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

Report · Jun 21, 2012

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.

Report · Jun 21, 2012

There are ways of doing it, but you're going to need to do a fair bit of formatting once you've exported from the MySQL DB to remove html tags etc.

Search for catalogue software indesign and you'll see a number of comapnies that offer solutions, but you'll probably want one that talks directly to a DB I guess, or as you pointed out, XML. Export the XML and then import it through InDesign's data merge and you'll then use the tags panel with the data.

The cataloging software makes it much easier, but it costs, and can sometimes cost more than InDesign itself... depends on your budgets etc as to which is the best for you. They can talk directly to the DB (more expensive) or you can export XML and CSV's and import them which are more problematic, but cheaper, but once you've realised the problems, you find simple work arounds. Most of the time it's about formatting the data properly before it goes into InDesign.

Mat

Report · Jun 22, 2012

Yes, you can go frm MySQL to InDesign. I've done it a number of times for projects similar to what you are describing. It's the beauty of XML.

I have never gone the other direction, from InDesign to MySQL.

It may take some fussing to get the data from MySQL the way you want it. Using PHP, I queried the database for the desired data, wrapped the data fields in XML tags and wrote them to a text file, like so:

$data1 = "<title>$coursetitle\r</title>";
$data2 = "<date_line>$eventdate $tuition\r$taught_by $instructor_names\r</date_line>";
fputs($coursefile, $data1);
fputs($coursefile, $data2);
if ($include_description == 1){
$data3 = "<description>$coursetext\r</description>";
fputs($coursefile, $data3);
}}
fputs($coursefile, "</courses>");
fclose($coursefile);

Then, when you import the data in InDesign, map the XML tags to InDesign styles.

You will also find that the XML will choke on some characters, like ampersands.