CSC3170 Course Project

Project Overall Description

This is our implementation for the course project of CSC3170, 2022 Fall, CUHK(SZ). For details of the project, you can refer to project-description.md. In this project, we will utilize what we learned in the lectures and tutorials in the course, and implement either one of the following major jobs:

• Application with Database System(s)
• Implementation of a Database System

Team Members

Our team consists of the following members, listed in the table below (the team leader is shown in the first row, and is marked with 🚩 behind his/her name):

Student ID	Student Name	GitHub Account (in Email)	GitHub Username
120090011	王广 🚩	ary.dinesen@icloud.com	arydinesen
120090410	颜钰劼	120090410@link.cuhk.edu.cn	ZYPRESSEN000
120090843	郭好	726827048@qq.com	Annaaaa997
120090644	乔雨柔	120090644@link.cuhk.edu.cn	120090644
120090327	宫燕亮	gongdashhuai@gmail.com	yanliangG
120090543	谭金镇	342335897@qq.com	yishan-13

Project Specification

After a thorough discussion, our team made a choice, and the specification information is listed below:

• Our option choice is: Option 1
• Our branch choice is: Branch 1
• The difficulty level is: Normal

Contribution

• Database Design: 王广, 颜钰劼
• Frontend: 郭好, 宫燕亮, 王广, 颜钰劼
• Backend: 王广, 宫燕亮
• Visualization: 王广, 乔羽柔, 郭好
• Test: 郭好, 宫燕亮
• Presentation
  • Script: 王广
  • Website Demo: 郭好
  • Slides: 颜钰劼
  • Speakers: 郭好, 宫燕亮, 乔雨柔, 颜钰劼
• Report
  • Directory Structure Explanation: 郭好, 王广
  • Difficulties Encountered & Solutions: 王广
  • How to Run: 王广
  • Historical Progress: 颜钰劼, 王广

Implemented Functions

• Chip models and operation types are fixed in this project (unchangeable by consumers or plant owners).
  • Possible chip models: i5, i7, i9.
  • Possible operation types: Each chip model has its own version of "design-import, etch, bond, drill, test" so a totally 15 operation types.
• What consumers can do:
  • Sign up and sign in.
  • Appoint plants for configurable packages.
• What plant owners can do:
  • Sign up and sign in.
  • Publish new machine models.
  • Accept appointments.
• What everybody can see:
  • Chip model information.
  • Plant information (See their machine models' feasibility, time, and expense on every possible operation; the available number of each machine model).
  • Processing records (Visualization––Gantt Chart) (Visualize the start and end time).
  • Processing information (Responsive tables) (See the time, expense, and machines related to the operations).

Presentation

• Watch our presentation on YouTube or Bilibili for a quick introduction!
• Click here for the slides.

Directory Structure Explanation

The PHP files were classified into two parts:

• Webpage part (root directory): PHP files here directly serve as the webpages the users can visit. Most of the code is the backend.
• Frontend part (frontend directory): Those here don't directly serve as webpages. Most of the code is the frontend. They indirectly serve as webpages by being required by the PHP files in the root directory.

Distinguishing the frontend and backend makes us easier to divide the work and collaborate more efficiently.

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Explanation of important directories:

• assets
  • JavaScript and CSS files stay here.
• frontend
  • shared
    • Since many webpages share the same UIs (e.g., homepage.php, shared by 9 webpages, as shown in the Function Demo), putting a shared UI in a single file and requireing it from those webpages makes us easier to modify the UI code and maintain the consistency across the webpages.
  • single
    • Every frontend file here is only reuiqred by a single PHP file.
• database
  • initializaiton.sql: The file was executed upon creating the database in index.php. It creates all tables and inserts the default chip models and their operation types.
  • history-of-database-design.md: The file shows how we get the current database design from scratch.
• PHP files in the root directory
  • Those beginning with c- are webpages for consumers, while p- are for plant owners (They are not put into one directory because they are not much and staying here makes us easier to see what webpages we have).

Difficulties Encountered & Solutions

• Database design
  • Overload of high normal forms: In a highly normalized database we tried, the data was not duplicated so table JOINs were required, which made our queries from PHP files more complicated, and thus read times were slower. Solution: No more normalization.
  • Overload of indexing: Improperly created indexes adversely affected SELECT queries. Solution: No indexing.
• Programming
  • Division of work: We divided the work into frontend and backend to make our collaboration more efficient.
  • Backend debug: For XAMPP, we checked the web server and PHP log files for the warning and error messages to debug.
  • Frontend improvement: We referred to famous websites for enlightenment.
  • Using the backend features to solve the frontend problem: Since many webpages shared the same frontend, making it just a copy let us modify the frontend code and mantain consistency. This was achieved by requireing the shared frontend files.

