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johngordon12
johngordon12
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How to get data from InDesign to mySQL (or vice versa)

Jun 21, 2012 4:55 AM

My background is web design, and work on a project which produces a physical guide as well as an online version. A sample page is here:

 

http://www.goodsafariguide.com/grootbos/

 

So all the guide info here is pulled from a mySQL database created in phpMyAdmin.

 

Currently the physical guide is produced in InDesign as an entirely separate process.

 

But in the future, the owners are looking to merge the two processes, so that the same data can be used. So presumably export any InDesign data into mySQL or the other way around.

 

Currently, off the top of our heads, neither I, nor the InDesign person really knows how to go about this.

 

So I'm really posting here to see if its possible in the first place (perhaps by way of CSV or XML), and if so what the best way to go about it might be.

 

Hope that makes sense - thanks for any pointers or suggestions.

665 Views   4 Replies   Latest reply: Kasyan Servetsky, Jun 23, 2012 1:25 AM
 
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  • Peter Spier
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    1. Peter Spier,
    Jun 21, 2012 12:30 PM   in reply to johngordon12
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    I don't do xml, but I think it has the potential to do what you want, though all the stuff I've ever seen about it implies it's a real can of worms to set up and not at all for the faint of heart. I also think that one or more of the commercial catalog plugins for ID has the ability to interface with your database.

     
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  • johngordon12
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    2. johngordon12,
    Jun 22, 2012 5:35 AM   in reply to Peter Spier
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    Thanks Peter. I've exported out a DB table as XML and imported it into a blank InDesign file. Sent that off to the InDesign person to look at, as that's beyond my knowledge of ID. I'm having a chat with her next week so we'll see where that leads.

     

    I'd have thought this would be quite common though - presumably DTP operators designing a layout template for pages, and flowing in data to populate multiple pages with the same layout from a source such as XML.

     
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  • Peter Spier
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    3. Peter Spier,
    Jun 22, 2012 6:14 AM   in reply to johngordon12
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    I wouldn't say it's necessarily an uncommon workflow, just not common among the types of users we see here.

     
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  • Kasyan Servetsky
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    4. Kasyan Servetsky,
    Jun 23, 2012 1:25 AM   in reply to johngordon12
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    Check out this site --  DataBase User Interface for Adobe InDesign

     
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