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ITEC 325
2016fall
ibarland

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db
DB connectivity

Due: 2016.Nov.14 (Mon) 11:00.

You will complete your new-Okaymon page by storing the okaymon in a database, and retreiving a summary list of all Okaymon.

  1. Your landing page https://php.radford.edu/~yourUserId/itec325/hw06/index.php should now be a summary-list of all the okaymon in the database (see below), followed by links to:

    Submit your files on D2L (individually, not as a jar).

  2. (5pts) Make a page which initializes your database: it creates all the necessary table(s) (via a CREATE SQL statement). Before doing that, it should drop the table(s) — so really, this page is re-setting your database.

    hint: The energy-type column should be a Foreign Key, of course.

    To help me grade, include a line at the bottom of the page which is the SQL CREATE command. Please render this line inside <code> and <pre> tags. Also, include a link to your index.php. (When grading, it will be convenient for me to visit this page, then click on some of your handle-sample-N pages, to insert new entries and verify they get added. Make sure that the first couple of sample-N's are valid data that does get inserted into the database!)

    You don't need to add the energy resistances/weaknesses, to get full credit. Instead, adding this feature is extra credit worth 5% of this assignment.

  3. (10pts) Modify the ol' Okaymon form handler so that once the information is validated, the Okaymon is added to the database.

  4. (5pts) Make your landing page show a summary list of all Okaymon previously entered: just the Okaymon name and its the associated energy-type. This page should also include a link to the Okaymon-entry-form page. (The list does not need to be particularly pretty — just loop over the results of the database query.)

    Make sure you that you can insert/retrieve values that have “SQL-sensitive” characters like apostrophes, spaces, and semicolons (as well as the “html-sensitive” characters like less-than and ampersand that we've already handled). Automate this testing by adding-to/modifying your sample-handle files. to include such characters.

    Be sure all your pages/programs always close any database connection they open!

  5. (15pts) Each Okaymon-name on the summary list should be a link which, when clicked, brings you to a detailed-information page.

    (The layout of this information does not need to be anything elegant, but it should not be prone to HTML/script injection.)

    Pro tip:

    From hw03 on, you already have a page which prints the summary information (on a successful submit); it used $_POST.

    You can re-factor that page so that instead of reading from $_POST, it reads from some other array, say, “$theOkaymonInfo”. Then:

    • To get the old behavior, $theOkaymonInfo = $_POST; followed by require("print-Okaymon-info.php");.
    • To meet this new requirement for this hw, read the database-info for a Okaymon into $theOkaymonInfo, and then you can just require("print-Okaymon-info.php"); from there!
    Adding a layer of indirection: is there any problem it can't solve?

    Note that this is asking for a link which behaves a little bit like a form-handler, since you won't have a separate URL for every single Okaymon — instead you'll have one page which (given a particular Okaymon-name) pulls the detailed information out of the database. How do you have a link which provides an argument (the Okaymon-name) to another page? One easy way is to have the link contain the parameter(s) explicitly, e.g.<a href="Okaymon.php?okaymonName=pugglez">…”, and the receiving page accesses that argument through the $_GET array (e.g., $_GET['okaymonName']).

    If using arbitrary text as part of a URL, you have to guard against characters not usually allowed in URLs. See rawurlencode and its inverse rawurldecode. It is also acceptable to add an ID-number to an okaymon, and use that ID-number for some database lookups. (However, it's a good principle to not going around and adding artificial fields into your database design—things that aren't part of the actual Okaymon info.)

    As always, to guard against HTML/script injection, be sure to call htmlspecialchars on any text which was originally provided by a user (even if retrieved from the database). (This goes for all pages, even if other validation requirements make such escaping moot).

    You don't need to include the Okaymon's energy-biases on this page. If you do, it's extra-credit worth 15% of this homework, done properly.

  6. I'll say it again, just because it's fun: Be sure all your pages/programs always close any database connection they open!

Guidelines


1 This can't be done through a gui interface, since we want it triggered via the php script. However, you might have previously once set up your table via the mysqladmin GUI interface, and then noted what actual command mysqladmin used.      

2In “real life” you would probably TRUNCATE the tables rather than DROP-then-reCREATE them. However, for this homework I want to see your CREATE statements.      

3

Transmitting the arguments through $_GET of course is vulnerable to over-the-shoulder snooping; if you wanted to still use $_POST but not require a “submit” button, you can set the link's onclick attribute to be javascript which (a) sets the value of a hidden input tag, and then (b) does something like document.getElementByID( 'theFormsId' ).submit().

     

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©2016, Ian Barland, Radford University
Last modified 2016.Nov.04 (Fri)
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