INTN 2201: Lab Assignment 5:
Basic PHP Scripting

Due Date and Marking

Lab 5 is due by March 6th 2010, by midnight. This means that you must have sent an email with your link by that time (see "Handing In" section below). Be sure to include the course code, and the lab number in the subject line of the message (i.e. "INTN2201 Lab #5"). You will receive an email back within a day or two, giving you your mark out of twenty, and the reasons for any loss of marks, to be used as constructive criticism (i.e. fix the problems before the next lab is submitted). NOTE: this assignment is worth two double your other assignments due to the complexity of the prompted temperature page. This should inspire you to spend some extra time completeing the assignment.

General

All the of the files you are to create for this assignment should include your header.php and footer.php files created as part of the last assignment. This will entail you actually making the files of type *.php (instead of *.html that the book asks for). You are also expected to place a header <h1> element and a paragraph description on each of the pages you create for this assignment. NOTE: as per usual, all pages must validate to the XHTML transitional standard.

Read "Chapter 6: Using PHP Variables" in the Julie Meloni text on Books 24x7, and the the first two pages of "Appendix C: Writing Your Own Functions and Objects" out of the course text book (skip the section on Objects). Take note that in Appendix C the include function is explained.

After completing the readings, work through all the php examples in Chapter 6.

Be sure to place single-quotes around the terms val1, val2 and calc in your array element names in the calculate example. i.e. instead of $_POST[val1] you should type $_POST['val1'] (it will cause an warning in PHP if you do not).

Specific Requirements

• Be sure that all your pages are visually appealing with a consistent look and feel. To acheive this, you are to incorporate your intn2201.css stylesheet and your header.php and footer.php for all files created as part of this assignment.
• Similar to the last assignment, include PHP comments with your name and course code in any PHP files created for this assignment. Additionally, add HTML comments to all your pages (this should occur if you implement your header.php file correctly) that give your name, the file name, the date the file was created and a brief description of what the page does.
• You are to create a lab5.php file that will act as the main navigation page for all files created for this assignment. In addition to having a link to this page in your site's main nav bar, you are to incorporate a clearly labeled link on each page created as part of this assignment back to the lab5.php page. Like all your pages, you should have a header and paragraph explaining on each page the page's purpose.
• Chapter 6 in the text has you create the files: calculate_form.html; calculate.php; phpinfo.php; remoteaddress.php; and, useragent.php. You do NOT have to incorporate the phpinfo.php as part of your website (though working through the example is still worthwhile). ALL of the other files should have a *.php file extension (so they can include your header and footer). As well, each of your filenames should be pre-fixed with lab5_ (i.e. remoteaddress.php should be called lab5_remoteaddress.php).
• In addition to the text examples, you are to create two (2) temperature conversion pages (one to be named lab5_simple_temp_convert.php and another called lab5_function_temp_convert.php. These two conversion pages will utilize a for loop that starts at a celsius temperature of -40° and loops to a temperature of 100° inclusive by increments of 10°, converting each celsius temperature to its equivalent fahrenheit temperature. To see what the instructor is looking for link to an example temperature conversion page. To include the degree sign you must include &deg; beside the number in the output. Reminder: be sure you give access to all these lab 5 pages from the file lab5.php.
• The first temperature conversion page should perform the calculation of the conversion directly in the for loop, the second page (whose table will look indentical to the first) instead should do the calculation in an appropriately named function.

Handing In

Publish your pages on the opentech server and submit the URL of your index page to YOUR lab instructor. The preferred method/location for the various instructor is:

Don't mail your files themselves or save them into WebCT; they are useless away from the server.

To publish your pages, upload them to the server in the directory /var/www/users/intn2201/userid (this is the only folder that will work because that's what the Apache Web server software is configured to look in for your files).
Keep your files on-line until you are sure they have been marked!
Directory and file names on the server are case-sensitive, so be sure to put everything in lowercase letters. The default page name is index.html. Don't use spaces, apostrophes, uppercase letters or quotation marks in your file name (keep it simple, using letters and digits, otherwise people won't find your pages).

Linking file names to URLs

Let's say your login ID is speedy, then your file name on the server is:
 /var/www/user/intn2201/speedy/index.html
The corresponding URL is:
 http://opentech.durhamcollege.ca/~intn2201/speedy/
Don't forget the ~ (tilde) symbol. It means "speedy's home directory".

For the rest of the files in your site, you need to give the name in the URL. The file named:
 /var/www/users/intn2201/speedy/page2.html
has the corresponding URL is:
 http://opentech.durhamcollege.ca/~intn2201/speedy/page2.html