Question

I am new here with very limited knowledge on programming. I just use whatever I find from the web and expirement on them. Let me explain how I meant.

I have a database text file that looks like this.

colh01|colh02|colh03|colh04|colh05|
data11|data12|data13|data14|data15|
data21|data22|data23|data24|data25|
data31|data32|data33|data34|data35|
data41|data42|data43|data44|data45|

Now I used the javascript I found in the web to display the contents to a table.

<script type="text/javascript">
onload = function () {
    if (!document.getElementById || !document.getElementsByTagName)
        return;
    var frm = null, 
    prenode,
    tbod = document.getElementById('tbod'),
    data = '';
    if ((frm = top.frames['buffer']) //iframe
         && frm.document) { //get <pre> parent
        prenode = frm.document.getElementsByTagName('pre').item(0);
        if (null != prenode
             && null != prenode.firstChild
             && /#text/.test(prenode.firstChild.nodeName)) //text node
        {
            data += prenode.firstChild.data; //read
            data = data.split(/[\n\r]/); //separate lines
            data.splice(0, 0); //lose first two (legend)
            var i = 0,
            l = data.length, rowdata, ii, ll, tr, td;
            for (; i < l; ++i) {
                tr = document.createElement('tr'); //new row
                tbod.appendChild(tr);
                rowdata = data[i].split("|", 6); //separate bits
                for (ii = 0, ll = rowdata.length; ii < ll; ++ii) {
                    td = document.createElement('td'); //new cell
                    td.appendChild(document.createTextNode(rowdata[ii]));
                    tr.appendChild(td);
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

</script>

It works fine and the output looks like this.

colh01  colh02  colh03  colh04  colh05
data11  data12  data13  data14  data15
data21  data22  data23  data24  data25
data31  data32  data33  data34  data35
data41  data42  data43  data44  data45

Then I wanted to insert a column (colh6) that will have data taken from first column. It should look like this

colh01  colh02  colh03  colh04  colh05  colh6 (new column)-->(link to file)
data11  data12  data13  data14  data15  'file-<data11>.pdf' -->(href='http://locahost/file-<data11>.pdf')
data21  data22  data23  data24  data25  'file-<data21>.pdf' -->(href='http://locahost/file-<data21>.pdf')
data31  data32  data33  data34  data35  'file-<data31>.pdf' -->(href='http://locahost/file-<data31>.pdf')
data41  data42  data43  data44  data45  'file-<data41>.pdf' -->(href='http://locahost/file-<data41>.pdf')

How do I go about this? The data is a hyperlink that user can click to open the file.

Answer 1

You’ve completed the hard part, all you’re missing is how to create a link using Javascript. If you just add these lines after your loop, it will create a link using the content of the first column;

var newlink = document.createElement('a');
newlink.setAttribute('href', 'http://localhost/file-' + rowdata[0] + '.pdf');
newlink.appendChild(document.createTextNode('Link text'));
td = document.createElement('td');
td.appendChild(newlink);
tr.appendChild(td);

More info on creating dynamic links here.