Done with HW 10 and All Lectures

I completed HW 10 and all the lectures, so technically I would be finished with the class. Of course, if I want to get a better grounding in the subject I should probably do the 'extra credit' assignments as well, since they would presumably be part of the regular class. But now I am technically 'done,' so this class can take a back seat to other more pressing tasks. I will say it is a good feeling that after all this time (1.333 years) the work is basically complete. FWIW, here is a final list of things I should do to feel I have really 'completed' this class:

-Add all email notes to php googledoc

-Do the extra credits, as they would probably be expected during the regular school year

-Transfer your php files to TWO separate locations for security!

-Clean up the html on your list view (and other) pages

-Read the rest of the lectures

-Document the class (i.e. HW/Lectures/misc)

Assigment 7--displaying data from a DB table is finished

It is with some relief that I note I am basically finished with the task of making my web page display data from a DB table. This assignment did not seem too difficult, but took me a surprisingly long time to finish (maybe > 8 hours).  The task was create a database table, then display the table's data in my php web page. I ran into several difficulties with this task. One of the difficulties was making the table borders visible. It seems I was able to make them visible on one of my pages but not the other. It required more than I might have thought necessary to make them visible--setting visibility at the individual cells, using css (not html), rather than setting the visibility at the table tag. I'm not sure why I was not able to set border visibility at the table tag, nor why my table border still wouldn't show up in one of the tables, but it might have something to do with the css styles used to construct the page. Another difficulty was using an external .sql file to update the database. I learned that the .rtf format contains additional formatting information which probably is incompatible with mysql. I also learned how to save a text edit file as a .txt file in order to make it mysql compatible. After renaming the .txt extension .sql, I was able to successfully execute sql commands contained in the external file.

I may later try to figure out how to make the table borders visible on the 'nivo' webpage, but the assignment is basically finished.

Assignment 6--Adminer--is finished

I am glad to be finished with this assignment. I did not keep track of how long it took me to complete this assignment. I installed Adminer then deleted it to avoid offending 000webhost. I did run a few mysql commands on the provided sql interface (phpmyadmin), so I think that I have some understanding of how to use a web-based interface with mysql.

Assignment 5--htaccess--is done!

I am finished with assignment 5. In reality, this assignment was not that difficult, but it was a bit boring. Still, I do see the usefulness of htaccess in controlling access to a website, redirecting, etc.

I probably could have stumbled for a lot longer had I NOT remembered Bill's trick of using a broken php file to discover the physical address of the root of my web space. Stumbling around and wasting hours when I don't know what to do is something that I really don't want, but that seems quite possible when working with computers. Fortunately, in this case, paying attention to one detail in the lesson may have saved me a lot of time.

Also, for some reason the file not found page did not display with IE but did display with mozilla. It seems nice to be able to control that aspect of the site, rather than being redirected to 000webhosts file not found page.

Did not track how long things took but probably around 4 hours today plus however long it took yesterday. Glad to be done.

Done with assignment 4--adding a form to a template

I am essentially finished with the assignment of adding a form to each of my templates. While each template has a form, only one of them integrates recaptcha in form submission. I added recaptcha to one of the forms in order to  demonstrate that I could do it, but not both, because adding recaptcha was optional and I wanted to save time.

The pages look nice and seem to function as I'd hoped, as well.

I did have a problem when the 'AltPage2.assy4prt2.php' page did not seem to be using the javascript file which checks the form elements. I fixed this by moving the JS file out of the 'include' folder and into the same directory as the webpage. I am not sure what the original problem was because I should be able to put included files in a separate folder. So if I want to work in this business I should probably develop an understanding of why it was a problem to have the JS file in an include folder, but my solution seems to work.  Also, I noticed that the variables in the form seem to be 'set' to an empty string when the user does not type anything in the form elements. Therefore, using isset() in a conditional that either posts or processes the form  always to seemed to yield 'true,' the result being that the form was always processed whether the user entered any input or not. In this case it seems ok because the JS will shouldn't allow the form to be submitted without the required entries, but this issue is something to keep in mind should I run into it elsewhere.

Lastly there is the issue of how long I took to complete this assignment.  I did approx two seven hour days plus one 2 hour day for a total of ~16 hours. If I assume we average about one assignment every 5 days, this means I'd need to do about 3 hours a day to stay caught up--and I am actually behind on things.

