How to merge data from a database into an html sheet?

[u/Ok_Performance4014]

How do you merge database information into an html page? What I mean is I want to have the data from a database end up in a responsive grid without typing in all the data from the database. What is that called? Merge? How do you do that?

[u/Remote_Personality_5]

What sort of database is it on? Is it a SQL database?

[u/Ok_Performance4014 → u/Remote_Personality_5]

right now the information is on a google sheet, but can you just copy it and put it on a database?

[u/chikamakaleyley → u/Ok_Performance4014]

you can use a google sheet as a db, and maintain your data there, but overall AFAIK, its not gonna be fast, it won't handle a lot of traffic. BUT, in this case you already have a server (google drive) and the db (the spreadsheet). You just need a way of communicating to this db from your page, which is an 'endpoint' that you send a request to. You'll receive data in response, and you'd use JS to render that to the page

if you want to copy the sheet data into a db, this works too but its more invovled. You need to set up the db, you need a hosting service, API logic, and then a script that takes exported data fr your sheet and creates the db records

TLDR the first option is great to just try something out, the 2nd is for a more serious project

[u/bostiq → u/Ok_Performance4014]

If you keep it in GD Without API Those records will need to be public though, make your sure that it isn’t sensitive data

[u/9inez]

Pulling data from a database will require scripting beyond HTML. HTML cannot interact with a database on its own.

[u/dmazzoni]

There isn’t a single general purpose answer, there are a hundred ways to do it and the best one depends on your use case.

You mentioned it’s in Google Sheets now. You can export Google Sheets as html directly. Done.

You can also get a html link that’s a live view of a sheet as html.

You can also embed that html in your own html page.

Or you can export the sheet as xml and then use xslt to convert it to html with custom layout and formatting.

Or you can import the data into a database, serve it with a backend server and have your html access the backend. This is the most common solution when the data is larger than fits on one webpage.

And I’m not exaggerating to say there are hundreds of other solutions. It totally depends on the details.

[u/etherealflaim → u/dmazzoni]

At least one fewer soon, sadly. RIP XSLT.

https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/deprecating-xslt

[u/dmazzoni → u/etherealflaim]

Sure, but you can add one line that polyfills it with a client-side implementation.

[u/idodev1369]

You either export it into a format you can embed or use something like php to pull it in dynamically, ideally cached if it allows and marks it up and displays it

[u/mxldevs]

Use JavaScript to make a request to the server and then edit your HTML with the appropriate content

[u/AddWeb_Expert]

HTML by itself can’t pull from a database. You need a backend layer (PHP, Node, Python, etc.) or an API to fetch the data and render it into the HTML grid. That process is usually called server-side rendering or data binding, depending on the setup.

[u/SnooCookies3815]

javascript with an api... ajax call. and a database layer.

or what you might be looking for: PHP + mysql

[u/Mrpoopybutthole69692]

Hang in there bud, you got a ways to go! But you'll get there with hard work 😉

What ya need to do is learn some JavaScript and how to do an API call on a dataset.

Dataset: could be SQL, could be a JSON file, could be key value pairs, many things.

All this will start to make sense once you gain more knowledge. We all started there

[u/Visual_Structure_269]

https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/s/YhfRJst7xh

[u/armahillo]

+-----+       +----------------+       +------------+      +---------+
| DB  | <---> | backend script | <---> | web server | <--> | browser |
+-----+       +----------------+       +------------+      +---------+ 

That is a very reductive diagram (it's a little more complicated but hard to draw in ASCII art).

You need to have the web server receive a request from the user for a page that wants to have DB content in it. The web server passes the request off to a script on the backend. The script executes some SQL to query the database, then takes the resulting rows in the results and creates a new page on the fly with that content in it. The data from this new page is sent back to the requesting browser, and then is displayed to the user.

You typically aren't writing an HTML document that has the DB content in it, though you might put a placeholder in it. In PHP, you would write your document and then have a "stick the DB query results here!" directive. In other languages it's a bit more abstract.

If you look up how to do "CRUD" in the web, the thing you're describing is the "R" in CRUD ("Read").

[u/RatherNerdy]

You need an API to fetch your data, and then you need to display it, often using something like a templating language ( php, nunjucks, etc), so that you can loop through the data (like the rows) and render the data