Assignment 2 focuses on creaitng a user system for our website. It requires those who are on the website to register to log and all that is processed through the server. For further details click <a href=https://dport96.github.io/ITM352/morea/150.Assignment2/experience-Assignment2_retrospective.html>here</a>.
What did you learn from this assignment?
I learned about server side processing and how to use forms. Forms were something important I feel that I will remember. Keeping track of the action on the forms (the order page, the login, and the register) helped teach me how to follow the path. Another important part of that was the GET/POST, which I understood better from this assignment.I learned about how data is kept in the query string and now I learned how data is kept in the json. I learned how the server works with the webpage and client. I learned the username/ passwords is stored on the server while the orders were stored on the client's.
How did you get help when you needed it? What did you need help with?
Professor Port always offered a helping hand during class. He reminded us that if we're stuck that we can always email him because we are learning and not going to deducted for that. I was able to email him for help on setting up a server. Then, from Lab14, I got a much better understanding of the fundamentals and how to keep your code simple.
How was developing this assignment different than assignment #1?
This assignment opened the possibilities to more. We could have had the login and register pages be a separate http page. We could've made the GET/POST paths different. We could have separated the login and process login instead of making it GET login and POST login. There were different forms names that could be used. You can choose at what point are you checking the login information. Overall, there was less focus on the aesthetics of the website and more focus on the function for me.
Estimate the % of time you spent (a) thinking about how to do something, (b) writing code (but do not include testing, (c) testing and debugging
(a) 3 hours thinking of how to do something (b) 4 hours of writing code (c) 4 hours of testing and debugging
Describe what worked well with this project? What did not work well?
Lab 14 was really, really helpful. I thought that going through the code as our professor was writing it made it much easier to follow the path that the server had to take. Trying to look at other's code for this assigment did not work well. As I mentioned earlier, there are many different approaches that can be taken. That means that everyone has a different system of variables and pathing, so trying to look at other's made everything more confusing.
If you could go back in time and do things differently, what would you do differently?
I would start with the most simple and basic structure that I can and add more off of that. Adding everything at once made the code really confusing and hard to follow. A lot of the code started to become redundant. I would also want myself to know what to do when the website says "cannot get path to /." I think planning that better and knowing how to address that like I do now would be a lot more productive. Still, I was able to take a lot from this assignment.