References


(N.D.). 5.4.7. Causes of Access denied Errors. MySQL 5.0 Reference Manual, MySQL. http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/access-denied.html

(N.D.). B.1.4.1. How to Reset the Root Password. MYSQL 5.0 Reference Manual, MYSQL. http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/resetting-permissions.html

Maurer, T. (2008). Active Field for Registration page crmalibu, Sitepoint.

Maurer, T. (2008). Activation Solution. Petermartin29, Yahoo Messenger.

Maurer, T. (2008). Failure to Activiate. Bianca Todd & Peter Martin, Curtin UniversitybWebCT.

Meloni, J. C. (2007). PHP, MySQL and Apache, Sams Publishing.

Sean. (2007). "Registration Script." Retrieved 29th July 2008, from http://www.tutorialcode.com/php/registration-script/

Student, S. (2008). "Registration activation through email verification ation ation " Retrieved 29th July 2008, from http://codeigniter.com/forums/viewthread/75576

Taylor, A. G. (2003). SQL Wiley Publishing.

Ullman (2005). PHP and MySQL For Dynamic Web Sites, Peachpit Press.

Ullman, L. (2005). Programming with PHP. PHP and Mysql For Dynamic Web Sites, Peachpit: 35-79.

Ullman, L. (2005). Example - User Registration. PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Websites, Peachpit Press: pp. 527-575.

Valade, J. (2008). PHP & MySQL Web Development, Wiley Publishing.

Breakthrough!

Well, I didn't think I would make it, but thanks to Peter Martin's help I got there. I now have a fully functioning registration, login and logout function on my website. It took about 6 hours last night to work through it. In the end it was just a matter of one or two changes to the script. But it was a marathon effort.

Most of what occured is mentioned in my comments within the script, but really it was just a matter of working through each error message as they arose and dealing with them one by one. Most were very simple, such as leaving a comma in where it shouldn't be and knowing the correct field to include when using sessions and how those connected to other pages.

We really got bogged down in it after a while so, since I was pretty much using the same script as Ullman (Ullman, 2005, pp. 527-575), Peter suggested we download the script for the login and logout pages from his book and start again. Two things occurred at that moment:

1. I went into shock to discover that I could have downloaded the script from Ullman's website. I had spent a good part of a week typing up the script for each page thinking that was the only way I could get it into my notebook++. However, I was consoled when I realised that I learnt a heck of a lot of stuff by typing it up myself and figuring out what much of it meant.

2. I was reluctant to download it as I was fairly sure that I had typed it up pretty accurately (since I had gone through it so slowly when I did it) and that I had only made a few changes to the original script. However, I knew I was not infallable (I know, hard to believe isn't it!) so I agreed.

We spent the next several hours going through each line step by step and working out what the problems were when we tested it. It proved to be a really worthwhile exercise as this morning i was able to go through and comment on everything in more detail without much help from the text book.

Please note:

*The Reset Forgotten Password and the Change Password links and files do not function yet.

* Also, the link to the functioning website through geoffrey_multimedia is situated at the top righthand of this blog, titled The 'Raspberry Whirl' Website

A couple of things need to be addressed, but nothing that effects the register, login and logout functions. I will list them below to remind myself of what I need to look at over the next four weeks to get it functioning as I want.

1. Understand the output buffering and make sure it functions on the pages that it needs.
2. Sort out the issue with the 'Welcome, 'username' not showing up when a user logs in.
3. Understand more about sessions and cookies and make sure they are functioning properly on each page
4. Possibly address the issue of having to move the login form from the top menu bar to a separate page. I didn't have time to research how to make this dynamic while it sits in the header.html template.

There are also some major things that I will need to address, that I don't understand, to get my site working in the way I outlined in the design document.

They are:

1. How I am going to make the search recipe option dynamic, since it sits in the header.html template. Similare to point 4 above.
2. How I am going to write the script for the highly complicated 'Submit Recipe' form (I am really dreading this after my experience with the fairly simple login/logout forms).

