Week 10

[hk - this project has been consistently interesting and has reflected weekly thinking and problem solving. I anticipate the final presentation will be quite good.]
The final presentation will include how the Amazon API works and how it is implemented in this site. It will also cover the functionality of the project. The last section of the presentation will show where this project is headed and what would be added if I was given more time to work on it.

Week 9

[hk - I would suggest three parts to the final presentation: 1) the overview ; 2) zeroing in on three specific, hands-on problems and solutions; and 3) what's next. Who is your audience?]
This project helps combine the release dates of books from several authors into one spot. This is done through the Amazon API.
One problem I had was parsing the result set returned from Amazon. This was an XML file. Luckily I found some code online that gave me a good base to start from. Another problem was combining multiple search results. I eventually figured out that the best way to do this would be through an array. I eventually implemented this and it has, so far, worked well. The last major problem I had was printing out XML data stored in a string. When the string was printed out, the XML tags wouldn't show up. This took a little while to figure out, but once I did, it was easy to understand what was going on.
The program is definitely still a work in progress. While the main functionality is there, it still needs other features. I am currently trying to implement a database to read authors from. Also I would like to add user accounts so each person could have their own set of authors. Only time constraints will limit how much of this gets done.
The audience for my next presentation will be a sophisticated client. The client will be able to understand some of the code with reasonable explanation, but is not necessarily a programmer themselves.

Week 8

[hk - might be willing to give final presentation on July 23.]
I was having troubles with combining search results in an array. The search string returned was actually xml and I figured out how to chop up that string and combine it with others to create one large result set. I then took this set and sorted it by release date. Next I am going to work on removing the books with no release date and getting the list price of the book to appear.

Week 7

[hk - the project at this point exists on an "A" level. The project subject matter is sound, and the presentations have been consistently detailed and interesting. So the only issue is to keep going. Has a final peer presentation on July 16 and then the final client presentation.]
Last week I thought I had the issue of combining the search results down, but it wasn't really done. What I was doing was creating two separate arrays (with the same name) in different objects. After going back and examining what was wrong I then tried to fix the code. I attempted to combine what appeared to be string results of two searches, but apparently there is some hidden text that does not appear when the string is printed out on the screen. This is a strange issue which I am still trying to figure out how to resolve.

Week 6

I finally got around to combining search results through an array and displayed these results on the screen. I did the searches manually through the code and still need to add database support. I also cleaned up the user interface to accommodate entries in the Amazon API that did not return images.

Week 5

[hk - good presentation yesterday.]
This week I began to tackle the problem of combining searches. To do this I will probably take author entries from a database and run them to get the Amazon API result. I will then append the result to an array and sort that array, instead of having the API sort the results. I am still trying to figure out what to do with the false release dates. Also, I have not dealt with the problem of the page numbers because it might not be a problem once I implement the new way of running searches and sort in the array.

Week 4

Double presentation this coming Tuesday. I got the author search to sort by release date. This sorts the books in order of original release. The sort has brought up a couple of problems. As you go through the search result pages, the books on each page don't change. Also, I have found many errors with the Amazon release category for books, including books that are to be released past the year 3000 [sic!].

Next I must fix these problems with the sort, then figure out how to combine multiple searches into one result set.