Member Avatar for Member #859548

Hi there,

This may be a daft question but I know absolutely nothing about Dreamweaver and how it can be used.

I have been asked if I could look at transfering some archaeological data which will be a mix of text/images/maps/illustrations etc., that has been saved in Dreamweaver presumeably as html, but I havent seen the data yet, and the guy who has asked me this, knows nothing about the IT aspect of how his data has been recorded, other than the person who did this used Dreamweaver. I am 95% certain that he hasn't used a true database in any form. Surprisingly he hasn't created a website for the data either.

So my question is: as I use web expressions (WE) is it straight forward to import all the Dreamweaver files into WE, or could I find problems at getting at the data?

My object is one of 2 options (and probably favouring the second option) :

1) Add the edited webpages to an existing website

or

2) If the data can easily be copied/pasted into our archaeological mysql database using a php/html form, then possibly do that.

Hopefully you will be able to confirm that I should be able to get at the data in the Dreamweaver files to do this?

Thanks in advance for taking the time to read and reply to this.

Cheers

Stephen

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A few practical checks and a short workflow will save time once the files arrive. Ask for the full site folder (HTML files plus the images and any *.dwt or *.lbi template/library files and any server-side files such as *.php or *.asp). Open several pages in a plain-text editor and look for template markers or server-side code (for example <?php or server includes). If pages are generated at runtime you will need either the generated HTML or the server components to reproduce the content.

If the pages are static HTML, identify the repeated structure that represents each record (title, date, description, image block, map caption). Export that data into a delimited file or into a staging table in MySQL. Automate extraction with a DOM-aware parser (PHP DOMDocument or Python BeautifulSoup) rather than brittle regex, and keep a raw-HTML column so you preserve provenance and can reparse later. Watch character encoding (convert to UTF-8) and preserve image EXIF/metadata if that matters for the archaeology work.

For option 1 (drop pages into an existing site): copy the asset folders, update relative paths, merge CSS/JS, and test thoroughly in a browser. For option 2 (import to MySQL): decide whether images will remain filesystem files with DB references or be stored in the DB, design a simple schema first, test the import on a small subset, then scale up.

Common pitfalls: missing images due to broken relative paths, hidden server-side includes, interactive maps or GIS files that require extra assets or APIs, and character-encoding loss. The quick answers from and point you in the right direction; next step is an inventory and a small proof-of-concept import or site integration before a full migration.

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Member Avatar for shaya4207

The files in DW should be regular HTML, which you can just copy/paste into any editor

Member Avatar for teedoff

html is html regardless of the type/brand of text editor that created it.

To me the hard part will be transferring the data to a database. If I read that correctly. You would need the data stored in some format that delimits each row and column. Spreadsheets can be used and easily transferred to MySQL, as well as plain text from notepad provided you set it up properly.

Member Avatar for Member #859548

Thanks for both replies.
I was a little worried that DW might have additional functionality in addition to the html authoring.
Yes; I am familiar with importing data into Access and Mysql Db's. So hopefully I will find a reasonable method to knock it into the right delimited format.
Thanks Again
Stephen

Member Avatar for teedoff 
Thanks for both replies.
I was a little worried that DW might have additional functionality in addition to the html authoring.
Yes; I am familiar with importing data into Access and Mysql Db's. So hopefully I will find a reasonable method to knock it into the right delimited format.
Thanks Again
Stephen

Well yes DW has additional functionality versus other text editors like notepad or notepad++ and others. Although there are many text editors that offer quite a bit of the tools and fucntionality DW has currently.

You might want to check out Navicat. You said you're familiar with MySQl and databases, so you may already have heard of Navicat, but its an awesome GUI for creating, importing, and managing databases.

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