CSci 4657 Programming Languages for Client-Server Systems.

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Required reading is marked like this. In-class examples are marked like this.

Please feel free to suggest resources that you find helpful, I will add them to the page.

General resources

• You might want to check out http://del.icio.us/emachkasova and specifically http://del.icio.us/emachkasova/WebProgramming. No guarantees about quality of sources or of my comments, but it still might be helpful.

TCP/IP and related protocols

• Overview of TCP/IP on wikipedia. You don't need to know the history or details of the layers, but you need to know what the layers are and the purpose of each one.
• An overview of HTTP protocol.
• W3 specification of HTTP/1.1 protocol

XHTML, CSS

• For references to W3 Schools tutorials, validators and other helpful tools, and helpful pages on fonts, colors, etc. see CSci 1101 resources page.
• XHTML 1.0 specification at W3C
• For the curious: Wikipedia overview of XHTML 2.0 draft specification
• A very simple example of CSS positioning, CSS file for the example
• CSS reference at W3 Schools

Security, SSL, cookies

• Cookies ans sessions in php
• User authentication using PHP
• Cookie fundamentals from The Unofficial Cookie FAQ by David Whalen

Javascript, DOM

• Basics of javascript - example
• (Mis)Use of JavaScript to change dynamic page properties - example.
• JavaScript tutorial at W3 Schools
• W3 Schools DOM tutorial with JavaScript DOM objects reference (names for addressing various elements in a page) and a list of Javascript DOM examples
• JavaScript objects corresponding to CSS properties
• Wikipedia article on DOM with references to the relevant specifications.
• Examples of JavaScript DOM most common functions
• ECMA Script (i.e. JavaScript) DOM functions at W3C
• Discussion of advantages and disadvantages of innerHTML vs DOM node manipulation.
• Another good discussion of DOM vs innerHTML. Some neat examples (check out the example of video game collection processing towards the end of the article).

Forms and validation

• An example of form validation (server and client side)
• Javascript regular expressions
• Form examples from W3 Schools. Clicking on "Submit" button shows you the submitted input.
  • Text field example
  • Checkboxes example
  • Radio button example
• 1101 php regular expressions example
• 1101 example: More regular expressions functions, error detection in php
• Csci 1101 form handling examples
• Csci 1101 Form validation and error handling on the same page

XML, XSLT

• XML tutorial at W3 Schools
• Formatting XML with CSS (a standalone example), the CSS file
• XPath and XSLT tutorials at W3 schools.
• XSLT examples

AJAX

• Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications - an article by Jesse James Garrett, one of the founders of the AJAX approach who was the first one to come up with the term.
• A list of AJAX tutorials at www.ajaxmatters.com/
• AJAX tutorial at developer.mozilla.org
• AJAX with php tutorial at www.webpasties.com
• In-class AJAX example
• In-class AJAX example that sends data in XML format
• A nice short article on different ways of processing XML using JavaScript. Covers the XMLDOM approach (plain JavaScript) and a combination of CSS and XSLT processing. Firefox only (though presumably XSLT processing and DOM work similarly in other browsers).
• The XMLHttpRequest Object description at W3 Schools, including related JavaScript methods.
• Using XSLT to format XML in AJAX

PHP

• An example that demonstrates basic PHP datatypes and features
• In-class example: object-oriented features in php
• CSci 1101: PHP database examples:
  • SELECT examples
  • examples of UPDATE and INSERT
• PHP header function is used for redirection.

SQL

• phpMyAdmin
• SQL tutorial at W3 Schools
• Relevant sections of MySQL manual:
  • Chapter 11. Data Types
  • Chapter 12. Functions and Operators
  • Chapter 13. SQL Statement Syntax
  • 12.5. Date and Time Functions

Ruby, Rails

• Official Ruby home page
• Ruby Cheatsheet - a list of ruby keywords and notations
• Ruby on Rails Wiki (list of tutorials and references)
• Ruby on Rails tutorial that I found very helpful
• A "short" reference for most commonly used Rails methods (HTML), Same reference in pdf
• Complete Rails Documentation