We looked at the different ways to make data persist in PHP and how long it can last. We also considered a bit how cookies can pose a threat to privacy.
In light of the weather warning for tonight I e-mailed exercises to students and suggested that they could work from home if they wish. I will be available online on Google Hangouts to answer any questions. For those students that want to come to class I will be here anyway.
I spoke a bit about HTML 5 inputs and how the browser do some very basic form validation for us.
We did some exercises using regular expressions. They didn't go as well as I would have liked. So perhaps some students need look at those again.
I previewed next weeks videos by introducing checksums. We looked at the Luhn credit card validation algorithm. Students seemed less impressed by this magic that I was expecting.
We moved to the lab at 2000
I e-mailed students the specification for the coding component of the module.
We paid particular to the difference between passing variables by value and by reference.
Students did a paper exercise on passing by value and by reference.
We looked at recursive functions for multiplication and Fiboancci sequence. The Colin tried the code for the Towers of Hanoi off the top of his head. The code was OK but tracing the execution of it on the board was a head-wreck.
While we were waiting for everyone to arrive I gave out a HTML exercise.
For this module should should already know
some HTML
how to program
I spoke a little bit about the inverted classroom model. Note everybody watched the videos in advance. But that's not a big surprise
I asked students to install XAMPP on their machine if they had them handy. We looked at how to view html file and PHP files via localhost. The files must be in htdocs.
We looked at variables in PHP and string manipulation.
Students did an exercise on variable substitution in PHP. That's tricky.
We looked at the assessment for the module.
We didn't continue on the the labs at 2015. We all went home.
I asked students to watch the following videos before next week's facetime. We'll see how that works and whether it frees up time for coding.