Extracting Tabbed Document Viewer URL for use with PHP

[Shawn]

Hi, I'm trying to build an easier way to browse the content of PubMed/MEDLINE. I'd like to somehow extract the URL being displayed in the Tabbed Document Viewer (http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamici...bdocviewer.htm) so that it can be manipulated with a PHP script. The initial URL in the Tabbed Document Viewer would be http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/2006/MeSHtree.html and users could then click on a Medical Subject Heading. When a subject heading is clicked on, the PHP script would output recent citations for the heading underneath the Tabbed Document Viewer. I'm sure that there's a simple way to do this, so I'd appreciate your help.

[Twey]

It's in the "selectedtablink" Javascript variable.

[Shawn]

I need to know how to convert the selectedtablink variable into a variable that I can use with PHP.

[Twey]

Now there's a tricky one. To send it server-side, you'll need to submit a form with an element the value of which has been set to selectedtablink. This is a bit inelegant. You could also use AJAX:

function getHTTPObject() {
  var httpobject = null;
  try {
    httpobject = new XMLHttpObject();
  } catch (e) {
    try {
      httpobject = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.DOMDocument");
    } catch (e) {
      try {
        httpobject = new ActiveXObject("Msxml.DOMDocument");
      } catch (e) { }
    }
  }
  if(typeof httpobject.load == "undefined") httpobject = null;
  return httpobject;
}

function touchPage(page) {
  var xho = getHTTPObject();
  if(xho == null) return;
  xho.open("GET", page, true);
  xho.send(null);
}

Then, add

touchPage("mypage.php?url=" + selectedtablink);

to the bottom of the handlelink() function (but before return false;). This will call a PHP page, from which you can then grab the "url" GET parameter and use it in whatever odd rituals you may wish to.

[Shawn]

Thanks for the suggestion. That route turned out to be much too difficult to bother with, so I used a combination of two iFrames instead (based on the suggestions at http://www.samisite.com/test-csb2nf/id82.htm).