Passing a filter through an onclick, master/detail xml

Question

I've been hijacked into helping out with a family history project, and I'm having trouble with a photo gallery page that needs to be filtered by family surname.  See http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/mattersburg/html/photo_gallery2.htm for work in progress.
You'll see that the left portion of the page, with thumbnails, large photos with captions, and paging, works OK (although I'm not pleased with the jumpiness of it), but the real problem is with the right-hand portion.  It's a master list of surnames from a separate xml file that I'd like to use to control what photos appear.
The "photonames" list is structured like this:
<surname>Abeles</surname>
<surname>Alt</surname>
<surname>Bauer</surname>
<surname>Blechner</surname>.....
The "gallery" xml file with all the photo info and six columns for surnames looks like this:
<image>
    <filename>92.jpg</filename>
    <category>family</category>
    <caption>captiontext</caption>
    <surname1>name1</surname1>
    <surname2>name2</surname2>
    <surname3></surname3>
    <surname4></surname4>
    <surname5></surname5>
    <surname6></surname6>
  </image>.....
Each <image> may have one to six associated surnames.
So, what I'd like to happen is that a user's click on a name in the left select menu ("Alt" for example) would create a subset of the "gallery" xml file with only those rows with "Alt" listed in any of the six surname fields.  Ideally, a user could pick more than one name from the left menu and get a subset of just those associated photos -- and, of course the thumbnails would appear on the right with correct paging information.
Anyone have any ideas?  Many thanks.

Answer 1

I think you will have to restructure your XML-data.
<image>
    <filename>92.jpg</filename>
    <category>family</category>
    <caption>captiontext</caption>
    <surname1>name1</surname1>
    <surname2>name2</surname2>
    <surname3></surname3>
    <surname4></surname4>
    <surname5></surname5>
    <surname6></surname6>
  </image>.....
The surname should not be numbered and only those surnames that contain a name should be mentioned. The above  will read
<image>
<filename>92.jpg</filename>
<category>family</category>
<caption>captiontext</caption>
<names>
  <surname1>name1</surname1>
  <surname2>name2</surname2>
</names>
</image>
Then have a look at the Nested XML Data Sample http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/spry/samples/data_region/NestedXMLDataSample.html.
Also have a look at Filtering With XPath and URL Parameters http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/spry/samples/data_region/FilterXPath_with_params.html
Hopefully the above will give you a few ideas.
Ben