Changes 11/25/13

Math Drill:

• Wrote a login.tpl page with user and password fields
• Researched hashing algorithms and how to safely store passwords
• Began creating a database to hold username and password and eventually other stuff

Changes 11/22/13

Math Drill:

• Fixed 500 Internal Server error: I typed student.trim() rather than student.strip(), and it didn't print out the stack trace for some reason, making it very hard to troubleshoot
• This was fixed in two ways:
• Code was added to make it able to run with both python3 run.py and google_appengine/dev_appserver.py projects/math_drill/:
• dev = False
  # If -l flag is used, run in python3 mode
  if (len(sys.argv) > 1 and (sys.argv[1] == '-l' or sys.argv[1] == '-local')):
      dev = True
      print('RUNNING IN LOCAL MODE (Non Google App Engine)')
  
  if dev:
      app = bottle
  else:
      app = Bottle()
  
  curdir = ''
  if dev:
      curdir = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)) + '/'
  
  ...
  # Other Code
  ...
  
  if dev:
      bottle.run()
  else:
      bottle.run(app=app, server="gae", debug=True)
  
  
• The second, MUCH easier way of fixing the problem is simply to add debug=True to the bottle.run() statement (making it bottle.run(app=app, server="gae", debug=True)). This causes the stack trace to print on the 500 Internal Server Error page itself (although the stack trace still doesn't print in the console)
• The add/remove students functionality of the /admin/students/ page finally seems to be working as intended

Changes 11/21/13 Part 2

Math Drill:

• Made a .vimrc file to set tab to four spaces, which makes python programming much easier
• Added comments to postStudents() method explaining what certain code does
• Saved the <textarea> input to a variable so that it can be parsed and added to students[]
• Learned that you can write mergedList = list1 + list2, which is good to know for future code 
• Keep running into weird problems where the server will give a 500 page but not output any python errors.  This is frustrating and it is very hard to tell what is going wrong.

Changes 11/21/13 Part 1

Math Drill:

• Fixed the list of deletions not checking against the right string
• Used '<br>'.join(debuglist) to easily print the list of students in html form, this is a pretty useful python function
• Checking the delete box now removes that student from the students[] list, but not the text file (yet)
• Got a lot of "internal server error" without a stack trace or anything, so that took a while to fix.  I still don't know what was causing that
• Added a textarea for entering additional students

Changes 11/20/13

Post-Note:

• Fixed that only the submitter field was being checked for being null or ''
• Uploaded new version to Google App Engine
• Also figured out that if you put the version number before an App Engine url, you can use different versions of the program. For example http://0-1.post-note.appspot.com/ vs http://0-9.post-note.appspot.com/

Math-Drill:

• Added page /admin/students, which dynamically generates a list of all the students names with checkboxes next to them, using embedded code in the template file
• % for student in students:
      {{student}}: <input type="checkbox" name="{{student}}_delete" value="Delete"><br>
  % end
• Added method to POST /admin/students/submit
• Submit button returns a page listing which students are being kept and deleted (although nothing actually changes yet)

Changes 11/19/13

Post Note:

• Fixed the "_blank" attribute on the form, which was causing a new tab to open
• Updated css to style the page
• Added bottle.redirect('/') so that the pages refreshes when submit is pressed
• Updated form to have two text boxes, one for the submitter name and one for the actual text
• Added checks to make sure the data has been submitted properly without blank fields

Changes 11/15/13

Post-note (Bottle app):

• Simple bottle app to look at how POST works for bottle and web forms in general
• Text box allows for text entry, and when submit is clicked, the text from the text box is put in a variable, which is then set to a <h2> element
• Code was largely copied from Math Drill and adapted
• Learned about the app.post() method and how it interfaces with the webpage
• Learned about the python global keyword and how it is used
• Interestingly, the global  message variable seems to clear itself after awhile; I assume this is due to Google's hosting servers wanting to save resources
• App was uploaded to Google App Engine (after learning the process with Math Drill it was really easy, too)
• App is live at www.post-note.appspot.com
• Styling and other stuff is eventually going to be added
• The code will probably be cleaned up, since this is serves as a good example for how POST works in bottle

Changes 11/14/13

Math-Drill:

• Updated to Version 1-1:
• Added new images that better show how the app will be used
• Apparently in app.yaml you need threadsafe: set to something
• Also I found this resource for building the app.yaml file
• Interestingly, after updating the app, you have to manually set the new version as default by going to the versions tab

App Engine:

• Copied original Math-Drill blog post to website so that it is easier to keep current
• Bottle to App Engine webpage

Changes 11/13/11

Web Design:

• Added Math Drill link to homepage banner
• Added styling for an <hr> element with class=solid_dark that allows for a border only on the top and bottom, but not sides of an element to be added (used in banner and navigation sections so far)
• Couldn't figure out why the <hr> element has a 1px gap under the <nav> element (any ideas?)

Changes 11/12/11

Web Design:

• Switched <link> tag loading stylesheet to style="@import(general.css);"
• <link> tag documentation for html5 is very confusing, says if you want to use it in body you should use the itemprop attribute instead of rel, but I couldn't figure out what to set itemprop to. w3 <link> docs
• Tried to figure out why jQuery code wasn't picking a random color on page load, but couldn't figure out the syntax

Changes 11/8/13

Web Design:

• Made padding on the header links table look better
• Changed what the header said
• Added links to blog and another page to header
• Added a custom <hr> element to create a border only on the bottom of the header
• For some reason the page won't validate, and I couldn't figure out why. The error was:
  Line 56, Column 61: Element link is missing required attribute property. <link href="css/header.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">

Changes 11/7/13

Django:

• Read some of the Django documentation

Web Design:

• Set body margin to 0 on page
• Started working on a header for the page
• learned about <link> element for linking to css stylesheets, apparently it's better to use than @import url()

Changes 11/6/13

The post below will not be updated, please refer to this page instead

Converting a Bottle program to be Google App Engine compatible:

1. Downloaded Google App Engine Python SDK and used google_appengine/dev_appserver.py math_drill/ rather than python3 run.py to build while testing
2. Added from bottle import * in the import statements (I think that fixed something)
3. Added app = Bottle() in order to:
   • Change all of the default @bottle.route() statements to @app.route() because that was causing errors
   • Changed bottle.run() statement to be bottle.run(app=app, server="gae")
4. Created a file app.yaml:
   

   application: math-drill
   version: 1
   runtime: python27 #Python3 not supported, so 2.7 was used
   api_version: 1
   threadsafe: no #One tutorial said to do this, but since threads are not used it probably doesn't matter
   
   handlers:
   - url: /static
     static_dir: static
   
   - url: /.*
     script: run.app #Using run.py causes strange debug output to show up on the webpage
   

5. With that all set up, it was uploaded to GAE using google_appengine/appcfg.py update math_drill/

---

Resources Used

• Peter Y. Gao :: Using Bottle with Python2.7 on Google App Engine
• Bottle Python framework + Google App Engine | Rutwick Gangurde's Blog
• Uploading Your Application - Google App Engine

Math Drill on Google App Engine

Changes 11/4/13

Bottle:

• Did a ton of troubleshooting and fixing and got GAE to accept the app
• Added code app = Bottle(), and changed bottle.run() to app.run, etc
• Almost uploaded it but didn't have time

Changes 10/1/13

Bottle:

• Fixed refresh button, making it use location.reload(true) instead of history.go(0)
• Uploaded math_drill to students.gctaa.net so it can be added to bottle zoo so proud

SO PROUD

• Installed google app engine and set up yaml file
• I think it isn't finding the template directory though because the page loads with no lines of html or anything