E5, Reflecting on Assignment2 Technical Essay

13 Feb 2020
  1. Provide a brief introduction to the assignment along with a link to this page for further details

Assignment2 involved both file input and output, as well as transferring quantity data as a query string through the login, registration, and finally to the invoice. By doing this, my customer is successfully guided from the products page, to the login page, then to the reistration page, and then finally to the invoice page if registered successfully. My site will save the new user data for the next time my customer wants to purchase something.

  1. What did you learn from this assignment?

I learned all about file input and output. Prior to this, I had no idea how to keep data around from one page to the next and I feel I learned a lot in this assignment. I also learned how to save user data from the server to a JSON file so that each time a returning customer comes to my site, they can simply log in and see their invoice.

  1. Did you work with a partner? Assign an estimated percentage on the amount each team member contributed to the assignment (including yourself).

I did not work with a partner.

  1. How did you get help when you needed it? What did you need help with?

When I needed help, I asked to schedule a Zoom meeting with professor Port. As I noted earlier, I had no idea how to keep the quantity data around from the products page, through the login and registration page, and finally to the invoice. Professor Port helped me a lot with this portion and I learned I needed to use the query string to keep my data around.

  1. How was developing this assignment different than assignment #1?

Both Assignment1 and Assignment2 were very challenging. but in different ways. In assignment1, we created a basic products page that linked to an invoice via the POST method. In assignment2, we took our site a step further and added a login and registragion page as well as code that would save user data into a file so they can log in.

  1. 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. I spent about 55% of my time thinking about how to do something. b. I spent about 20% of my time writing code c. I spent 25% of my time testing and debugging my code.

  1. Describe what worked well with this project? What did not work well?

My project worked extremely well, with the help of professor Port. I got everything to run smoothly, and I even got my file to save userdata. I input css files for my login and registration pages which made my pages a LOT more aesthetically pleasing. Before I asked for help, however, I was stuck on keeping quantity data around until the user reached their invoice.

  1. If you could go back in time and do things differently, what would you do differently?

If I could go back and do things differently, I would try to find a template css file and use it for my webpage. I tried to do it in Assignment1. However, I could not get it to work so I finally decided to create my own origninal css file.