Web Forms, or How I Learned to Stop

Worrying and Love Web Services

Erik GorkaReed College

erikg@reed.edu

You Can Do That With Web Services!

The Journey• FileMaker and Terascript

• Lots of databases

• Ruby on Rails

• Resource intensive

• Google Forms

• Problems with the user experience

What is a Web Form, Really?

• A way to engage users

• User experience is important

• A way to collect data

• Data collection means data reporting

• User generated content

• Leverage that content

Cascade Not Just for Web Pages

• Assets are database records

• A report is just an index of assets

• Cascade is an interface for looking at data

• Reports can be viewed inside Cascade

• Or can output alternate formats - CSV files

• Most of our users already use Cascade Server

Why PHP?

• PHP is common and lightweight

• Hannon Hill provides PHP web service examples:https://github.com/hannonhill/Webservices-PHP-Sample-Project

Considerations

• Fit PHP applications into college template

• Have a way to see the format of the structured data for development

• Not everyone who needs reports use Cascade Server

• Spam!

Gotchas

• Server downtime

• Performance

• Changing Data Definitions

• The Recycling Bin

Demos

• PHP Configuration Set with Structured Data

• Web Service Asset Reader

• Alumni Mentors

• Student Meetups

Q & A

Thank you!

• Hannon Hill Github PHP Web Service Examples:https://github.com/hannonhill/Webservices-PHP-Sample-Project

• Erik Gorkaerikg@reed.edu