Blog Entry #17
April 8, 2016
This morning, I met with Dr. Pankratz to show him my diagrams and where I was at with my work on the project. He gave me new guidelines that I needed to adapt and follow with my new project. I will list these requirements on the Project page.
I also took the time to plan out what I needed to do and when I needed to do it on a Gantt Chart. The Gantt chart will also be listed on the Project page.
In line with the new project requirements, I started up a new app. With the app, I used the Side Navigation Bar template to get a side bar pre-made. I did spend some time seeing if I could add a custom-made formatted side bar to the original application I had started to make, but the two methods I attempted were inefficient and caused the app to continuously crash, despite eliminating warnings and receiving no errors. Since time is of the essence, I chose to ignore it, created a new app, and used the Side Bar template to save time and effort.
Alongside creating a new app, I have also created the basic search screen for the app, with all of the search fields. It still requires proper formatting for the sake of good appearance, but my primary goal at this time is to ensure that the app works in being able to reach out to compsci02 and grab the information. Thus, it will happen, just not at this immediate moment.
I've also been looking into different ways I could access and format the data with student projects. Dr. Pankratz recommended that I used compsci02 to store the data for the Senior Projects on there, and then use PHP to have the server send the information back to the app for processing. Other things I have considered when picking an option include how easy it is to maintain and update the information, the format for the information, and the best way to access it.
Ideally, I want to store the information in a CSV file. The primary reasons for this is that data within a CSV can be better maintained and kept cleaner, I could parse the content based on cell, and in regards to keywords, I can keep the data together much better. Dr. Pankratz did recommend maintaining a simple text file, but keeping the data organized could become messy, and my focus with this is easy updating and management in the future. A third option I have considered, based on my Woodward experience with ColdFusion, is to store the data in an Access database. However, I have chosen not to go with this, simply because it could be more difficult for somebody to pick up and maintain.
From further research what I have found is that some people use a combination of PHP and JSON in order to fetch information from servers. I had researched into this to determine the best way to go out and access the information.