Saving Spots – September 2016

by VK5AYL

The next stage was to create a spots entry screen for collecting a spot from the user and then saving it to the web server.  Allen was planning on making his web server receive data in JSON or XML format.  I designed the screen using a different method called a Stack View.  Basically, I could lump all the text boxes into the main Stack View and I only had to deal with the layout of the Stack View not the individual text boxes.  It worked a treat.

Then I started working on saving spots.  I created my web server to collect the spots data that magically appeared, turned it into individual bits of data and then inserted it into my database table.  This stuff is my native tongue.  I know querying and manipulating database tables like the back of my hand.  The more difficult part was getting the data into PHP and manipulating it ready for uploading it to my database table.  My understanding of PHP is limited but it has been sort of enjoyable, a bit like pull starting a lawn mower that’s flooded, I find that really enjoyable too!

This is the new Spots detail screen which was saving data to my test server.  Now I was ready to test it with Allen. 
Our first attempt didn’t quite work but Allen went away and did some work on a test PHP script and within a few days we tried again and this time, it worked.