Question

Looking for some thoughts on the best way to accomplish this:

I am creating a wordpress site that will have wrist watch instructions for different brands. I have 12 brands with one PDF instructions file for each brand. People will be able to enter in a brand or product number and be able to download the instructions (there are tons of product numbers and we want to make it easy for them to just enter in a product number and then be shown the corresponding instructions, may sound like overkill but the focus is on usability). That site does what I want it.

Here is what I need, there are other sites we have that sell watches, we want an instructions link on the product page that will dynamically create a link based on the product number and link back to the PDF file on the wordpress. A variable is created on the product page with the product number so my thought was to modify the following code along with a php file that will link to the correct PDF based on the product number which the PDF file will be tagged with in wordpress (code found here http://filamentgroup.com/lab/jquery_plugin_for_requesting_ajax_like_file_downloads/):

jQuery.download = function(url, data, method){
//url and data options required
if( url && data ){ 
    //data can be string of parameters or array/object
    data = typeof data == 'string' ? data : jQuery.param(data);
    //split params into form inputs
    var inputs = '';
    jQuery.each(data.split('&'), function(){ 
        var pair = this.split('=');
        inputs+='<input type="hidden" name="'+ pair[0] +'" value="'+ pair[1] +'" />'; 
    });
    //send request
    jQuery('<form action="'+ url +'" method="'+ (method||'post') +'">'+inputs+'</form>')
    .appendTo('body').submit().remove();
  };
};

My other thought was to just link to the file by brand name. I would have a file named _instructions.pdf and then append the brand to the front of _instructions.pdf that then links to the file on the wordpress site. I’m trying not to over think it, anyone have any thoughts?

Answer 1

I would never make assumptions about actual file names when communicating between sites. Keep your list of dependencies that might change to a minimum, so that you don’t have to modify multiple code bases in the future.

My solution would be similar to what you propose, but you don’t need to use jQuery. If you can create a simple PHP file on the wordpress site, then just create normal hyperlinks to that file from the other site. For the hyperlink hrefs, use something like http://wordpresssite.com/directory-that-custom-php-file-is-in/php-file-name.php?prodnum=n, where you replace “n” with the actual product number for the page being viewed. Then, in the php file, grab the prodnum query string parameter value, look up the correct file name based on the one tagged with that product number, and send the PDF file itself back as the response. This will all be hidden from the user; she will simply click the hyperlink and the file will begin downloading.