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View Full Version : Programming KRANAR HPEL PLZ



Drew2
09-21-2007, 02:38 AM
Or anyone with programing experience.

So basically family-owned IT company I work for is currently too cheap to purchase time-tracking, customer report, etc. software and basically I am to the point where I'll just write something myself that will drag us along until we can be not cheap.

What I want most immediately is a web form (or, failing that, a self-contained exe/script) that will generate a document in a certain format based on information typed in by the user.

For example, I want like the consultant's name, the client they visited, the date, the time spent there, the work completed, materials used, price of materials, etc. etc.. This can all be entered in a very simple text-box-like environment (I don't care how ugly it looks, it's not for customers to see), but I want it to output it to a well organized table that can be copied into an e-mail (or in this case, Quickbooks).

IDEALLY, I'd like to accomplish a couple other things as well. I would like a drop-down list of the clients we have (for uniformity's sake), perhaps even a list of consultants, and I'd like the ability to add to that list without having to physically change the code of the site. Furthermore, I'd like a e-mail subject (or file name, if it can be saved to a file) generated based on the client name (or abbreviation thereof) and the date when the form is submited (either to an e-mail address or directory on the server, I don't care).

Anyway, I guess my real question is, what programming language(s) would be best suited for this and most easily learned? I have limited programming experience (C++, HTML, lawl) but I learn almost anything I have a desire to extremely fast (via internet resources).

And I already have a web server at my disposal with MySQL, which I assume will be necessary for a task such as this.

HPEL THX K BAI.

Bobmuhthol
09-21-2007, 08:26 AM
Ever heard of Excel, LOL???

Drew2
09-21-2007, 08:52 AM
Except Excel isn't web based and mostly defeats the purpose of me doing this at all. We're currently using this shitty word document that someone created and it's cumbersome and slows me down. I want to be able to tab through the fields quickly, enter what I need to, and submit it to e-mail or a file or whatever and be done with it.

This is the worst part of all of our jobs and I want it as little work as possible.

Kranar
09-21-2007, 09:00 AM
What's the timeframe that you're looking at? Are you running Apache? Do you have physical access to the web server (ie. it's your own computer or a computer you could logon to as opposed to some restricted access computer).

Assuming Apache with root privileges to the computer, a simple web-based application like this could be written in Python. If you're more familiar with C++ then you could go the Java route, but learning Java could take longer.

Insodus
09-21-2007, 09:06 AM
PHP / Apache / MySQL. Could have something like that done in a day...

Celephais
09-21-2007, 09:35 AM
Or you know...
http://blogs.msdn.com/coding4fun/archive/2006/10/31/908509.aspx
(Article on how to write a time tracking utility)

As far as easiest/fastest to churn out what you want, no question: Visual C#/Basic, Kranar will say I'm encouraging poor programming design... well I am. You don't need an enterprise class design here, the scope of your project is, as Bob stated, Excel++, no reason to not just open a form, drag and drop items and use wizards/properties to link them up, minimal code writing.