I am going to second the suggestion to write an upload feature from a spreadsheet. You're not going to invent a better UI, and it is going to take you a lot more work. Plus there is no security issue here - anyone can do anything they want with the spreadsheet but they can only enter it into your application if they have the data.
BTW I'm going to suggest that you not use flatfiles for this. Use a database, if only something trivial like SQLite. Your program will be simpler and faster. If your barrier is that you don't understand databases, well now is the time to learn. Cheers, Ben On 6/1/06, Janet Marie Jackson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Thanks to those who have answered. Let me clarify a bit more what I > need to do. We want to use $USER to verify a valid user before running > the program, so this is very unlikely go on the web or have a web > interface. If a teaching assistant's personal account is compromised, > we're really in deep you-know-what - otherwise, it's our best choice for > security. The program will not be accessed by anyone other than the > course staff. > There will be a back-end flat file (probably CSV) listing the > current students, their basic info, and their homework scores, one per > line. When the user logs in, he/she will be presented with a menu along > these lines: > > 1. View scores > 2. Enter scores > 3. Exit > > Your choice: > > The user can run the program by adding student names to the command line, > in which case the choice will include only those students specified. > Otherwise, based on the $USER, that person's section will be included. > If the choice is to view scores, all students (or those from the args) and > their scores will be shown. If the choice is to enter scores, the user is > asked which homework, then the program will allow the user to enter a > score for each student for the stated homework. At the end, the updates > are written back to the file. > The feature to enter scores is where I'm stuck... I'm debating > trying to use something like curses to display all the student names and > to allow the user to navigate with arrow keys to enter scores, vs. > displaying one student at a time with a request for the score (which > doesn't need curses, but takes more time) - or some other variant of > either of these. At the same time, if the user doesn't want to go > through the entire section, he/she CAN specify only certain students. I > want this to be comfortable and convenient to use, so can't decide which > approach is preferable. > Thanks for your ideas! Jan > > > _______________________________________________ > Boston-pm mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm > _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list [email protected] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