Activation of Registration

I have decided to make this a separate post as there is so much to this issue.

When I innitially made the attempt to register for the firts time I got as far as the activation link within the email before the error trigger showed up and I was not able to activate the registration. The active field of the database showed that there had been a registration with a email, username, and password, but that it had not been activated. the active column showed the #2 under it. Subsequent tries had the same result - all having the #2 in the active column.

I spent a lot of time cleaning up the script and managed to fix up the Parse errors and script errors, but couldn't get the validation to work.

My thinking was that it had something to do with the database setup, but I wasn't sure. Everything validated within the register.php, and it wasn't until the validate.php page was called up that the error message appeared. This said to me that the problem lay in the database structure.

As I studied the script in the activate.php file I felt that I should have to change the Char from (1) to (32), as the '$y' generated a temporary 32 character string which validates the registration, and then it reverts to NULL when the registration is validated. But changing this didn't solve the validation problem. So I was not sure where to look from there.

I did a bit of research on the internet, but couldn't find anything specific enough to solve the problem (Sean, 2007)(student, 2008). So I decided to ask for help on the WebCT forum. I recieved a couple of repsonses and then an email from Peter Martin suggesting we walk through it together on Yahoo Messenger (Maurer, 2008). He spent over an hour with me going through both the register.php script and the activate.php script. I also posted a question on Sitepoint Forums and had a response, but Peter and I had solved it before I could get right into it (Maurer, 2008).

It all came down to two problems. The first one was discovered by Peter:

1. The setting the variable for activate as '$a' on line 40 of the register.php page. I had not properly set it, but had actually set it as NOW(). Which meant I was issuing a date and time to it and not a variable. So I changed it. However, it still didn't solve the problem with the validation, but, both Peter and I felt that we were not far from the solution and that this was part of it.

2. I then mentioned that we probably should change the active field to Char(32) to allow for the 32 character temporary string. I ended up giving it Char(40). This worked a treat and before I knew it Peter had registered and validated.

Since then I believe I also need to change the NULL column to NULL instead of NOT NULL, as once registration is activated the active column reverts from a 32 character string to NULL. The database works the same with it, but still not sure if this is the right thing to do. Will keep looking into it.

Right now I have another problem on my hands. Validation works, but when I try to login after validation I keep getting the error:

Please enter a valid password
Please enter a valid username

So back to the drawing board....

Tiny steps at a time

I feel like I am inching my way along a precarious wall 100 feet in the air. With every tiny step there is another boulder to hurdle.

So, I got through the password issue, and into the refining of the script. I started getting the error handling messages (which I set up in the config.php file) on the username validation. Obviously there was an issue with how I set it up - so I looked at the coding.

I had taken much of the coding for the registraion page from chapter 13 of Ullman's book and had to adapt it because I was not going to require a first name and second name. So in place of the first_name and second_name I included a user_name and used the same character class :alpha and the same characters as would be used for a first or last name (Ullman, 2005, p. 406). However, I later changed the character class to :alnum, because I wanted the user to be able to use numbers as well as letters. But I forgot to change the characters within the brackets to include a-z0-9 as well. So when I tried registering the username it kept sending me the error handling message. Once I added the extra range of characters it worked a treat and I was welcomed to the Raspberry Whirl website and instructed to go to click on the link which was sent to my email address to activate my account. It was all so exciting...

EXCEPT!!!

I also had a message below the welcome which indicated that the buffering session could not be terminated as there had not been an action to commence it. I straight away checked to see if I had included the start buffering code in the header.html template, which I had. So now I have to deal with this issue.

Update: Can't work out why this is coming up as not being commencing. Have looked at the coding - very simple - but not sure. As I feel that I have some other more important things to deal with for now I have decided to take out 'output buffering' and address it later.

However, I did go to my email and I found the link there in an email for me to click on. I did so, but failed to get back into the site. Something else to look at - I suspect it may be linked to the buffering issue, or the issue below, but not sure.