How to Run

1. Install an AMP package such as XAMPP (or manually install a web server, a MySQL/MariaDB server, and a PHP server).
2. Start a MySQL/MariaDB server and an Apache web server in the AMP.
3. Download and move this repository to the location of your web server (For XAMPP, it's xamppfiles/htdocs).
4. Visit http://localhost/project-team-1-main on your browser (The code has been designed to create the database automatically when you visit index.php for the first time, so you don't have to do so manually).
5. To test all functions of the program, follow the steps: Publish machines as a plant owner, appoint plants as a consumer, accept the appointments as a plant owner, and then check the database:
   • Easier way: Check these webpages: Plant Information, Processing Records, and Processing Information.
   • More fundamental way: Check your database (If you have phpMyAdmin installed, you may do so in a GUI way by visiting http://localhost/phpmyadmin).

Known Issues and Solutions

The code was successfully tested on macOS with PHP 8.1.13 but failed on two Windows machines and some other conditions. Here were the successful solutions:

• Failing to connect the DBMS:

  • Check if you have set a password for your DBMS. If so, change the PHP statement, $mysqli = mysqli_connect("localhost", 'root', '', "chip_website"); , in all files of its occurrence, into $mysqli = mysqli_connect("localhost", 'root', '<your password>', "chip_website");.
  • Change the PHP statement, $mysqli = mysqli_connect("localhost", 'root', '', "chip_website"); , in all files of its occurrence, into $mysqli = mysqli_connect("localhost:<port number>", 'root', '', "chip_website");. (Especially on Windows)

• Failing on the try and catch (mysqli_sql_exception) statement of PHP:

  • Remove the whole try block in index.php, manually create a database named chip_website, and populate it with database/initialization.sql. (Especially on Windows)

Database Design

See also:

• History of the database design
• initialization.sql

Function Demo

index.php

Consumers

c-appoint.php

Plant Owners

p-publish.php

p-accept.php

Both

c-plant-info.php or p-plant-info.php

c-pro-info.php or p-pro-info.php

c-pro-records.php or p-pro-records.php

Historical Progress

• Nov 23, 2022
  • Initial commit
  • Set up GitHub Classroom Feedback
• Nov 26, 2022
  • Add member information
• Dec 5, 2022
  • Start database design
• Dec 6, 2022
  • Database redesign
• Dec 7, 2022
  • Database redesign
  • Add index.php
• Dec 9, 2022
  • Database redesign
  • Strat: initialize database with database/initialization.sql
  • Start: signup and signin
  • Start: consumer appointment
• Dec 10, 2022
  • Start: plant accept
• Dec 11, 2022
  • Start: plant publish
  • Add assets/bootstrap/bootstrap.min.css, assets/bootstrap/bootstrap.min.js, assets/fonts/ionicons.eot, assets/fonts/ionicons.min.css, assets/fonts/ionicons.svg, assets/fonts/ionicons.ttf, assets/fonts/ionicons.woff, assets/js/theme.js
  • Add images/avatars/avatar.jpg, images/index/i5.jpg, images/index/i7.jpg, images/index/i9.jpg, images/nature/image1.jpg, images/nature/image2.jpg, images/nature/image3.jpg, images/nature/image4.jpg, images/nature/image5.jpg, images/nature/image6.jpg, images/nature/image7.jpg, images/nature/image8.jpg, images/nature/image9.jpg, images/tech/image4.jpg, images/tech/image6.png
• Dec 12, 2022
  • Add assets/css/app.min.css, assets/css/bootstrap-datepicker.min.css, assets/css/bootstrap-editable.css and so on
  • Start: chip model info
  • Start: processing records
  • Start: using a shared home and signup/signin webpage
• Dec 13-23, 2022
  • Backend: Add functions and fix bugs
  • Frontend: Improve the appearance
• Dec 24, 2022
  • Start: processing information
• Dec 25, 2022
  • Fix bugs
• Dec 26, 2022
  • Start to prepare for the presentation
  • Start to prepare for the report
  • Improvement of the frontend
• Dec 27, 2022
  • Fix bugs of the backend and frontend
  • Version 1.0 finished
  • Work on the presentation
  • Work on the report
• Dec 28, 2022
  • Fix bugs
  • Finish presentation
  • Finish report