Can someone please help me. I think I am misunderstanding the syntax or something. I am exhausted from trying to get this working into the early hours the last two nights. Hope someone can help.

I am wanting to show a comment for each slide from my Access database. I actually need to show a different price for each item of furniture shown in each photograph. I have tried to incorporate David's solution mentioned here but using my database. This didn't work - I didn't get any comments. So then to prove that it actually does work I created a new Access database with a comments table and an ID, fileName and comments field with three records. The table looks like this:

ID fileName comment
1 chinesebench.JPG sadfwertqerq
2 LINOCHBK.jpg htyutyutyuj
3 displayProductImage1.jpg yiluioijomio

I then created a new Jalbum project with Chameleon with these three photographs in the album (chinesebench.jpg, linochbk.jpg and displayproductimage1.jpg). I ticked the 'Text to Display = Comment' checkbox and unticked the 'Use label if there is no comment' checkbox.

I created an ODBC System DSN with the data source name of commentdb.

I put the exact information from the thread above into the index.htt.

I placed the <%= comments.get(fileName) %> into the slide.htt in two places as there are two IMG tags in the file. See below:

<img id="slide" src="$imagePath" class="slideImage" width="${mImageWidth}" height="${mImageHeight}" ${copyProtectStr}alt="$fileName<ja:if exists="comment"> - <%= comments.get(fileName) %></ja:if>"<ja:if test=<%=!chameleon.imageNavigationNone%>> usemap="#imagemap"</ja:if><ja:else> onclick="window.open('${originalPage}','originalslide','toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,scrollbars=yes,copyhistory=no,resizable=yes')"</ja:else> /></a></td>
</ja:if><ja:else><img id="slide" src="$imagePath" class="slideImage" width="${mImageWidth}" height="${mImageHeight}" ${copyProtectStr}alt="$fileName<ja:if exists="comment"> - <%= comments.get(fileName) %></ja:if>"<ja:if test=<%=!chameleon.imageNavigationNone%>> usemap="#imagemap"</ja:if> />
</td>

I did a ALL make album build and clicked Preview to see the index page. I then clicked onto one of the three images showing and I would expect so see my comment showing but there is no comment. When the comment is in the ALT tag, am I supposed to see the comment text when I hover over the image. Even when I View Source, the ALT tag is empty.

I then changed the ALT text to this (removing the 'ja:if exists') test to see if it would work:
alt="$fileName<ja:if exists="comment"> - <%= comments.get(fileName) %></ja:if>"

And still no luck.

Can someone offer some advice, I'm about to lose my mind (and another night's sleep).

Cheers,
Howie

You can also test run that script from within Jalbum's system console window and evaluate what makes it into the "comments" Map. Just drop the <% %> tags.

Also, when I make an album normally there are no errors in the system console - it just lists the elapsed time.

I don't have the full code index.htt and slide.htt files anymore. You can attach your modifications to the Minimal skin here and I'll look at them. Did you add the script itself to the top of the index.htt file?

When you're testing your code in the system console, be ware that "fileName" is not a known variable in that context as "fileName" is an image specific variable. It is only known within a fileiterator or coliterator or inside the slide.htt file. When testing the script via the system console, type a known file name instead (some filename you know you have in your database, for instance:

comments.get("chinesebench.JPG");

Followed by CTRL+E to execute

Well, neither of those attached files contain the script as far as I can see. That also goes along with the error message you got on your last attempt.

That looks ok, try modifying the script so you insert some debug prints, like this:

<%!
  import java.sql.*;
  Map comments = new HashMap();
  System.out.println("Running script...");
  Class.forName("sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver");
  System.out.println("Connecting to database...");
  Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:odbc:commentdb");
  Statement stmt = con.createStatement();
  ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery("select * from comments");
  System.out.println("Table data:");
  while (rs.next()) {
    String fileName = rs.getString(1);
    String comment = rs.getString(2);
    comments.put(fileName, comment);
    System.out.println(fileName + "\t" + comment);
  }
  rs.close();
  stmt.close();
  con.close(); 
%>

Now make the album and press F7 to inspect the debug printout. Can you see the table data now? What does it print?

Debug prints is a wonderful thing . I'm glad it sorted out.

Sure. Instead of just stuffing a String comment as the value of the comments Map, put an object that contains all the fields you need to access.
Let's assume you have a database table called users containing the following fields: filename, name, address and comment. You can now create a representation of such a user row in Java by creating a "User" class, for instance like this (index.htt):

<%!
	class User {
		String name;
		String address;
		String comment;
 
		public User(String name, String address, String comment) {
			this.name = name;
			this.address = address;
			this.comment = comment;
		}
	}
%>

Now peek at this demo code that populates a "users" Map object with two users:

<%!
	Map users = new HashMap();
	users.put("john.jpg", new User("John Doe", "Burbon St", "Don't we just love John Doe"));
	users.put("sam.jpg", new User("Sam Nielssen", "West St", "Another fake user"));
%>

In my example, the "users" map replaces the comments map used in the script previously. Now, to refer to the relevant fields of this "users" Map from the slide.htt file, you can do like this:

<%
	User user = (User)users.get("sam.jpg"); // In a real world example, "sam.jpg" would be fileName
%>

Now you can insert the field values of this user whereever you like, by writing like this (slide.htt):

<ja:if exists="user">
	The user's name is <%= user.name %>, his addresss is <%= user.address %> and he comment is <%= user.comment %>
</ja:if>