Help me develop my own app
February 4, 2012 12:44 PM Subscribe
[DIY app] I have an Excel database of products being showcased at a wine show and I'd like to transfer this to an app so that guests can use it as an event programme. There isn't any budget to hire a developer so please help me find an app template (iPhone & Android) online that I can use to upload the information I have.
I'm organizing a wine show and have an Excel database of the products being showcased (photo, name of wine, region, abv%, tasting note, key word descriptors such as fruity, intense, dry, etc). I'd like to transfer this information to an app (Android + iPhone ideally) that attendees can use as an event programme, and browse through the wines alphabetically by name, or by region, or by a key word in the tasting note.
I've noticed that there are templates online that you can use to develop your own app. Is this feasible/reasonable for the project I'm looking at? If so, please point me in the right direction.
I'm organizing a wine show and have an Excel database of the products being showcased (photo, name of wine, region, abv%, tasting note, key word descriptors such as fruity, intense, dry, etc). I'd like to transfer this information to an app (Android + iPhone ideally) that attendees can use as an event programme, and browse through the wines alphabetically by name, or by region, or by a key word in the tasting note.
I've noticed that there are templates online that you can use to develop your own app. Is this feasible/reasonable for the project I'm looking at? If so, please point me in the right direction.
Do you want to make this a native app? That seems like it might be a bit much for something like this. You'd have to pay to be a developer in order to submit to the Apple store and then everyone would have to download it. What about creating a mobile website (it will have to be hosted somewhere) and using a short link or QR code people could scan to get to the site?
I don't know how much HTML/JS knowledge you have, but maybe you could look into exporting the Excel table as HTML (I think it lets you do that, no? If not, here is a link I found but haven't used that might also be helpful: http://tableizer.journalistopia.com/) and then maybe adding something like this bit of jQuery to make the table searchable? http://www.vijayjoshi.org/2011/01/03/searching-text-in-a-html-table-using-jquery/. And here is some jQuery for making the table sortable: http://tablesorter.com/docs/.
I hesitate a little bit at letting Excel generate the tables for you because I'm sure the markup is complete garbage, but it might work out okay.
posted by wintrymix at 7:09 AM on February 7, 2012
I don't know how much HTML/JS knowledge you have, but maybe you could look into exporting the Excel table as HTML (I think it lets you do that, no? If not, here is a link I found but haven't used that might also be helpful: http://tableizer.journalistopia.com/) and then maybe adding something like this bit of jQuery to make the table searchable? http://www.vijayjoshi.org/2011/01/03/searching-text-in-a-html-table-using-jquery/. And here is some jQuery for making the table sortable: http://tablesorter.com/docs/.
I hesitate a little bit at letting Excel generate the tables for you because I'm sure the markup is complete garbage, but it might work out okay.
posted by wintrymix at 7:09 AM on February 7, 2012
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posted by Aizkolari at 5:49 AM on February 5, 2012