Then I wondered if the new user information had been recorded in my database, so I went in there to look. I was very excited to see that it had. But the username column had the email address connected to it and the email address column had the username connected to it. So I guess the order in which you submit a query is important. I will now go in and delete my registration and see if I can get the order right so that the information can record correctly.

Update: I just discovered that I had changed the order of the form handling on the register.php page, and the INSERT INTO $query, but didn't change the order of the VALUES (line #40 on register.php). That is why it was registering under the wrong columns. :-)

Now it gets exciting - Puting it all together

Yesterday I finally got enough php pages completed for me to get the database going with the website. It was a bit daunting as I have been following the posts on the forum and get really worried that if all these issues are arising with others, then they are sure to arise with me, and half the time I have no idea what they are talking about. So it was with apprehension that I made my first attempt to register through the registration page.

Predictably it didn't go well. However, I soon realised that I had not written the mysql_connect.php page up correctly. I had the DB_HOST correct 'localhost', and the DB_NAME correct too 'geoffrey_Raspberry. But I wasn't sure of the DB_USER or the DB_PASSWORD. I spent some time wondering what they would be, then went into MYSQL on geoffreymultimedia, where my database was. There it was staring me in the face - the correct information on the MySQL Account Maintenance page. Under each database heading is provided the exact PHP connection code. However, I couldn't remember the password I had set so many weeks ago (I thought I had recorded it somewher, but couln't find it).

So I spent about 2 hours yesterday and this morning trying to research how I could either locate the password, or create a new one for the database. I went to the MySQL website and did a fair bit of research on it in the Reference Manual:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/access-denied.html
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/resetting-permissions.html


But could only come up with how the change the password - but of course I had to have the old password to change to a new one. So no luck there.

I made a post on the forum to find out if anyone could help me. I got one reply - suggesting I create another database. But I didn't have the time for that. However, it did lead me to think that I might be able to copy my database and create another one with the same data and then I could create a new username and password.

So I went into my database and discovered I could do just that. So geoffrey_Raspberry became geoffrey_raspberry and the new username and password went into the mysql_connect.php and it all worked well. It actually connected to the database, but of course, there was a list of other errors I had to deal with.

Activation Field

In working through chapter 13 and setting up my login, join, and logout process, I discovered I will need to include an activate field in the user table of my database. This is necessary for those who join the website. They will have to activate their account before they can login for the first time.

Some Lights are Turning on

As I start to get into the various files involved in setting up this site I am slowly realising that my innitial Design and Analysis Document is sadly lacking. Since submitting assignment 1 I have decided to base my site around much of what is presented in Ullman's Chapter 13 - Example - User Registration (2005, pp. 527-575). It covers a lot of what I wanted to include in my site, so i thought that would be the safest way to go. But I am now discovering that there is so much more in the way of file creation than I thought when I was preparing my Design Document.

Of course there are some aspects of his instructions which I won't need to use, and there are some things that I do want to use that he doesn't cover in this chapter. So it is a bit of give and take. But I thought I would highlight some of the changes or additions I will have to make here.

Header Template (header.html) - This is fairly straightforward as I covered it in earlier exercises. However, there are a couple of things that I needed to consider. At first I wasn't sure if I needed to use cookies or sessions, but after making some queries on the forum and doing some reading I will include the the sessions_start because i will be having users login and their information will need to be tracked by the server, which won't happen if I don't have sessions set up.
Footer Template (footer.html) - The footer coding in Ullman includes an option to login, logout, change password, and reset password. This is something that i had not considered innitially and will require me to create several more pages -
1. login.php - which is a separate login page. As I have the login table set-up on every page I have decided to just create a link back to the Home Page here, where they can enter their login details, rather than creating a whole new page for it.
2. forgot_password.php - This is for those users who have forgotten their password. I will keep this in, but am yet to understand fully how this works. This is an important page to have as it will offer an important service for the target audience (mostly over 60, poor memories, inexperienced Internet users etc.).
3. logout.php - This will be a fairly simple page to create as it will have a static message (tailored with the users name) on it. I will still include this.
4. change_password.php - I will include this page, but it will only be accessable when a person is logged in already.
**All these pages will be accessed via links across the bottom of every page and will be displayed according to whether a person is logged in or not (Ullman, 2005, p.530).

