clients computer.

The next time the eBook is opened, the clients name can be retrieved from the text file and display it on the pages you want.

This will work for any information you can store in a database or text file.

Unfortunately this is not simple to do. You need to know how to create the code for making the form that collects the clients name ( either in JavaScript or Activ Script ). Then you need to know how to capture that input and store it in a variable. Next you must create the code to write that data to a file using Activ Script.

After the data is stored you will need to be able to retrieve the data the next time the eBook opens. Then you must write the code to display the clients name on the page.

To make matters worse, a lot of this code must be constructed in context with the pages it's going to be use on. That means just having the code "snippets" is not enough. You also must know how to place the code on the page to do what you want. In other words you need to be somewhat familiar with scripting languages and how they are used.

Like most things, It's simple if you know how...

This is not necessary if you read in a .js file.

And, if I recall, the FileRead syntax is written into the script as well, commented out, but available to read in the demo file, to be helpful. I just didn't use it... I wrote to and read a .js file instead.

Download the demo here:

http://www.copperfieldpub.com/dev/ActivForm.zip