Fundamentals of Web Applications (Winter 2016)

Course Outline

Here is the course outline.

Lectures and Exams

Date	Topic
Jan. 7	Lecture 1
Jan. 12	Lecture 2
Jan. 14	Lecture 3
Jan. 19	Lecture 4
Jan. 21	Lecture 5
Jan. 26	Lecture 6
Jan. 28	Lecture 7
Feb. 2	Lecture 8
Feb. 4	Lecture 9
Feb. 9	Midterm Review
Feb. 11	Midterm (in class) (Tentative)
Feb. 23	Lecture 11
Feb. 25	Lecture 12
Mar. 1	Lecture 13
Mar. 3	Lecture 14
Mar. 8	Lecture 15
Mar. 10	Lecture 16
Mar. 15	Lecture 17
Mar. 17	Lecture 18
Mar. 22	Lecture 19
Mar. 24	Lecture 20
Mar. 29	Lecture 21
Mar. 31	Lecture 22
Apr. 5	Lecture 23
April 7	Lecture 24
TBA	Final Exam

Tutorials

Each week you will get a progress grade from 0-4, given to you by a TA. If you are being diligent, you should be able to get 4's every week. The easiest way to get your grade is to come to tutorial and meet with your TA; alternately, you can meet a TA in their office hours or, at their discretion, discuss things with them online.

Date	Tutorials
Jan. 13, 14, 15, 18	Asynchronous Code in JavaScript
Jan. 20, 21, 22, 25	Tiny web server
Jan. 27, 28, 29, Feb. 1	Express, Form demo
Feb. 3, 4, 5, 8	TBA
Feb. 24, 25, 26, 29	TBA
Mar. 2, 3, 4, 7	TBA
Mar. 9, 10, 11, 14	TBA
Mar. 16, 17, 18, 21	TBA
Mar. 23, 24, 25, 28	TBA
Mar. 30, 31, Apr. 1, 4	TBA

Assignments

Due Date	Assignments
Jan. 20	Assignment 1
Jan. 27	Assignment 2
Feb. 3	Assignment 3
Feb. 9, 2:30 PM	Assignment 4
Mar. 2	Assignment 5
Mar. 9	Assignment 6
Mar. 16	Assignment 7
Mar. 23	Assignment 8
Mar. 30	Assignment 9
Apr. 6	Assignment 10

Course Software

In this course we will be developing web applications using node.js and mongoDB. You are welcome to use whatever operating system and development tools you like; however, we will supporting the use of a course virtual machine appliance running Lubuntu, a low-resource variant of Ubuntu Linux distribution.

In the labs

In the SCS labs you should be able to run the course VM by starting Virtualbox (listed in the Applications menu) and selecting the COMP 2406 virtual machine image. After the VM has fully booted up you can login to the student account using the password "tneduts!". This account has administrative privileges; in addition, there is the admin account in case your student account gets corrupted for any reason. The password for it is "nimda!".

We highly recommend running your VM in full-screen mode (select from the menu, not by maximizing the window). Do all of your work inside of the VM; it should be fast enough and you won't have any issues with sharing files or with firewalls/network connectivity.

You can save the work you do from the course VM (in the student account) to your SCS account and restore it to any other copy of the class VM (on your machines or in the labs) by running using the following commands:

 save2406 <SCS username>
 restore2406 <SCS username>
 compare2406 <SCS username>

If you use these commands, use them consistently. That means run restore2406 when you first log in, and run save2406 just before logging out. If you don't do this, you will erase the work that you had done previously when you save.

If you forgot to restore and you want to save, try running this:

  rsync -a -v --progress ~/ <SCS username>@access.scs.carleton.ca:COMP2406/

This is the same as the save2406 command minus the options (--delete and --force) that deletes files in the destination that don't exist in the source. As a check, you may want to add the -n option to do a dry run.

Running the VM on your own machines

If you want to run the VM appliance on your own system (running essentially any desktop operating system you want), just download the virtual appliance file and import. The SHA1 hash of this file is:

   a8a70ec2e1b49699f4de29c872ecec7cee21888f COMP 2406 & 3000, Fall 2015.ova

On Windows you can compute this hash for your downloaded file using the command <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/889768">FCIV -sha1 COMP 2406 & 3000, Fall 2015.ova</a>. If the hash is different from above, your download has been corrupted.

If the application is not VirtualBox, you'll need to:

Have the VM platform ignore any errors in the structure of the appliance found during the import process;
Uninstall the VirtualBox guest additions by typing starting a terminal application and running

  sudo /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-*/uninstall.sh

Install your platform's own Linux guest additions, if available.

Configuring Linux

If you already run Linux and you want to use the same packages we do in class, you should do the following:

Install the latest node.js version using a package manager. (You generally don't use the version that comes with your distribution, it is probably too old.)
Install mongoDB - it probably goes by mongodb in your package manager. The version doesn't matter too much.

Note that the binary of the node.js executable may be node, nodejs, or something similar.

That's it!

Configuring Windows

It is also possible to do everything in this class in Windows. Here are some tips on getting things running.

You can just install the windows node package to get basic node and npm functionality.
Run MongoDB on Windows.
If you want to run Emacs on Windows, look at the following tips.

Other Resources

JavaScript

The easiest way to get started with JavaScript and get basic understanding of web technologies is to go through the interactive lessons on Code Academy. I suggest you go through their JavaScript, Web Fundamentals, and jQuery tracks. They shouldn't take you very long to do given that you already know how to program.

Crockford also has a lot of online resources on JavaScript, including videos of talks he's given that cover much of the content in his book. Look at his JavaScript page and this page of his videos.

Another good book is Eloquent JavaScript: A Modern Introduction to Programming by Marijn Haverbeke. A version of this book is available online for free. The for-sale version is apparently updated and edited.

The standard reference for JavaScript is JavaScript: The Definitive Guide by David Flanagan. It is a big book, but it is comprehensive.

Node

Another introduction to node.js is The Node Beginner Book by Manuel Kiessling.

This page by Evan Hahn has a good overview of the express/connect/node software stack.

Lecture Notes Guidelines

As specified in the course outline you can get up to 6% extra credit on your final grade (2% per time) for writing up notes from lecture. Here are the guidelines for those notes.

Lee Croft (LeeCroft at cmail.carleton.ca) will be handling course notes. Please contact him if you would like to volunteer. Note that you should email him in advance and he will give you the next available slot. There are over 200 students in class and only 20 lectures so opportunities may go fast!

Lee or Anil will set you up with an account on this wiki. You'll enter your initial draft notes here and then work with Lee to make sure they are of sufficient quality. This may require a few rounds of revisions; however, if you follow the guidelines below it shouldn't be too bad.

You should plan on organizing your notes as follows:

Organize them in at least the following sections: Topics & Readings, Audio & Video, and Notes.
The Topics & Readings section lists the main topics covered in the course, e.g. "Scoping rules in JavaScript". Please use an unordered bulleted list (using *'s in wiki markup). In this section also list readings relevant to the lecture that were mentioned in class.
Leave the Audio and Video section blank. Anil will fill this out.
Put your notes in the Notes section.

Use (nested) lists if appropriate for the notes; however, please have some text that isn't bulleted. Please try to make the notes even if you did not attend lecture; however, you don't need to cover every small bit of information that was covered. In particular the notes do not need to include digressions into topics only tangentially related to the course. Complete sentences are welcome but not required.