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Using a form to save/update settings in a db and build a HTML with those settings from a template

My limited experience in web development as a self-taught led me to hit a wall while trying to figure out how to deal with this problem.
I need a form (map_settings.php) where the user should enter some inputs. Those inputs must be saved in a database table (MAPS) and then used to create the final HTML file (e.g. map1.html) for that specific user/inputs.
I know how to deal with using forms and saving submitted data to a database.
What is completely obscure to me is how can I use those inputs to automatically generate the final HTML.
My idea is to have a template HTML (template.html) and each time a user saves new settings via the form, I copy the template and replace some variables inside it with the actual data the user has input in the form.
If this might matter, the variables I need to replace in the template are also JavaScript variables within a <script> tag.
Can anybody help me suggesting one viable way to do this? I am mostly using JavaScript and PHP, without frameworks. I've also red about JavaScript templating engines, but I sincerely did not get if those are useful to me in my case.
Anyway, here is an illustration of what I would need to do, to hopefully clarify better my point.

Creating a static HTML file per user is not the way to go. Instead just have a PHP script like mapdisplay.php or similar.
Make the script so that if you type mapdisplay.php?map=1 in the browser then it will read the map ID, get the relevant settings from the database for the map in question and then generate some HTML to display them - of course you can have most of the HTML ready made like a template, and just use PHP to fill in the details from the database. This idea of getting data on the fly when requested, and plugging it into some HTML is how most web applications work.
If you create a static HTML for each user it quickly becomes unmanageable with a large number of users, plus it's hard to introduce changes or improvements to the template because instead of just updating one script file, you have to back and re-do every existing page. There are other disadvantages to your approach too, but I won't continue here - you get the idea I hope.

If I were you I'll make that in this way:
Don't use template.html
Don't get data from database to new file, but from form
Make database test before make file
To make template use
$template_text = "text...text...html...text...".$php_varible."text...text...html...text";
For other things about php see w3schools

Saving / Retriving all the fields value's of an HTML form into / from a local file using JavaScript

I have a typical HTML form, with some fields of various types on it.
What I'm trying to achieve is the following:
Once the form's input fields are filled out with values, a button to be able to save all the filled-out field/value pairs into a local file of some sort that allows me in a future ocassion to...
Automatically fill the very same HTML form by retriving the field/values pairs from said file instead of typing them manually.
Ideally this would have to be achived thru JavaScript, because the webpage that contains the HTML form is served by an embedded system where PHP or other server side scripting is not available.
Is it possible to achive this thru JavaScript (or any other browser-side effort method)? If so, how?
Many thanks.
EDIT: The target environment is a regular user in a regular PC/laptop using any one of the 4 major browsers. It's acceptable to have "Cookies enabled" and "latest browser version installed" as requisites, but external plugins/addins are not.
Later: NullUserException has achived something in this direction. He's been able to read from a local file using JavaScript:
Using a local file as a data source in JavaScript

I think, for your particular site you can store data in local storage. Only your application will be able to access to that data. Also you can encrypt it before storing.
You can refer
diveintohtml5.info/storage to start with.
Happy coding.

Pretty sure you won't be able to save a file locally and then pick it up again.
However there are obviously cookies but there, and this is only in a modern browser, is also LocalStorage that can hold quite a bit of data that can be retrieved by Javascript and jQuery.
This is probably the way I would go but it does depend on your browser version.

question is some what ambiguous please specify what you are trying to do.
i can't tell if you want to do something just for you if so:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/

Use bing translator in my website

I recently have come across with a need for some type of "translation"-type that could translate specific text fields or areas to other languages.
I want when user will write texts in **<input type="text" id="texttotranslate"/>** html control and after space the text should get converted to local language i.e. Hindi, Arabic Finnish
I am not sure if something like this even is out there - but I thought this might be a good place to ask.
Link 1
I came accorss this links as well but i want it Javascript / ajax solution to get it done
Link 2
I went through this and create my APPID
I am getting link 1 working in my C# console application but
i want a javascript solution for the same. ie. when i write a word in the text box it should get converted to local language i set .

if you are using Bing translator in your website, then there is no need to write any code in C#. You can use the Bing URL directly to translate the words.
Please refer to the following URL: http://basharkokash.com/post/Bing-Translator-for-developers.aspx

One option would be to put the Microsoft Translator widget on your site (http://www.microsofttranslator.com/widget). Mark up the fields that you don't want translated using the class="notranslate" tag.
Alternatively, if you want to use the API, I recommend following the tutorials here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/translation/p/gettingstarted1.aspx
and
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/translation/p/gettingstarted2.aspx
While the second link does it in ASP.NET, instead of JavaScript, it should give you a rough idea for how to do it. At the very least I recommend getting your access token server side, using ASP.NET, PHP or something similar, so your Client ID and Client Secret are not in-the-clear on your site.
Finally, take a look here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff512385.aspx, for the MSDN documentation on the AJAX API, including how to access it using JavaScript.

