CST 336 Week 8

Week 8

This is our last week. We have wrapped up our final exam and completed the last assignment for the course. The assignment this week only added one new bit of information, however it required knowledge from previous weeks to complete. This week the class learned how to upload files to the server and store them either in the database or in the file system on the server. The idea is pretty simple, but can very easy to mess up by keeping track of the files in the session.

Overall, this course has been pretty simple for me since it's in my line of work. I've really enjoyed how structured the professor is and haven't felt like there were any surprises this course (aside from the slightly off first week). I also like his structure of teaching. I have always felt I learn tremendously better by implementing the concepts rather than just reading or listening to the material.

Below is my final assignment for the course.

• http://hosting.otterlabs.org/mazzabrittanyn/CST336/labs/8/login.php

CST 336 Week 7

Week 7

This week we went through W3 Schools AJAX Tutorials. The assignments this week were focused on using AJAX to retrieve data and JavaScript/JQuery to update the DOM with the retrieved information. This week has been pretty nice for me. This week I was requested to do a quick video demo of my assignment (each student is asked once at a random week in the course). I decided to try the Jing software. The software worked fine, but I ended up having a difficult time trying to convert from their SWF to anything else so that I could put it on YouTube. Everything I tried either didn't work, just had audio, or was watermarked. I ended up using the site that they basically force you to use. I guess that's fine for this demo, but it's likely I won't use that software in the future. As far as I can tell, flash is on its way out (thank goodness!).

My completed assignments for this week are below.

• http://hosting.otterlabs.org/mazzabrittanyn/CST336/labs/7/
• http://hosting.otterlabs.org/mazzabrittanyn/CST336/assignments/4/

Assignment demo: http://www.screencast.com/t/959tgD36J

CST 336 Week 6

Week 6

This week we were assigned to read through the lecture material and watch several videos from Atomic Learning's JQuery & JavaScript Basics Training course. The workload was much lighter this week, so that we can focus on the practice exam. This works out well for me, since I'm out of town this week and partially into next week. We only had one assignment, which was practice with JavaScript and JQuery. The JavaScript and JQuery intro has been very simple so far. They're doing their best to distinguish between JavaScript and JQuery, but I imagine that the line is pretty blurry for some of my classmates since they were both introduced the same week. It also doesn't help that the lab used primarily JQuery. I think it would have been beneficial to do two separate assignments (one using only JavaScript and the other using JQuery) to help solidify the idea.

My completed assignment for this week is below.

• http://hosting.otterlabs.org/mazzabrittanyn/CST336/labs/6/

CST 336 Week 5

Week 5

This week we learned about storing user data in sessions (specifically for logging in and out of a website). It was a very quick intro and very simple. We were assigned reading from chapter 12 (titled "Working with Cookies and User Sessions") of Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL, and Apache All in One. The lab assignment was nice this week since we just added a log in to the website we did last week. I'm glad it ended up being short because it allowed me to spend more time on the team project.

I think my team has gone beyond what the assignment detailed, which is good, but it also meant that I have spent time on certain functionality that didn't meet the assignment requirements. So, this project has taken longer than I was expecting.

Below are my assignments for this week.:

• Lab: http://hosting.otterlabs.org/mazzabrittanyn/CST336/labs/5/
• Team Project: http://hosting.otterlabs.org/mazzabrittanyn/CST336/team_project/1/

CST 336 Week 4

Week 4

This week we were assigned to read chapters 15 and 16 from Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL, and Apache All in One. The topics covered basic database design and basic SQL statements (SELECT, INSERT, DELETE, etc.). There are three relationships that help relate data in databases: one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many. These relationships help us to better maintain our databases. The chapter assigned used students as examples for these. This is very useful information, but I would really appreciate new examples. Relating students to classes and professors is a very tired example in academics. I find that this example topic leaves me bored and disinterested.

We've also began our first team assignment of the semester. Our team has been a little late to the start, but I'm sure we will complete it fine. I'm glad we have settled on an idea and started building out our tables.

Below are my assignments for the week (team assignment should be posted next week):

• http://hosting.otterlabs.org/mazzabrittanyn/CST336/labs/4/pt1/
• http://hosting.otterlabs.org/mazzabrittanyn/CST336/labs/4/pt2/

CST 336 Week 3

Week 3

This week we covered HTML forms and PHP arrays. We were assigned the videos from section E of Atomic Learning's HTML5 & CSS3 - Basic Training course, videos from section E of Atomic Learning's PHP Basic Training course. I really enjoy these videos. They're extremely insightful and it's easy to follow along. Coming up with what I will do each time to fulfill the assignment's requirements each time is challenging. However, I am very excited about my assignment this week. Since there's been a lot of hype over the large Powerball winnings, I've created a generator to decide on numbers for your Powerball ticket. It ended up being a lot of fun.

Below are my assignments for the week.

• http://hosting.otterlabs.org/mazzabrittanyn/CST336/labs/3
• http://hosting.otterlabs.org/mazzabrittanyn/CST336/assignments/3

CST 336 Week 2

Week 2

This week has been focused on creating webpages with PHP. We were assigned reading from the second chapter of Beginning PHP5, Apache, and MySQL Web Development. We were also assigned videos from Atomic Learning's PHP Training course.

For me, this week and last week are basically once since I messed up on the start date for last week. The projects were pretty basic and we've basically been writing the HTML inside of the strings in PHP. This is my first time working with PHP and I am getting a grip on it, but I am still feeling like PHP is pretty messy and it is complicating my HTML. I get the feeling I'll learn a bit more in the upcoming weeks that will help me clean it up. I'm also going to begin looking at various PHP style guides to better understand how companies keep their code base clean and easy to read. So far, the example videos and code snippets don't appear to have much or any code style discipline. Python, which was used in the last course, has a very distinct style guide. It doesn't appear that PHP does.

We began creating some very simple HTML pages with PHP. Below are my assignments for this week.

• http://hosting.otterlabs.org/mazzabrittanyn/CST336/labs/2/
• http://hosting.otterlabs.org/mazzabrittanyn/CST336/assignments/2/

CST 336 Week 1

Week 1

I'm a bit late on posting this since I thought the assignments for this week weren't already due (they were due the day after the class officially began and I had gone out of the country during the scheduled break), so I'm late on all of my assignments for this week. The week 2 post will follow quickly after this week 1 post. This week we covered several components that can, and often do, make up a website. We were required to read O'Reilly's Learning PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, CSS & HTML5 Chapter 1 Introduction to Dynamic Web Content and follow along through several videos in Atomic Learning's HTML5 & CSS3 - Basic Training videos. Reading through these were pretty simple for me since I already understood these basic concepts. They are really good things to understand and review though, so I read through all of the materials and watched all of the required videos.

We also created some very simple HTML and CSS webpages. One of them was more free form and the other appears to be our home page where we will link all of our assignments from. Below are the webpages I put together for these assignments. Note that the second can be accessed through the first.

• http://hosting.otterlabs.org/mazzabrittanyn/CST336/assignments/1/
• http://hosting.otterlabs.org/mazzabrittanyn/CST336/labs/1/lab1.html