Internet Application Programming

Internet application programming taught the fundamental skills of HTML/XHTML and CSS. In addition to the mark-up languages we also studied JavaScript, Perl, and how to use AJAX. Outside of this course I also studied PHP, jQuery, Django, and familiarized myself with database usage for web applications (MySQL, PostgreSQL).

Assignment #2

The purpose of this assignment was to create a dynamic table using Javascript and HTML to hold data entered by the client. The data in this case was a Carleton University student number along with the users name and postal code. The created table also featured a built-in sorting feature when clicking the column titles along with a search function. On top of this we were to create a recycle bin-like object to drag and drop the data rows in so that they could be deleted. The assignment can be previewed here.

Assignment #3

Rummaging around my archived assignments I came across the actual description and requirement document for this assignment. It was to create a ‘simple password protected content management system coupled with a cookie editor’. This assignment focused heavily on the use of Perl along with…. more Perl. Javascript was not allowed in this assignment.

So, there are a few files to this ‘program’. There is a password file which is checked against the user-supplied credentials to allow access to the application. The .htaccess file is used to deny accessibility to the password file, along with redirecting any other sneaky moves using Apache directives. The index.pl file is just there as a logon page, and upon logon forwards the user to main.pl. In main.pl there is a link to the cookie editor and a form to upload files to the server.

Assignment #4

This was the last internet application programming assignment, an in my opinion this is where the course began to get interesting. Asynchronous Javascript and XML (AJAX) was used to implement an auto-complete component used with an input form. The user would input their first and last names along with area code and phone number. Then as the information was being typed a possible match would be looked up and filled in to the form. The data to be matched against was contained in an external XML file and checked for validity with a DTD file.