How to save the input values of an HTML page?

Now, this requirement may seem weird. But i would like to know how to achieve this?
I am having an HTML file, which is having few input box, check box, radio button etc. I would like to retain the changes a user [ actually i ] performs on this page. Like if the user has ticked a checkbox then next time anybody open that file should see that checkbox as ticked.
This thing can be done easily using HTTP cookies. But i don't want to use cookies.
The answer can be as simple as "No you can not do that" :)
Edit
That's the problem with not phrasing the question correctly.
I guess i can't use DB as if i will send my HTML page to someone then he/she will not be able to see my changes. I want my changes to be reflected on other systems also. [ thats the reason i was not going for cookies ]. Other solution what i was thinking was, using FileSystemObject. Any other solution ? again the answer can be "No you can not do that" :D

You could bind the change events of your form elements to an AJAX submit, log the submits to the db and then on any page load grab the latest states from the db for rendering.
Edit
If you want these changes to appear "simultaneously" for other users then you could use jQuery polling to update the page - have the page periodically poll the server for the latest state.
Having said that, if you give them a server link and not the actual file they will see your db changes.
However, it sounds like you want to actually send the file (not send someone to a web server) in which case you could do something like one of these approaches:
Your PHP/whatever file (can possibly even do this with javascript) outputs a HTML file with appropriate checked="checked", selected="selected", value="blah" etc. You send this file.
Your PHP/whatever file outputs a static reference file. Your HTML file has javascript referencing and using the values stored in this file. You send both of these files around (although value updates only require a changed static reference file).

I sounds like you want to change the actual file using Javascript - this should be rather difficult. Javascript was designed from scratch as a web scripting language and as such it doesn't have any built in file/IO functionality.
What you can do in Javascript is load ActiveX objects and plug ins. How this works depends a lot on which browser you're using. For instance in IE you could load an ActiveX object (written in VB or whatever) that could edit your file:
var fileWriter = new ActiveXObject("My.FileWriter");
fileWriter.Update("myFile.htm", "inputName", "newValue");
You'd have to write your FileWriter utility though.
Alternatively you could use HTML5's new data storage stuff - but then you're still limited on browser.

You need some method to identify the user when he or she visits again. A browser cookie is useful, because it is stored on the user's computer, which serves as identification. The other serious option is to store the user's preferences in a database. This would, at least, require a server-side language. In addition, you need some way to identify the user, such as username, or, less reliably, IP address.
I hear other options may exist in HTML5, but I don't think those can be used seriously at this time. You can read about it here in Offline Web Applications. It seems to me like something very similar in spirit, although much more powerful, than cookies.

Is it possible to create a searchbox for my site using javascript?

I'd like to create a search box on the home page of my site that would be able to search the entire site. I know it's a very general question but I'd be very happy with just a general conceptual answer is there anyway to do this?

You can't really do this using Javascript. You'll have to use some sort of server-side language that has access to your database. Alternately, you can use something like Google Custom Search Engine to provide searching capabilities.

Once you start wanting users to be able to search your site, it implies that your site is larger than just a few simple HTML pages. Have you thought about using something like Drupal, Joomla!, Wikimedia, or some other CMS? Most of those have search capability built in (one way or another).

People are going to tell you no. They're mostly right that his probably isn't the best way to do this.
But depending on your site, it may be technically incorrect to say this can't be done with JavaScript. If all the documents you want to be searchable have a unique URL that's used throughout the site, and if their graph is connected, I think you could write a spider in JavaScript that begins indexing all these pages as soon as a user hits your site. It'd do what any other spider did: look for links on the current page, request the documents behind them (using XMLHTTPRequest or a frame or popup window of some kind), process the document and index keywords based on some scheme, and store the results (possibly in a a cookie).
Of course, duplicating all this work for each visitor doesn't make a lot of sense, which is why the other people telling you no are mostly right. But it's theoretically possible.

This is would involve much more than just Javascript and depends on a number of different variables. Often, sites are built on a MySQL (or similar) database. If this is true in your case you may want to use some PHP to get into it and search through each record. Here's an example using PHP and MySQL.
For the form, something like this will work:
HTML
<form action="?" method="get">
<input type="text" id="search" name="search" />
<input type="submit" name="submit" id="submit" value="Search" />
</form>
Then you'll need to use some PHP, assuming you want to search the title and body of one table of blog posts:
$search_terms = mysql_real_escape_string($_GET['search']);
$resc = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM blog_posts WHERE title LIKE '%".$search_terms."%' OR body LIKE '%".$search_terms."%'");
$posts = mysql_fetch_assoc($resc);
now $posts is an array containing all of your posts which match the search terms in their title or body.
NOTE: In order to search for text type MySQL fields you will need to make the field a FULLTEXT index.
Check this link out for more info: http://devzone.zend.com/article/1304
This is a VERY SIMPLE solution, but it will get you on the right track.