Building HiPerCiC Interfaces

Building Hipercic Interfaces: An introduction
At present, the primary model for building Hipercic interfaces involves creating a web form, and for that reason, a more than passing knowledge of "webish" languages is required to create, and then modify, these forms on the cluster webspace.

Since all web forms must use HTML, this is the core language to be understood before attempting to do anything fancier. An excellent tutorial for learning the basics of this language can be found from W3Schools on these pages:
 * http://w3schools.com/html/
 * http://w3schools.com/xhtml/

In particular, the tutorial on forms may be useful:


 * http://w3schools.com/html/html_forms.asp

Dealing with the data that's been submitted through a form requires knowledge of basic PHP, particularly dealing with the $_POST array and variables. A cursory tutorial is available here:


 * http://w3schools.com/php/

Of particular interest and usefulness is the page about $_POST


 * http://w3schools.com/php/php_post.asp

The variables submitted by the form are the basis for creating a semi-graphical user interface on a subsequent page, so it is important to know how to deal with them appropriately.

Documentation of specific PHP functions can be found by doing a search on the PHP.net site.

In addition to basic server functions for dealing with forms and POSTed variables, hipercic interfaces may provide many logical places to add in AJAX functionality. In other words, there may be a number of areas within a page where it would be convenient to simply refresh the content of that single area, rather than having to refresh the page as a whole. This goal can be accomplished through AJAX, and there is a tutorial for that here:


 * http://w3schools.com/ajax/

To see practical applications of AJAX and other fancy javascripting, log into your FaceBook account–there's scripting everywhere, particularly on the requests page.

This page relates to the proposed project idea on Automatic Form Creation

Gustafsj 13:24, 19 November 2007 (CST)