CSci 4608 Principles of Web Programming, UMM: Resources.

CSci 4608 Principles of Web Programming: Resources

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Resources will be added as the class progresses. Required reading is marked with *R followed by a number (used in the syllabus) and possibly followed by the description of what exactly is required in this reading.

History

Internet Timeline by Robert Zakon.
History of Web Languages

Internet Protocols

*R1 (don't need to know about UDP or details of telnet) Introduction to TCP/IP at acm.org. Somewhat old, but still a good description of the basic connection scheme.
My notes on Client/Server Model and Internet protocols (from an E-commerce course which I taught in 2002 at Wellesley College). Please never mind the typos...
Introduction to HTTP1.1 protocol by Robert D. Cameron.
RFC2616 -- the official standard of HTTP1.1. Everything you ever need to know about HTTP, and then some!
*R2 Overview of HTTP and SSL at AdventNet.com (includes the description of POST and GET requests)
Introduction to CGI and HTTP at NEXUS

HTML

A nice intro to HTML (but notice Javascript fragments in roll-over section!)
*R3 (you should know the basic terminology, such as elements, attributes, etc, and should be able to use this page as a reference) HTML 3.2 Reference Specification at W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Here CDATA (Character Data) stands for any set of SGML characters (including markup characters, such as other tags), PCDATA (Parsed Character Data) doesn't allow any markup characters.
HTML 4.01 (the newest-latest W3C recommendation for HTML).

JavaScript

Thanks to Mike Anderson for sending these references.

Javascript guide at netscape.com.
JavaScript reference at netscape.com.

A bit of caution: the two references above may have some Netscape-specific features. Check your page on Mozilla or IE to convince yourself that all the features will work the same. One known problem: getYear() method of Date() works differently in different browsers. Using getFullYear() seems to work in most browsers, so use it instead (but still exercise caution).

CGI, Perl

Introduction to CGI at W3C.
*R4 More details on CGI (form data processing) The link is now fixed - Oct. 7th.
Which Server-Side Language Is Right For You? An excellent comparison of server side languages by Kevin Yank at sitepoint.com. It's not a required reading, but it's highly recommended!
CGI section of online edition of Perl in a Nutshell (O'Reilly).
Some Perl examples from the class lectures.
Debugging Perl scripts: some possible reasons for a script error message. This article comes from thesitewizard.com, a good source of web development and web hosting information.
Perl regular expressions:
- A very detailed page on Perl regular expressions. Many examples. Excellent reference!
- An introduction to regular expressions (O'Reilly's "Learning Perl").
- Pattern Matching chapter of O'Reilly's online edition of "Programming Perl": probably more than you ever need to know about Perl pattern-matching, but has all the grammar for regular expressions and some examples.
Perl file access:
- Reading and writing files (includes testing whether the file exists): an online chapter of Perl cookbook.

PHP

PHP Tutorial at W3 Schools. A very basic introduction.
PHP tutorial at www.php.net.
NEW Also, Filesystem references at www.php.net.
PHP manual. Some useful sections: PHP types (PHP is not as untyped as it seems), in particular string manipulation.
In-class examples. To test the examples, copy them using cp or a plain-text editor into your public_html. The file must have an extension .php and it must be publicly readable (use chmod a+r myfile.php to set the permissions. To test php programs, just type the absolute URL of the php file in the browser's address bar (see the first example below):
- http://epoxy.morris.umn.edu/~elenam/first.php The first example: PHP variables, conditionals, functions.
- a form that gets processed by php. See the Form tutorial at php.net for more information. This example also shows the use of $_SERVER variable. See Predefined Variables at php.net and CGI Environment Variables specification for a list of individual elements of $_SERVER.
- Illustrating assignment by reference, different types of comparison: compare.php
- File reading in php. The file must be world-readable. files.php.
- cookie.php.
*R5PHP sessions from online chapter of O'Reilly "Web database applications". Examples of using sessions, cookies, etc.
In-class example of accessing a database.
PHP and CSS: an example and its source code.

Cookies (general info)

*R6Cookie specification at Netscape.com

PHP and MySQL

*R7 Persistent connections at php.net.
MySQL functions at php.net.

XML

XML tutorial at W3 Schools.
XML and XSL in-class examples and More XML/XSL examples (XSL conditionals, variables, and templates).
Java-based XML parser Xalan is avaliable on epoxy and can be run at command line Click here for instructions.
Java APIs and examples related to XML:
- Xalan - a Java XSLT processor, in particular Xalan API. Also, see some examples and hints on how to use it.
- Xerces-J - a "Simple API for XML" (SAX) parser.
Examples related to the project:
- An example of Java validation of XML schema.
- An example of XSL processing in a Java program

Servlets and JSP

API for javax.servlet.http package. Some specific classes:
In-class example: IceCream Servlet example
In-class example: XSL processing in a servlet
Posted Dec. 12th. Another project-related example: Validating a document against a schema in a servlet.
Tutorial on Java technologies (Servlets, XML, JSP)
Tomcat installation instructions .
Tomcat documentation (also accessible on the starting page of Tomcat, i.e. the page that you see when you click on localhost:8080 link).