Assignment 2 was fixing errors or improving our Assignment 1 and also making a login and registration page to get to the invoice page. When the customer pressed the checkout button, they needed to be redirected to the login page to make sure that the customer was logged into the store’s database before receiving the invoice page and if they were not registered, they could go to the registration page to make an account. For more information on assignment 2, here is the link: https://dport96.github.io/ITM352/morea/150.Assignment2/experience-Assignment2_retrospective.html
From this assignment, I learned how to input code into the server.js page to save the data from the display page then go to the login page, and once they logged into the store’s website, the data from the display page would transfer to the invoice page. From Assignment 1 we did not have to use the POST method to save our data so changing the format from GET to POST was challenging because it was a lot of extra steps in addition to creating the login and registration page. From this assignment, I also used our class resources a lot more because I referred back to the class lectures to see how to input code into the server.js page and I researched a lot of other codes to make the website run smoothly.
Although I did not work with a partner, I believe that it benefitted me overall. I believe that working by myself allowed me to work around my own schedule and understand how to fix problems when I got stuck. I feel like working with a partner could have been fun because we can combine our creativeness and knowledge but, in the end, it would have been hard since we would work on it separately. When I needed help, I would ask a friend from class or I would look at our lectures. For this assignment, I did not ask Professor Port for help because I believe that all the problems, I had could be solved by breaking it down into pieces and that is what I did. The main problem that I had when working on assignment 2 was linking the invoice page to the login and registration page because it would not go through once, I thought I inputted all of the correct codes.
The differences in developing Assignment 2 compared to Assignment 1 was that we used the server.js page a lot more. In Assignment 1, we did not use it a lot because we were able to use the GET method and that allowed us to not have to input all the code into the page but with Assignment 2, we used the POST method. In the server.js page, it ran my registration and login page, and it had a data validation section. I believe that creating the pages were the same but linking them through the server.js page was the main difference.
Breaking everything down into percentages, I believe that I spent 20% of the time thinking how to do something, 30% of the time writing the code, and 50% of the time testing and debugging everything. I spent the most time testing and debugging because I had to fix things before, I could go onto the next section, so this took up most of my time while working on the project. I believe the things that went well with this project is writing the code and understanding why I was writing it. When we do labs, I write the code but sometimes do not understand why we are writing it but while working on assignment 2, I understood why certain codes had to be in place. The things that did not go well was trying to change multiple things at once because if something went wrong, I would not know the specific thing that was causing the error so I would have to use up more time going one by one on what the problem was. If I could go back in time and do things differently, I would have started on the assignment earlier because it would have allowed a lot less stress while trying to make things work in a certain amount of time.