My Mini Project

#webdev #beginners #ruby #programming

It has been an insightful, fun, challenging road through DPI's Tech Prep course. I have finally made it and completed the last section, which is the mini project section. I wanted to write about my thoughts while completing the mini project.

My first idea

My first idea for my API web application was to create a page that used a U.S. state data API. It would be a fun site with useless facts about any state the user entered. Unfortunately the JSON file I wanted would cost me $20/month. To avoid any hassles with canceling my plan at the end of the month and giving a company I do not know about my credit card information I pivoted and went with a free lorem ipsum API.

My lorem ipsum idea

Now that I had access to a free working API, it was time to get to work. The lorem ipsum API I was using had a lot of options for the user. The user could decide between the length of the paragraphs, headers, unordered/ordered list, description list, and block quotes. While working through that I found out that there was a bacon ipsum API as well and a hipster ipsum API. I decided I would have all 3 options available for my user.

My first hiccup

I was progressing through my form section with little problems. I decided to use checkboxes instead of text boxes, it would be easier for the user and look better. Unfortunately when I switched the text boxes to checkboxes it broke my app. When the checkbox was clicked everything went well. The problem was when the user was selective with the options. A "key not found" error would appear. I tried everything, from adding a value attribute to the input tag to using if statements with a nil option when not selected. Nothing seemed to work and since I did not know how to properly write my problem down in google. I could not successfully troubleshoot through my problem. Luckily text boxes worked perfectly fine so I decided to move forward with them. Once the main page was completed with the regular lorem ipsum, the two other ipsum pages were very identical.

Overall

Overall I am happy with my web app and when I styled the app it solidified my feelings. I would have liked to work with an API that required a private key and had layers in the JSON file to really understand what it is like working with API's. As a result I have reviewed the API material and taken detailed notes so, that when I have to work with a more complicated API I will be prepared.

Here is a link to my mini project

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