Configuration Scripts (config.inc.php) - This file will handle and display the errors. Innitially, as I set up the website, I will set it so that the errors will display on the web browser. When the site is complete I will set it up to notify me through email.
Database Script (mysql_connect.php) - This file sets up the database access information, creates the connection and sets up any specific functions needed to handle errors. As I have not yet attempted a connection I am still not sure how this happens, but will soon find out.
Home Page (index.php) - This page has been pretty standard as I have been through some of the earlier exercises which cover it.

Finally, as my site is not just a Registration site - unlike the excercise in Ullman - i will have a link to the registration page which will be separate to the Home Page, and it will not be mandatory to login before using the site. Anyone can use the site to browse for recipes. But to submit a recipe you must register and be logged in.

Yes, I am still here :-)

The last week has been fairly quiet because, firstly I have had other assignments due this week, so have spent the bulk of my time on that, but secondly I have spent most of my NED24 energies on getting the various pages for my site written up. As this is fairly straight forward - using the manual to make sure I have covered everything - I've not had any real issues with it. So consequently, not much to report here.

Right now I am trying to get my index.php page working, which is proving bothersome, as I keep coming up with all these sintax errors. Normally this would be really frustrating, but since I understand that syntax errors just require a bit of patience and proof reading to be fixed, it doesn't bother me.

What is bothering me is that it is so quiet at the moment. It feels like the calm before the storm. Everything is going too well. This calm and quiet has to mean that there is going to be something major happening around the corner. I know that as soon as I start to put all this together into a working web site that the problems are going to start. With only a week to go for assignment 2, I am not sure I am ready or equiped to solve them.

Oh well, just keep going, one foot at a time and face one problem at a time.

One change I have made to the overall design of the site is to use PHP to dynamically display the appropriate login, logout, change password, forgot password links. I have followed the instructions given in Ullman to do this (Ullman, 2005, p.530).

Progressive Decisions

I have decided that I will add just a few recipes to the database to start with. Then I will try and get the database linked to the php files and get that working before I enter too much data. I think that if I try to get all the data in there at once I may be confusing myself and also making it more difficult to work out the connection process. I have yet to really work through the chapter on 'Using PHP and MySQL' and don't want to create something bigger than I can handle before I master the basics.

Next Phase

I almost forgot that this was here. I was so buried in my first assignment that I haven't had a chance to consider this blog. But as it is a requirement to show my progress in the next assignment I am going to have to make sure I touch base here a bit more often from now on.

Well, I have to say that getting the first assignment out was very stressfull. There were several time when I considered if I should actually drop this unit. It felt like I was constantly hitting a brick wall when trying to understand database structuring. My biggest hurdle was understanding where to put what in each table and then how to link them. It really stretched the logical side of my brain - not my strong side. But I have to say that once I got it (somewhat) I really did feel like a door had been opened. What capped it off was when another student posted their database structure on the forum and asked for feedback. I was able to look at it and get an idea of what it was all about and even make a suggestion on how to adjust it. I knew then that I would at least be able to come away from this unit having learnt something completely new.

This is how the structure turned out:




However, today I have been working on the actual creation of each table and have decided that I need to add a category table, with associated id, and link it to the recipe table. There will only be four categories - Main, Dessert, Cake and Biscuits - but I figure that it will be easier to link the category_id to each recipe rather than the actual name of the category.

This, I have discovered, also means that I will need to move the unique index I have placed on the category_id in the recipe table to the category column of the category_id table.