Display database records

Displaying database records involves retrieving information stored in a database or other source of content, and rendering that information to a web page. Dreamweaver provides many methods of displaying dynamic content, and provides several built‑in server behaviors that let you both enhance the presentation of dynamic content, and allow users to more easily search through and navigate information returned from a database.

Databases and other sources of dynamic content provide you with more power and flexibility in searching, sorting, and viewing large stores of information. Using a database to store content for websites makes sense when you need to store large amounts of information, and then retrieve and display that information in a meaningful way. Dreamweaver provides you with several tools and prebuilt behaviors to help you effectively retrieve and display information stored in a database.

Dreamweaver provides the following server behaviors and formatting elements to let you enhance the display of dynamic data:

A powerful feature of Dreamweaver is the ability to present dynamic data within a structured page, and to apply typographic formatting using HTML and CSS. To apply formats to dynamic data in Dreamweaver, format the tables and placeholders for the dynamic data using the Dreamweaver formatting tools. When the data is inserted from its data source, it automatically adopts the font, paragraph, and table formatting you specified.

Recordset navigation links let users move from one record to the next, or from one set of records to the next. For example, after designing a page to display five records at a time, you might want to add links such as Next or Previous that let users display the five next or previous records.

You can create four types of navigation links to move through a recordset: First, Previous, Next, and Last. A single page can contain any number of these links, provided they all work on a single recordset. You can’t add links to move through a second recordset on the same page.

Recordset navigation links require the following dynamic elements:

• A recordset to navigate

• Dynamic content on the page to display the record or records

• Text or images on the page to serve as a clickable navigation bar

• A Move To Record set of server behaviors to navigate the recordset

  You can add the last two elements by using the Record Navigation Bar server object, or you can add them separately by using the design tools and the Server Behaviors panel.

You can create a recordset navigation bar in a single operation using the Recordset Navigation Bar server behavior. The server object adds the following building blocks to the page:

• An HTML table with either text or image links

• A set of Move To server behaviors

• A set of Show Region server behaviors

  The text version of the Recordset Navigation Bar looks like this:

Before placing the navigation bar on the page, make sure the page contains a recordset to navigate and a page layout in which to display the records.

After placing the navigation bar on the page, you can use the design tools to customize the bar to your liking. You can also edit the Move To and Show Region server behaviors by double-clicking them in the Server Behaviors panel.

Dreamweaver creates a table that contains text or image links that allow the user to navigate through the selected recordset when clicked. When the first record in the recordset is displayed, the First and Previous links or images are hidden. When the last record in the recordset is displayed, the Next and Last links or images are hidden.

You can customize the layout of the navigation bar by using the design tools and the Server Behaviors panel.

You can create your own recordset navigation bar that uses more complex layout and formatting styles than the simple table created by the Recordset Navigation Bar server object.

To create your own recordset navigation bar, you must:

• Create navigation links in text or images

• Place the links in the page in Design view

• Assign individual server behaviors to each navigation link

This section describes how to assign individual server behaviors to the navigation links.

Add links that let the user navigate through records in a recordset.

When creating a custom navigation bar, begin by creating its visual representation using the Dreamweaver page-design tools. You don’t have to create a link for the text string or image, Dreamweaver creates one for you.

The page you create the navigation bar for must contain a recordset to navigate. A simple recordset navigation bar might look like this, with link buttons created out of images, or other content elements:

After you have added a recordset to a page, and have created a navigation bar, you must apply individual server behaviors to each navigation element. For example, a typical recordset navigation bar contains representations of the following links matched to the appropriate behavior:

You can also specify that a region be displayed or hidden based on whether the recordset is empty. If a recordset is empty (for example, no records were found matching the query), you can display a message informing the user that no records were returned. This is especially useful when creating search pages that rely on user input search terms to run queries against. Similarly, you can display an error message if there is a problem connecting to a database, or if a user’s user name and password do not match those recognized by the server.

The Show Region server behaviors are:

• Show If Recordset Is Empty

• Show If Recordset Is Not Empty

• Show If First Page

• Show If Not First Page

• Show If Last Page

• Show If Not Last Page

The Repeating Region server behavior lets you display multiple records from a recordset within a page. Any dynamic data selection can be turned into a repeating region. However, the most common regions are a table, a table row, or a series of table rows.

For a tutorial on reusing PHP recordsets, see David Powers’s tutorial, How Do I Reuse a PHP Recordset in More Than One Repeat Region?

The following example illustrates how the Repeating Region server behavior is applied to a table row, and specifies that nine records are displayed per page. The row itself displays four different records: city, state, street address, and ZIP code.

To create a table such as the one in the previous example, you must create a table that contains dynamic content, and apply the Repeating Region server behavior to the table row containing the dynamic content. When the page is processed by the application server, the row is repeated the number of times specified in the Repeating Region server object, with a different record inserted in each new row.

Record counters give users a reference point when they are navigating through a set of records. Typically, record counters display the total number of records returned, and the current records being viewed. For example, if a recordset returns 40 individual records, and 8 records are displayed per page, the record counter on the first page would indicate “Displaying records 1‑8 of 40.”

Before you create a record counter for a page, you must create a recordset for the page, an appropriate page layout to contain the dynamic content, and then a recordset navigation bar.

Record counters let users know where they are within a given set of records relative to the total number of records returned. For this reason record counters are a useful behavior that can significantly add to the usability of a web page.

Create a simple record counter by using the Recordset Navigation Status server object. This server object creates a text entry on the page to display the current record status. You can customize the record counter by using Dreamweaver page-design tools.

You use individual record count behaviors to create custom record counters. Creating a custom record counter lets you create a record counter beyond the simple, single row table inserted by the Recordset Navigation Status server object. You can arrange design elements in a number of creative ways, and apply an appropriate server behavior to each element.

The Record Count server behaviors are:

• Display Starting Record Number

• Display Ending Record Number

• Display Total Records

Before you create a custom record counter for a page, you must first create a recordset for the page, an appropriate page layout to contain the dynamic content, and a recordset navigation bar.

This example creates a record counter that appears similar to the example in “Simple record counters.” In this example, the text in sans-serif font represents the record count placeholders that will be inserted in the page. The record counter in this example appears as follows:

Displaying records StartRow through EndRow of RecordSet.RecordCount.

Dreamweaver includes several predefined data formats that you can apply to dynamic data elements. The data format styles include date and time, currency, numerical, and percentage formats.