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I'm a beginner in web development. The only websites I've made are in HTML, CSS, JS and jQuery, and all of them are static (with all the data hard-coded in HTML or JS).

I want to build something more engaging, without using a server-side language like node.js or PHP connected to a database, maybe populating the info on a website from a CSV "database".

My question is, how can someone make a dynamic website without using a server-side language?

Diogo Capela
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  • Do you mean dynamic as "things happening", or the possibility to add/edit/remove content? If you want to be able to edit stuff without a server side you could go server side as a service, ie firebase. Lots of tutorials on youtube/etc, go have a look :) – JimL Jan 10 '17 at 19:42
  • NodeJS is practically Javascript, with some extra libraries to communicate with the operating system. To really expirience dynamic website, there are quite simple tutorials out there to get you started. – guysigner Jan 10 '17 at 19:46
  • What do you mean by "dynamic website"? You can embed `.csv` data or file within `html` `document` itself. – guest271314 Jan 10 '17 at 19:50
  • possible? maybe. but a good idea? nope. at least not with data that has to be manipulated (since without server-side code that would mean *everybody everywhere* can manipulate it how they want) or is in any way sensitive (since without server-side code *everybody everywhere* can read it). which limits the possible applications to a few cases that are far quicker and better done with classic, static sites. – Franz Gleichmann Jan 10 '17 at 20:01
  • If you want to be able to write and save data you need to have something on the back end else you will only be able to read data from the csv/json/txt files. Firebase might be an option to store data as well as be able to read and write however there are charges associated depending on connections/storage as the free version is limited https://firebase.google.com/pricing/ – Sean Wessell Jan 10 '17 at 21:01
  • Thank you for all the answers. What I mean for dynamic content is content that is displayed in a page without manually inserting it on HTML piece by piece. For example: https://www.pokedex.org In that site, the information of each pokemon is pulled from some database, I'm sure the owner didn't hard coded each of the pokemon info there. PS: I didn't knew about Firebase (server side as service), but I'll check it, seems intersting. Thank you all once again =) – Diogo Capela Jan 10 '17 at 21:55

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Of course it is possible - with JavaScript.

CSV reading How to read data From *.CSV file using javascript?

CSV reading http://papaparse.com/

JSON http://www.w3schools.com/js/js_json_intro.asp

AJAX http://www.w3schools.com/xml/ajax_intro.asp

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