In a nutshell, my company is using several different programs that use a string of data regarding personal appearance information for different TV/movie character. This data need to be read in a very strict manner. (The following example is exactly how we need to input the information... including all brackets and greater/lessthan symbols.
Example:
[Performer=Character]<gender.age>.<ethnicity.skin.tone>.<height>.<bodyhair>.<haircolor.hairlength.hairtexture>.<eye.color> etc...etc...etc...
[Sylvester.Stallone=Rocky.Balboa]<male.man.guy.middle.aged.adult>.<white.Caucasian.Italian.medium.mid.tone.toned.skin>.<average.height.stature>.<bare.smooth.hairless.chest>.<black.medium.mid.length.wavy.hair>.<brown.eyed.eyes> etc...
Currently, my boss has half the company using shortcut keys to type all of this in manual. Absolutely ridiculous!!! So over the weekend I broke out my old HTLM/Javascript books and tried to make a simple webpage/form w/ multiple dropdowns or checkboxes that will hopefully speed up the process. The input dropdowns/checkboxes are at the top of the page w/ a box at the bottom that will post the correct string (including proper brackets,periods,<>,etc).... with a "Generate" and "Reset button in between. I'm using PHP (process.php) to process the data, put it in the correct order and then post it back in the box (treated as a separate page.) The problem I'm having is the the Javascript strips away the < and > (greater/lessthan) symbols no matter what I try. I can't get it to post the data w/ these symbols attached. It just treats is as code and posts only the words.
I haven't tried programming in quite some time... so any and all help is greatly appreciated!!! If there's a simpler/easier method, I'll start from scratch if need be. But preferably I'd like to find a simple fix and be done with this.
Thank you!!
DaFunkyBeats