Passing vars into hidden data

Hi, this is my first post here!!!
i got a friend who uses this forum and rates it as the place to get help so here i go!!!

I am making a web app and need to display a list of information that also allows the user to click on a record in the list displayed and that will show hidden data (taken from the DB at the same time as the query) in other areas of the page.

I realise that the principle of taking data and hiding it until a user event is simple, but i need to do this for each iteration of the while loop.

I thought that I should attempt to set up a counter that I will use to set the id of each hidden data type. and then put the info from the db into the hidden data. So that each list entry returned will have it's own hidden data available to be displayed in the other area of the page.

But I am a novice at javascript. I am not sure which commands to use. I have been hunting for code that will provide this functionality, but i think what i have found will not work with what i am doing.

Hope someone out there knows what code is best suited for this task (I'm sure this is possible).

Thanks
Simon.