First step I thought would be to get my data into the browser. I thought I would need to make a database and then an API to call to it. My website back of house allowed MySQL databases and had phpMyAdmin installed to manage. Ok so I know it isn't standard to develop and test online, but I didn't/don't want to learn how to set up a local server, at least just yet, on top of everything else that is new. So I looked at phpMyAdmin - I can upload XML, but not JSON, and only files less than 100mb. So the very first thing to do is export a clean small XML version of the data. Stuck already. Stayed stuck for days.
I tried to write XML with proXML, a library for Processing. But I couldn't figure out how to actually put any data content in the XML elements. I could make elements. I could give them attributes and add children. I could check if elements had data content (text) and get that text. Seems such a basic thing. And the documentation for the library was otherwise good. I tried lots of ways that I made up myself to add data, but could only write elements that were not correctly formed. I couldn't find any help on forums either.
Then I tried to write XML using Java StAX. This library required you to explicitly code opening and closing tags and start document etc. Writing to a stream and remembering to flush was ok. My output used Java FileWriter, which I thought should work. But it didn't! I kept getting error: access denied. Why? I couldn't figure it out - for ages. Turns out, after investigation prompted by Mitchell, that the Java file path name wasn't relative and so it was trying to write at my top level C: drive! Problem fixed. Exported clean XML.
However at Mitchell's suggestion I decided to instead change approach and, at least initially, try to directly load JSON into the browser and work with it. Hopefully the files wont be too big - usually in web you would would (with an API calling to a database) only load the bits you actually needed at any particular time. Mitchell kindly gave me some sketches to hack to get started.
So working with JQUERY I made my first JavaScript sketches, which selected html elements and changed their formatting or added content. Yay, achieved something! Next I tried to load some data - but was badly stuck again. I couldn't get $.ajax({ url: ''dataURL" }).responseText; to work, nor $.getJSON. I eventually was able to write some JSON elements in html file and work with these, but I still couldn't get JSON to work. In fact I was just about to give up after most of a day of trying different combinations of $.ajax, $.getJSON, JSON.parse(data) and even eval() which I understood to be a big no no because it didn't parse to check for valid JSON and so was a security threat. I had tested online and locally, neither worked.
I searched help forums to find why the functions were hanging or resulting in variables that were undefined. Then I realised that there were some syntax errors in the JSON data - they were just a bunch of objects floating, not separated by commas in an array. I fixed this, but is still wouldn't work! Searched some more but still couldn't find a solution.
Finally - brainwave - try a different browser. Works!!!
Don't know why I didn't think to try this earlier. Browsers are notoriously fussy.
So nothing would work for me in Chrome. Don't know why. In Internet Explorer $.getJSON works, but I still couldn't get $.ajax to work. Don't know why!
Anyway here is my very very sweet hello world.
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| A list of item titles with their object type in brackets |
Next, now that the data is in the browser, I will begin to play with it...
End frustration.
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