Kyle M. Perkins

Last night was fun for me, especially since I was on a roll with the .fadeIn()/.fadeOut() jQuery functions, along with a few animated sequences that I'm proud of. However, I was also working on making the .remove() function working as well with the "parent of the parent" issue. Luckily, I got that resolved.

However, I was up till about 4am last night working on the form builder, and I'm glad to see how far I am, but I regret staying up till 4. Keat had class this morning at 9:30, which meant that we had to get up at 8-ish. Knowing me, I usually kill the alarm and go back to bed till the last possible moment. And it doesn't help that Winter is unofficially here and it felt good to be under the nice warm covers and soft pillows. I wanted to call it a "sick day" if I could, but I knew that stuff had to be done and other requirements needed my attention, so cancel the "sick day" idea. How I desperately wanted to go back to sleep........

While Keat had class issues and presentation due at 7:30pm, I used the majority of the day fixing the data submission feature of the form, along with catching up on Eureka. I finished up Season 2, proceed to Season 3 3.5, and finished watching Ep. 7 earlier this evening, but let me back up a bit.

Since jQuery is still kinda new to me, I decided to study up on the form submission process, along with the AJAX background structure. I still prefer server-side coding to client-side, but getting to play around with a new, exciting language is just fun!

I found out about the .ajax() feature, and experimented with a lot of the .ajax() features, but the ones that interested me the most for this task were .submit(), .serialize(), and .serializeArray(), all of which come with their own pros and cons.

It turns out that I had to submit information via jQuery .ajax() method and send it in POST format, which was the idea until I saw that the original data stream for the tutorial was only in GET format (example: page.php?id=3&sel=Hi&p=4q), so I researched and found out that I could switch out the .submit() and .serialize() functions for .serializeArray(), which submitted the information in their original Array format instead of a serialized string (GET). Afterwards, I had to write a function that sorted through all of the fields (which were all arrays) and set up the database form structure based on the array placement, type, and name (along with maintaining the tableDnD library to allow the rows to be moved dynamically). Overall, it was quite a challenge, but I believe that Milestone 4 is 90% complete.

That brings me to about 7pm. Keat had to leave for class, and I thought about another sub-feature: What if the person designing the form needs to make a form go in-active, or they need to take it offline for a while to make some corrections? That's when I thought about adding a "Active" boolean variable to make forms active or not. And what better way to allow for this option (along with showing it off) than the iButton jQuery plugin! Most people see this on mobile versions of WordPress pages, but I found a custom library from Giva Labs which allows for custom iButtons side from the default On/Off.

Maybe a little show-y, but I like to test new features I learn.