need help with neuroscience site

[greatm31]

Hey I need some serious help with a site I'm working on. At present, on my computer, I have a couple hundred nested directories in a gigantic hierarchy, and at every level there are pdf-formatted research papers for a total of about 8000+ files. i don't want to have to go and create a web page for each of these directories manually. is there any way i could use perhaps XML or any other language to make it easier? any suggestions at all would be useful

[Vladdy]

What server side capabilities are available to you, how do you need to present those pdf files (just links, or something else?), what other information about directories is available (other than the name) and how is it stored?

[greatm31]

Originally posted by Vladdy
What server side capabilities are available to you, how do you need to present the information, what other information about directories is available (other than the name) and how is it stored?

As far as server side capabilities, to be honest I'm not sure. Someone else is working on getting a server, my job is to create the site. I assume it has "normal" capabilities. The information needs to be presented as an actual web page (not just an FTP listing), with navigation at the top and bottom consistent everywhere. When viewing any given directory, I'd like the nested directories shown first, and then the files contained within the presently viewed directory. I hope that helps your helping. Thanks.

[Vladdy]

If you do not want to create a web page for every derectory with links that you have to keep current, or have a single huge file that contains information about the whole tree (which either way will become a nightmare if you need to rename or add more) you need server side capabilities.
A server side code that can parse the folder structure and construct the page on the fly which will show a certain subtree depending where the visitor is.
Furthermore you can have simple text files (dirinfo.txt), which may contain information about the directory which can be read and content inserted into a web page.
"Normal" server capabilities depend on the server type. If it's Windows Server I would expect ASP available and if it's Apache it would be PHP - both can do the job.

[greatm31]

that's exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for. would I have to write that code myself? if so, i'm not sure where to begin. if not, where can I go to get the proper code? thanks again.

[Vladdy]

I doubt you will be able to find "cut and paste" example for what you are trying to accomplish. There are examples available in most languages on how to read files and parse folders, but integration of such samples into a web page would still be required.

If that is still over your head, e-mail me and I can quote you the job

[greatm31]

Okay I'll look up some examples and give it a shot. I'll probably be working with php, so if off hand you happen to know any places where I can get such examples, let me know. Thanks so much. cheers.

[Vladdy]

Google "free PHP scripts"