Website Development

1
Website Development Management
CIT 3353 -- Fall 2005 www.clt.astate.edu/jseydel/m
is3353

• Form Processing with PHP

Instructor John Seydel, Ph.D.
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Todays Agenda

• Discuss Exam 1
• Summarize and review recent material
• Discuss file and applications management
• Introduce server-side includes
• Note AITP meeting (whats AITP?)

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Information about Exam 1

• Meet in BU 205
• Closed book / closed notes
• Exam will be available Monday _at_ 500 pm
• Primarily coding
• Specifications given
• HTML and PHP code to be written accordingly
• Bring pencils and erasers
• What to expect
• HTML (Chapters 1-3, 6)
• XHTML 1.0
• Basics elements/tags/attributes,
• Style rules
• Forms
• PHP (through Chapter 5 helpful to take a look at
  Chapter 6 also)
• Basics variables, functions
• Form processing
• Server setup/organization/administration

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Recall Browser/Server Interaction
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How Forms Work

• Form data
• Using post (see example) data in body
• Using get (see example) data in querystring
• Lets look at a response header
• Linking a form and its handler
• In the ltformgt tag, specify the action attribute
• When the submit button is clicked, the data are
  sent to the form handler

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Form Validation

• Necessary for any real application
• Avoids GIGO syndrome
• Done
• At the client with JavaScript
• On the server with PHP (or whatever system is in
  place)
• Which is better . . . ?
• Refer to the example (compound_proc.php)
• Note the condition in the if statement
• Note the redirection that takes place
• Redirection
• When change of control requires another file
• Often used when website is moved
• How header(Location . . . )

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Style Rule Concepts

• Based on the CSS language specified so far using
  the style attribute
• Facilitate separating structure, semantics, and
  display
• Syntax
• Always property1valueproperty2value . . .
• Example font-size10pttext-alignjustify
• Properties you should be able to modify by now
• color
• background-image
• font-size
• text-align
• font-style

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Some Miscellaneous Things

• Error in calculation on compound_proc.php
• No one noticed!
• Clearly results in unreasonable result
• Application management involves simultaneously
  running multiple applications
• PHP Designer edit locally
• ID (viewing localhost) view pages/applications
  on development server
• Windows Explorer copy file from local machine
• IE (running FTP) paste (i.e., upload) to SuSE1
• IE (viewing SuSE1 through HTTP) view
  pages/applications on production server
• Anything else . . . ?

9
File Management

• Mirror your files use the same directory
  structure for
• Local machine
• My Documents root
• Localhost root
• SuSE1 server
• Portable disk (e.g., jump drive)
• Structure
• index.html
• exercises.html
• . . .
• /images
• LogoASU.gif
• . . .
• /exercises
• guestbook.html
• personal.html
• . . .
• /chapter4
• errorscript.php . . .

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Server-Side Includes

• Note some components used throughout multiple
  pages (e.g., headers and footers)
• CIT 3353 website
• Suzy Student website
• CIT website
• ASU website
• Why write the code for these components over and
  over?
• Takes time
• Never error free
• Updates hard to manage
• Instead, use server-side includes
• See reference section of PHP textbook (page
• Example include(header.shtml)
• Try it!

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Appendix
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Some Guidelines for Source Code

• Use lowercase for tags attributes
• Quote attribute values
• Use relative references for resources on same
  server
• Always use closing tags
• Nest elements properly close in reverse order of
  opening
• Use indentation consistently and to make code
  readable
• No more than 80 characters per line of code
  break long tags into multiple lines, typically
  one per attribute
• Avoid deprecated elements, e.g., ltfontgt, ltigt, ltbgt
• Use no spaces in file names
• Treat all URLs and other resource names as if
  case-sensitive

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Setup for Today

• Login using your student ID
• Open Windows Explorer
• Click on Folders button
• Folders view on left
• Contents pane on right
• Navigate to \htdocs directory (localhost root)
• See if you can copy any file into \htdocs
• Open PHP Designer close all window except Task
  Panel
• Open IE (2 instances)
• One starting in localhost
• Use the other to FTP to your home directory on
  SuSE1
• All applications should be opened to partial
  windows that can be cascaded