Displaying a simple HTML page from input embedded into a URL

hi,

I'm looking for a workaround to a problem that currently doesn't have a solution: to put multiple hyperlinks into a single cell of a spreadsheet (Excel or google sheets)

I suspect a 'fudge' workaround is possible as follows:

Spreadsheet to display a single hyperlink that contains a parameter listing a number of other urls
This link points to a special webpage to parse and display these links

eg spreadsheet displays "click to see list of products"
and webpage is "generated" showing the list of products with links

It's a bit of a fudge because the user will need to click a link twice (once on the spreadsheet, and then again on the webpage)

It maybe that a URL shortener service would also be required depending on the maximum permitted URL length

It's for low-volume use, I'm thinking to put such a webpage on my server for private use, so I'm looking for help to create this page.

Perhaps a more general version is to create a page that converts an input parameter into a new webpage. ie embedding some HTML as a parameter to then display this as a webpage.

Thanks
xeniumAsked:
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Julian HansenCommented:
You mean like

http://www.yourdomain.com/makelinks/?links=apples,oranges,bananas

And the makelinks script takes the links GET parameter, splits it up and makes a page with three links each with a different q=<FRUITVALUE>

What would your server script need to be written in?
In Javascript you could do it like this
<ul id="links"></ul>

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<script>
$(function() {
  if (window.location.search.indexOf('=') > -1) {
    var href = window.location.search.split('=')[1].split(',');
    var list = $('#links');
    for(var i = 0; i < href.length;i++) {
      var link = document.createElement('a');
      link.href = 'https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=' + href[i];
      link.target = '_blank';
      list.append($('<li>').append($(link).html(link.href)));
    }
  }
});
</script>

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Your link would look something like this: http://www.yourdomain.com/page.html?link=apple,banana,orange

You can see it working http://www.marcorpsa.com/ee/t3003.html?links=apple,banana,orange
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Julian HansenCommented:
I am not clear on what you are asking - maybe give us an example?

I am getting you want to either put multiple links into the cell of a spreadsheet - but as that is a simple process I am guessing that is not what you are asking.

Alternatively I am getting you want one link in the spreadsheet that opens a page with multiple links - but it is not clear as you are using words like "input" which bring some ambiguity to the question.
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xeniumAuthor Commented:
hi Julian,

Thanks for your reply. Yes an example would probably help..

Suppose i want to put 2 links into a spreadsheet cell (I believe this is not possible, but correct me if wrong)

Instead I can put a single link to a webpage that contains the 2 links i want, for example to mypage.html containing the following HTML code:

<a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?&q=apples">search apples</a>
<BR>
<a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?&q=oranges">search oranges</a>


What I'd like is a way to create this page automatically, eg by feeding the above HTML code snippet as a parameter input to a webpage that simply displays the HTML

Thanks
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Julian HansenCommented:
Note the ?links can be anything in this case - the important bit is the '?' followed by something followed by an '=' followed by a comma separated list of terms
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xeniumAuthor Commented:
Thanks, that looks about right, i will try it later. btw the links could be completely different URLs, but i can see from your method that that's a trivial modification.
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xeniumAuthor Commented:
That's great thanks. I need to adapt it to allow a complete URLs to be entered as parameters. The split terms (comma, equals) are interfering as they may appear in the URLs, how could i adapt the script?

Thanks again
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xeniumAuthor Commented:
Changing the delimiters seems to work:

<script>
$(function() {
  if (window.location.search.indexOf('=') > -1) {
    var href = window.location.search.split('^')[1].split('@');
    var list = $('#links');
    for(var i = 0; i < href.length;i++) {
      var link = document.createElement('a');
      link.href = href[i];
      link.target = '_blank';
      list.append($('<li>', {class: 'list-group-item'}).append($(link).html(link.href)));
    }
  }
});
</script>

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example:

mypage.html?links^https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=apple@https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=orange
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xeniumAuthor Commented:
Can i use a delimiter longer than a character to make it more robust (in case a URL includes ^ or @ for example) ?
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Julian HansenCommented:
It can but why not just use comma's as the delimiters - don't get overly complicated it will come back to byte (intentional misspelling) you

Remember we are not dealing with the URL - only with the search string - the bit that comes after the '?' so the URL can contain anything we don't care - but as long as you are consistent in the parameters you pass after the ? you are good to go.
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xeniumAuthor Commented:
Because my URLs might contain commas, and they DO contain equals (=), so I needed to change the delimiter to enable the script to work.

A quick search reveals that a URL can also contain an @ symbol so maybe best avoid that.

What's the risk of using a delimiter that you wouldn't find in a URL?
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xeniumAuthor Commented:
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