[Duhck]

Originally Posted by IonBaller07

How hard is it to set up a really basic server and database for a web page assuming I have proficient programming skills but no networking/web systems skills?

You will benefit from using something like WAMP to be able to test locally before deploying to a remote server. Affordable apache hosting can be found all over the web although I'm partial towards www.dreamhost.com

[OhIoCoNtRActKilLa]

A lot of the major providers have resources in place to walk you through he process of setting up your shared hosting, database, etc.

[IonBaller07]

Originally Posted by A4C

Depends if you want access from the outside world or just locally to test. Waht are you looking to do?

Im not too highstrung on this but what I was originally intending was to create website where its almost like a chatroom in the sense that they type something, hit submit, and it posts it to the main/only page, then someone else can type something and it is then posted right below it with maybe just a line between them. But the thing is I want no style to this page, no "chat environment", just the blank white page with each of the posts seperated by lines, and then a input box with submit at the bottom.

Originally Posted by Duhck

You will benefit from using something like WAMP to be able to test locally before deploying to a remote server. Affordable apache hosting can be found all over the web although I'm partial towards www.dreamhost.com

Originally Posted by OhIoCoNtRActKilLa

A lot of the major providers have resources in place to walk you through he process of setting up your shared hosting, database, etc.

Thanks, I think Im just gonna hold off until the end of next semester because its all over my head right now.

[Duhck]

Originally Posted by IonBaller07

Im not too highstrung on this but what I was originally intending was to create website where its almost like a chatroom in the sense that they type something, hit submit, and it posts it to the main/only page, then someone else can type something and it is then posted right below it with maybe just a line between them. But the thing is I want no style to this page, no "chat environment", just the blank white page with each of the posts seperated by lines, and then a input box with submit at the bottom.

Checkout node.js

An example of what you want to do can be found here: http://chat.nodejs.org/

In short node.js is a sever side technology that compiles JavaScript into native c. It's an asynchronous server unlike apache, so mostly all calls are nonblocking. It's my favorite technology as of late and I've written quite a few apps in it over the last month or two.

[Pyrosive]

I'm looking to write something that will visit a webpage and populate the fields on that page. Any suggestions on the best method?

[pb_kidd]

Originally Posted by Pyrosive

I'm looking to write something that will visit a webpage and populate the fields on that page. Any suggestions on the best method?

What's the end game? It's possible to write a utility to directly interact with the service that actually processes that form data instead of trying to fill out the form on a webpage and then submit that.

Can you provide some more detail on what you're thinking?

[Duhck]

Originally Posted by Pyrosive

I'm looking to write something that will visit a webpage and populate the fields on that page. Any suggestions on the best method?

The form is likely submitted using a RESTful API. You can emulate this with a dozen different methods, but you first need to know of its POST data or GET data...

Assuming its done properly it's POST data and you can just create your own form to submit to the same submit URL.

[Pyrosive]

The end game is to fill out a form on a page, and submit it. I've never done any work with a webpage remotely before, and I just wanted to try my hand at it.

Scenario:
Daily giveaway page where you enter information like name, email, zip, and then click submit.

I want to automate it. Every time I run the script I would like to go to the specified url and populate the form with the data I give it.


Duhck: How would I go about getting its POST data? Thats just the data that it sends to the server as part of a request right? I'm not sure whether it would require POST data or GET data, because I'm not sure what would be in the message data of the POST request

[Duhck]

Originally Posted by Pyrosive

The end game is to fill out a form on a page, and submit it. I've never done any work with a webpage remotely before, and I just wanted to try my hand at it.

Scenario:
Daily giveaway page where you enter information like name, email, zip, and then click submit.

I want to automate it. Every time I run the script I would like to go to the specified url and populate the form with the data I give it.


Duhck: How would I go about getting its POST data? Thats just the data that it sends to the server as part of a request right? I'm not sure whether it would require POST data or GET data, because I'm not sure what would be in the message data of the POST request

If you just want to fill out the form you can write a script for -- lets say chrome -- to find the text fields, populate them, and submit the form.

If you want to submit the form repeatedly it'd be more akin to what I described. It's probably POST data, but a tool like firebug or developer tools in chrome will show you the network requests a web page makes when the form is submitted.

It's easy to dissect this data and reproduce it using Xhr in javscript

[BlitzPA9]

I think he wants something like a mechanize library.

http://search.cpan.org/dist/WWW-Mechanize/
http://mechanize.rubyforge.org/
http://wwwsearch.sourceforge.net/mechanize/

The problem is mechanize scripts can be brittle. If you share a link to the form we can probably show you how to do it with straight http requests.

[deviantgeek]

Originally Posted by IonBaller07

How hard is it to set up a really basic server and database for a web page assuming I have proficient programming skills but no networking/web systems skills?

