Scripted Page Create-onLoad Idea.. Need Help!

Hey guys,
I am recreating a friends webpage. It is base upon tropical fish species and their profiles. He has currently designed it so that each profile is on its own webpage created and edited individually. My idea is that i could use a javascript code to do it all... for example:
Instead of clicking on a link to: url/fishprofiles/betta.html
I wish to implement: url/profiles.html?type=fish&name=betta
This way i could run both fish profiles and plant profiles from the one page.
Now if you are still following, I have done that, and on the page 'profiles.html' I am not sure how I would go about setting it up to:
1) recieve the type and name from the URL [completed]
2)either
i)using the type and name create a path to, maybe text or xml document or some other sort of file that contians the information about the one profile [semi-completed]
ii)or just link directly to a table with all of the profile information for everything stored in it and search for the profile given the above name [no idea on doing that one]
3)then extract the profile information as one large string [definitely need help here]
4)then break up the large string into the information needed [completed]
5)then using the information returned as variables compile the page to be viewed. [semi-completed]

While doing all of this I am quite sure it is do-able although the real challenge is that I DO NOT want to venture past using javascript, vbscript or possibly other client side scripting languages. also i am trying to avoid using activeX object as they bring up warnings and what not.. use if the only way for me to do this is by using them can someone please tell me how to automatically accept the error?

I know this is a big ask but I am not asking you to actually write the script for me just to tell me what I could use to do it.
Thank you in advance!!
Jem.

Hi jemthealmighty, welcome to the forums,
I'm not 100% clear on what you want to do. You want to use javascript only (no server-side script) to create dynamic pages?

well yeh i think it might be impossible without using something like php but i dont really want to learn that just yet!

any ideas? or maybe sites that can give me some quick and easy to follow tutorials on php?

I wouldn't say that it's impossible, just not very practical.
Preferably I would store the info in a database and use PHP to get the info and display the pages. And I would use Apache to "rewrite" the URLs.
If I had to use only javascript (not a good idea, what about non-js users and search bots?) I would keep the info in an XML file and parse out what I needed. eg.

• user clicks link url/profiles.html?type=fish&name=betta
• js on profiles page gets GET values from location prorperty
• js AJAX makes HTTP request to XML file
• js parses info and writes to the DOM

thanks for your reply. I might look into doing it the js way with the xml and see how i go... do you think you could point me in the direction of somewhere gives examples of the last three steps you posted above?

Thanks in advance,
Jem