ITEC 325 2013spring ibarland

home—lects—exams—hws
D2L—breeze (snow day)

hw03
php producing html

For this homework, you will submit four files (utils.php, utils-test.php, wow-constants.php, and skill-form.php) on D2L. In addition, I will visit the URL https://php.radford.edu/~yourUserName/itec325/hw03/skill-form.php to grade your work. If that URL is not accessible, you will get a 0 for that portion of the grading! (Be sure to get the name exactly right: a itec325 folder containing a hw03 folder.) Also, note that good test cases comprise nearly half of the points-possible, for problems that have you write a function.

1. (10pts) Write a function which takes in an array of strings, and returns a single, long string: a comma-separated list of all the individual strings, with “and” before the last element (if more than one)¹. The resulting string should be suitable for splicing into the middle of a paragraph of prose, and should be proper, grammatical English. (This function has nothing to do with html.) Include at least three test cases, each testing a different situation.

2. (20pts) Write a function which takes in an array of strings (checkbox-descriptions) (and, a group-name), and returns a string that happens to be valid html for a series of checkboxes. The string should include newlines, and (if you want) each line might start with (say) 6 spaces, to serve as indentation.

   For example, calling checkboxes( 'family', array('Brother', 'Sister', 'Pet') ) would return html which renders as something like:
   Brother
   Sister
   Pet
   
   Include at least two test cases; you'll probably want to write a sample series of checkboxes by hand, to serve as your expected-output. Use label tags to group each checkbox with its adjacent text.

3. (10pts) Include a function named (something like) arrayToHTML_table, which takes in an array and returns a string: the HTML markup for a two-column table, with the array-indices in the first column and the array-values in the second.

   For example, arrayToHTML_table( array( "en" => "Hi", "de" => "'Tag", "fr" => "'Allo" ) ) should return HTML which renders as something like:

   en	Hi
   de	'Tag
   fr	'Allo

   Include at least two test cases. (What if one of the strings contains, say, an ampersand character?) I suggest first writing the raw html for the table, and then cutting/pasting that html in as the expected-result; this will help you decide what whitespace etc. you want your function to produce.

   Hint: I found my solution to actually be simpler by making a second helper function, twoStrsToHTML_tr, that only had two worry about creating a single row. Having test cases for the helper also let me have fewer/simpler tests for the main function.

4. (10pts) Write a function navlinksUL: It takes an array of strings, and returns a string that is HTML for an un-ordered list of links to anchors within the same document.

   For example, given an array with "commaList-prob", "checkbox-prob" and "due-date", it would return HTML that would render as:

   • commaList-prob
   • checkbox-prob
   • due-date
   (Of course, this function is only helpful on a web page with elements whose ids match the strings in the array. Try clicking on those items, and feel free to view-source, to understand what it's doing.)

5. (10pts)

   Finally, create a web-page skill-form.php which makes use of all four of the above functions, and renders something like: .

   Note that this page is not actually a submittable form; it will just contain some checkboxes and an entry field; the submit button does nothing. (We'll get to that soon!)

   You should also have one short, extra file wow-constants.php, which simply initializes two variables: one array with the 4 types of characters, and one array with the 6 character attributes (with their abbreviations as keys). (We'll add more to this file in future homeworks.)

   Your skill-form.php will require_once your files with the utilities and constant-definitions.

Other requirements

• Each file start should start with with a PHP or HTML comment with your name, class, etc. (after a doctype declaration and perhaps <html>).
• Use meaningful variable names, function names, and good comments as needed.
• Write functions (both php and javascript) as appropriate, to avoid repeated work.
  I recommend writing functions that return strings rather than print (as convenient²), and including one or two test-cases as examples. Writing the test-case first often clarifies exactly what your code needs to return.
• Use standard XHTML tags and make sure any javascript does not use browser-specific constructs.
• All code/html should be well formatted with appropriate white space and indentation so it is easy to read.
• Strive to minimize lines that wrap.
• If you have any questions, use the discussion board.
• Do not modify your final submission after the due-date; if you want to make changes, copy all your files to a new directory and work on those. (Linux: use cp -pr to preserve timestamps and copy directories recursively.)

• Please run/check your program/html incrementally — don't write huge amounts of the assignment w/o even running it.

home—lects—exams—hws
D2L—breeze (snow day)

©2012, Ian Barland, Radford University Last modified 2013.Feb.14 (Thu)

Please mail any suggestions (incl. typos, broken links) to ibarlandradford.edu