Having setup a server myself, and if you don't care about making your page ultra secure, its pretty easy. With Ubuntu server, you can just select the LAMP option when you install, and your good. Install Openssh (sudo apt-get install openssh <-i think, google it first) and then use filezilla to ftp your page into the /var/www directory, then chown it so its owned by www-data. All of these things have simple directions to use on google. If you are going to have lots of traffic, or are constrained on memory, looking into nginx instead of apache might be a good idea.

edit: if you get a vps that doesn't have lamp preinstalled, you can do this http://www.unixmen.com/install-lamp-...erick-meerkat/

[paintballking72]

ok guys, I have this final project due in my C++ class. It's a pretty simple program. Just have to check a word and check and see if it is a palindrome or not. I have to use classes for the gathering a word from the user, and for checking the validity of the word as a palindrome.

I missed the class on classes () and I don't understand them well. I could easily do the program using functions but I have to use classes. If someone can help me understand what I am missing/doing wrong it would be much appreciated.

Here is where I am at:

//Palindrome Validator
//Daniel Valle
//5/1/2012
//Butler C++

#include <iostream>
#include <string>

using namespace std;

class Palindrome
{
public:
	int getWord();
	int checkWord();
private:
	char word[100];
};

Palindrome::getWord()
{
	cout<<"\n Enter the word : ";
    cin.getline(word,100);
}

Palindrome::checkWord()
{
	bool palindrome = false;
	int wordLength = strlen(word);
	for (int i = 0; i < (wordLength/2); i++)
	{
        if (word[i] != word[wordLength-i-1])
		{
			cout << "The string is not a palindrome.\n";
			palindrome = false;
		}
		else
		{
			cout << "The string is palindrome.\n";
			palindrome = true;
			//cout << word[i];
		}
	}

	if(palindrome==false)
	{
		cout << "That is not a palindrome.\n";
	}
	else
	{
		cout << "That is a valid palindrome.\n";
	}
}

int main()
{
	Palindrome pal;

	pal.getWord();
	pal.checkWord();
}

[Blazestorm2]

Classes are just aggregates of data, and functions that work on that data. Underneath they compile down to the same code as normal procedural code. They're more of a semantic thing to help structure programs, they have rules that C++ compilers will force you to follow. Example, const member functions. If someone passes you a const object, you can't modify the internals of that object. But how does the compiler know which member functions won't modify the object? Ones that are marked const. But again this is a semantics thing the compiler checks, you can modify the internals of a class that has a const function with enough hacks. So an example with your class, checkWord should be marked const, because it doesn't modify your private data, it only reads it. Const correctness is important to ensuring it behaves as you would expect. There's nothing stopping you from making a typo in checkWord that modifies your original string.

Also I don't know if they taught you about other standard library stuff but std::string is so much more useful than regular char const*'s / char buffers.

The only thing I can think of is if you find out the word isn't a palindrome you should break out of that for-loop. If you don't break, then it might keep going and find out it is a palindrome. Your code would say ABCCDA is a palindrome, because it would get to BD and say false, but then get to CC and say true.

[paintballking72]

Thanks, for the catch on breaking the for loop.

I guess, I understand why classes, just not how to use them. I'll try adding the const, but I believe I tried that and it still wouldn't compile.

[Blazestorm2]

Oh you're having issues compiling? What's the error?

[paintballking72]

Yeah. I'm at work right now. Let me see if I can get it on this computer. I've had a few different errors depending on changes that I made and undid/redid, etc.

[paintballking72]

Here is my compile error. If someone can help me get this working, that would be great.

[Blazestorm2]

Oh, your functions don't have return values. That's required for 99% of functions (there are some special cases where you don't specify it).

Add "void" in front of both functions, if you're not returning anything. I should have seen that D=

[paintballking72]

Wow, that was so easy. I feel like a retard. I coulda swore that I tried that though. It was really late the night I was working on it though.

Thanks. Give me time to add more error checking and such.

One more thing that I have to add is that when checking the word, it should ignore everything other than numbers and letters (spaces and %,&, etc. should be ignored).

What is the easiest way to do this?


For instance, "race car" is a palindrome, but because of the space, it doesn't read it as a palindrome.

[Blazestorm2]

Does that mean

A&BBA is a palindrome? or only A&BB%A is a palindrome.

The issue is, do you need to move both indices, or just one? Because the first case is harder than the 2nd one. The other thing you could do is "pre-process" the string. Just go through and remove anything that's not a number or letter before you start checking.

[paintballking72]

The instructions say "only letters and numbers should be considered when checking the string". It really depends on how difficult that is. If I'm only able per-process, I will be happy with that.