Herbs Store finished

The herb store categories - list - view pages are finally working within the context of the Radiant Health page layout.

A few details to be addressed later:

On the dynamic horizontal nav, when one of the pages in the nav list is active, the list seems to expand, shoving the last item in the list into a smaller space. When the 'contact' page is activated from the footer, the horizontal nav at the top looks correct.

The date issue, called from the footer, is still unresolved. I get an error saying that it's dangerous to use the server to get the date. For now I just wrote in the year. I can always just get it through javascript if I can't get the php to work. I do agree that there is a danger that on the last day of the year, people around the world could get the wrong date using php, but somehow that doesn't make me shudder.

The side nav is not dynamic. It would have taken more coding to fit a dynamic side nave into the table-based layout I had to use. I could do it, but it's working, there is no time left, and for this site, a dynamic nav probably isn't necessary anyway.

I had to rebuild this site from the bottom up in order to make it work. The div based layout I had originally designed kept breaking. Also I didn't know how to get the old-fashioned javascript mouseover side nav they want to work with the php. Before actual deployment, I'm going to have to make these elements work together or come up with compromises.

Left to do is the spreadsheet documentation, catch up to the login assignments. then spend a similar amount of time catching up on ASPnet assignments.

Hours spent on this: 10 on Saturday, 8 on Sunday, 4 on Monday.

date error

Getting warnings that it's dangerous to publish date generated from the server. Whenever I try to combine my stand alone php categories - list - view code within a larger page layout context, I get this date error and it seems to break the layout.

Will keep trying--may have to ask Bill about it.

2 navs

Note to self: I'm programming both an horizontal and a vertical nav. I'll comment out the print command on the horizontal nav. This will allow flexibility of design when it comes to implementation. If they like the horizontal nav better, I can just switch it on and switch off the vertical nav.

Finishing up categories

I worked around the error I was getting without actually fixing it. Seems to work as is.

A couple of minor details left to change within the Chinese Herbs shop, but I'm going to move on anyway to save time.

1. need to find the to upper command that puts the field name in upper case letters and get rid of it.

2. need to find out if I can alias the field names so that the name in the unique herbs page header doesn't look funny when the field names isn't an appropriate title -- coldflu, for example.

3. need to dynamically change plural 'products' to singular 'product' when there is only one item in the category list

time spent this sitting: 4 hours

I may keep going for awhile

One more try

I now have about two hours to try and fix the categories. We'll see what I can manage.

Categories almost ends - unresolved error

Receiving an unspecified error when returning from the view to the list on line 94 of listview:

print '@lt;a href="herbsview.php?id=' . dbOut($row['HerbID']) . '&cid=' . $myID . '&cat=' . $_GET['cat'] . '">';

This is a line I added while adding categories.

Times up for now. I'll have to leave it this way until I can sit back down to it.

time spent on categories so far: 3 and a half hours.

Categories begins

I have about 4 hours of seat time to devote to catching up on the PHP. My goal will be to add the categories to the Chinese herbs store pages. First step will be to change the database tables, then to integrate the search by categories functionality into the pages. If I get that far, next I begin integrating these pages into the larger page format.

Pagination complete

Still too much time spent staring at errors without seeing them. I think what I need is more practice.

4 pm Monday. Just finished paging the herb store items. Haven't integrated the navigation and template into these pages yet. I'll return this evening (after my kids' fastpitch games) to do the categories assignment, then work on integrating the pages.

If my template doesn't work easily and quickly with these view integrated into them, I'll mock up a quick alternative pages in order to facilitate the assignments.

Hours spent on this--too many. Four or five creating the database. Ten or twelve making these pages work so far. (This may be an under-estimate)

I keep beating and beating on this, but I can't seem to make all the elements come together. I have a rare opportunity to work all day on it today. I'm going back to basics--starting with getting the pagination right on Radiant Health Chinese Herb Store, without fitting it into the web design.

I've been struggling all quarter making things work within the design that they want. For the sake of time, I may have to go back to a previous design that is easier to work with but not as pretty.

Back up

Finally sat back down to it. First thing I did was look up the site online. Found no error messages. It's magic. Now there is a lot more work to do to catch up.

Leaving in non-working state

After fussing for too many hours trying to make the images working with the dynamic navigation, I've decided I'm spending too much time with these side issues and not enough keeping up with class work. I'll revisit the image issue later (maybe after the quarter is over) and go with mundane side navigation.

After making this decision, I made a couple of quick changes to the css and a quick change to the hnavINC page that I thought would make the appearance more palatable.

The change to hnavINC was just a change to the value of a string. I thought it would be innocuous. As soon as I dropped it into the website file structure, however, I came up with the following error:

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare checklink() (previously declared in /home/classes/dwelle01/public_html/itc280/radiant/hNavINC.php:56) in /home/classes/dwelle01/public_html/itc280/radiant/hNavINC.php on line 67

At this time I am not able to work at fixing this. It will have to wait a few hours at least.

I didn't change the checklink function, and certainly didn't declare it twice.

Assignment 4 - time

php -- adapting php to my client's application: 2 hours

css, javascript -- 2 hours

photoshop -- creating images -- 4 hours - not yet finished with images

Assignment 4 - List and View

My favorite bit of code from assignment 4.

|img src="images/m|?=$myID?>.gif" /> (vertical line replaces less than symbol)

It would never have occurred to me that php code could be used to provide part of the html name of an image. It is so neat and simple. It automatically associates the correct image with the correct view and associated database information. And it imposes a certain amount of discipline and regularity in naming images.

My primary client has no use for these list and view instances, but another client wants to sell novelty merchandise on-line. These exercises represent the beginning of a possible rebuilt of their site.