HW3 Done

This is the homework where I de-bugged the adder.php page.  I found about 10 errors. I didn't track how long it took, so I suppose I missed that lesson. Perhaps the most helpful thing to come out of this homework is that I now understand how an If/Else statement with the closing php tag right after the else's opening works to either print the 'IF' statements (which are inside the php tags) or the 'ELSE' statements/html (which is outside the php tags). So I think I did well enough to declare this assignment done.

Assignment 2 is Finished

I just finished assignment 2. Not sure how long it took in total but today I spent around 6 hours working on it (and had worked on it previously). A large portion of this assignment was trying to understand table-free html used in the page coding. I think I made headway in this regard so that I have some ability to read and understand this sort of code but I would probably have a more difficult task actually trying to use it to write a page from scratch.

After I had the page divided into include files it still did not display correctly coming from the server. It took me awhile to realize that with my file structure and the multi-layered way I was creating the page, the browser was probably expecting the css file and image files to be within public html, even though they were within a subfolder. I fixed this by placing all the page documents within the same subfolder, so that now the relative path used for the css/images would reference the correct files. But that created another problem--it seemed a browser could not access files except those in the public_html file. I was stumped for a while until I thought of changing the permissions for the directory and file.

I noticed that main index.php file in the subfolder had read permission but not execute. I believe I needed to add execute to the permissions since a .php file  an executable file. After I changed the permissions to allow execution I was able to access the page using a browser and things looked okay. I am glad I paid some attention to Bill's lecture on file permissions.

Lastly, the structure of the page did not seem friendly to having an index page with all other files consigned to an 'include' folder. The reason for this is because the index page had its own reference to the css and image files, and I didn't think of an elegant way to reference them from both inside and outside the include file. This is an issue to be improved on later, I suppose.

PS--While this is only assignment 2, I think I already did the two assignments AFTER it, so should be on assignment 5 now, not assignment 3.

Argghhh!!

I thought I would be able to finish HW 6 because I had 'archived' the class site. But I did not realize that some of the material I viewed in my archive was actually 'live' from the internet, and therefore not part of my archive. Therefore, I have decided to follow the spring quarter class and do assignments after Bill posts them. This should make my quarter more relaxing and give me time to do other things but will also prevent me from finishing as fast as I would like.

I need to investigate an FTP tool for the Mac/Windows so I can back up the files I have on 000webhost. I think Bill is right that it's too dangerous to have my only copies of those files on 00webhost when they could delete them without notice.

I like Bills idea that if we know how long things take then we can bill for them. That is the whole idea behind keeping track of how long things take, and I should probably keep track of how long things take me with not only this class, but many of the things I do.

So anyway, I think I am done with homework 1.

Done with HW 4!

I am finished with homework 4, though I should probably do the extra credit bit to solidify my knowledge. The main problem is that I took about 13 hours to finish this assignment. I spent too much time looking at and trying to understand pre-fabricated php/javascript code that I didn't need to understand in order to finish the assignment. And as usual I wasn't paying attention to the seeming fact I was using way too much time for the amount I was actually accomplishing. Need to be more systematic and set expectations to something I can accomplish in a reasonable amount of time. Then I need to monitor myself to note WHAT I am accomplishing and how long it has taken me (hopefully an appropriate amount of time, BTW). Yet I do feel that I learned something on this one.

Working on HW 4

I started work on HW 4 today. It seemed necessary to review the lesson on email, so that is what I did, primarily. I also reviewed some information on ReCAPTCHA. Anyhow, figuring out what I needed to review and reviewing the lesson and other info took more than 3 hours, including extra 'issues' that I made for myself. Hopefully, finishing HW 3 will be relatively easy from here out.

Done with HW 3!

I am finally don with HW 3 (troubleshooting the adder.php page). While I am glad to be done, it took me perhaps 4 hours today just to fix and hopefully understand the final problem. I think I learned a bit, however, and now I have perhaps 10 days to finish the final 8 assignments! These circumstances seem to be setting me up for failure but I will still try.

Done with homework 2

After being away from things for a while I am done with homework 2. And I feel I have completed all aspects of the assignment in a quality fashion. Not sure how long it took me to complete the html template and subsequent php template, as I completed the assignment over several days. In any case, there are at least 6 more homeworks left to complete, and if I take 2 months for each like I did with this one, I might not finish for a year. So I need to be a bit more diligent about working on homeworks if I am going to finish by the end of March.