Newbie - How to display info from a .dat file?

Question

I'm pretty new to this so I'm not sure if this is a simple request or not but here goes:

I am working on a school website and under each program page is a list of course codes. What I'm looking for is when I click on said course code (ex. HEL2106), to have a lightbox-type of popup that displays program info about said course code. What I have is a .dat file that has all the course codes and descriptions in it, so I would like to use some sort of HTML/CSS/JS that will pop this up and display the correct info about the clicked course from the .dat file.

I'm not 100% sure on how to go about this so if anyone has any suggestions at all, that would be really helpful.

If you need any other details from me, let me know. Thanks,

(File Info* The .dat file is pretty much just a notepad document with each course code & description in sequence)

Answer 1

Just to let you know, you need to search and learn about a lot of things first.

For data access on a website, you need access to a database. If you don't know about SQL (or any other query language), Query, Database, Tables, Server ... then you should start there.

To read those databases, you need to write code (ASP.NET, PHP, etc) that runs on a web server (Apache, IIS, etc).

If you want to create a website, I recommend you start working with WordPress, Joomla or other CMS (Content Management System) for you to familiarize with a lot of things before jumping to the advance stuff.

YouTube is a very good friend and teacher! :) Start by looking some tutorials there. Hope this will guide you to what you need.

Answer 2

I have no idea what your level of experience is based off your question so I will assume you have a basic understanding of HTML,CSS and JS. If not, then I would recommend Exel Gamboa's answer.

It sounds like you're looking for something like http://fancybox.net/

Of course, it is typically used for displaying images but it could be easily modified for your purpose.

Now about your .dat file. When storing data for large websites, it's typically best to use SQL for databases. This allows you to access data and store it in an organized manner.

As a final recommendation I'd take a look at using a CMS for your website. (Wordpress, WolfCMS, perch, etc...)

Hope this helps.