Bi-Weekly Summary of a Rough Two Weeks

It's been a very busy last couple of weeks, unfortunately busy with roadblocks. Progress has been slow but I feel like I've been learning a lot about the OHM codebase and that this will help further down the line.

Week 3: June 2 to June 9[edit | edit source]

1. Snagged TimeSlider code from themusictree.net website
2. Continuing work on getting the slider integrated into the website and I'm learning:
   1. Building consensus can be hard - there are a lot of differing opinions over what the TimeSlider should look like and how it should function.
   2. While I know Rails, finding one's way around a new code base can be tricky, to say the least. I'm using the Rails UI Wiki page and this Guide to Erubis to try to lead the way.
3. I've been very surprised at how much of the logic of the site is in JavaScript. The other Rails projects I've dug into have been mostly Rails with a little JavaScript for buttons and hover effects. This project is a JavaScript project wrapped in a Rails app. I'm still getting a handle of its complexity.
4. I'm still working on getting the slider working but I've got the text fields showing, at least.
   1. They needed a lot of tweaking to fix and flex to the space of the site. My branch is posted on Github.
   2. I have hit a major roadblock with the bottom half of the slider. The divs generated in the JavaScript portions are not rendering on the site. I've used console.logs throughout, testing to be sure that the script is running but I have not yet found the problem. I'm reaching out to my mentor for some assistance for what else to try to find the answer. I've exhausted my ideas. (None thus far have worked.)

Week 4: June 9 - June 15

1. After consultation with my mentor, we were both stumped so we reached out to the author of the slider for tips and toward the end of the week, we finally synced and got the slider working! The slider required a change from rendering a single object to iterating through a group of divs to create the sliders.
2. While I was waiting to work with the slider-creator, I started investigating methods for having a form in Rails have two separate actions, depending on the button clicked. It's apparently a little non-REST-full, but there are some REST-like options:
   1. using the params and embedding if statements into the controller or
   2. capturing the name of the button that is clicked.
3. I also cast about for other options that might be more understandable for me (this was a plan Z option, in case I never was able to connect with the original author.) I found a few nice options including nouislider.
4. Received a last-minute invite to the OHM/OSM Hangout at the @SotMEU Conference on June 13th.
   1. The audio was very difficult to understand, but Susanna Ånäs pointed me to SK53 and Maps Matter Blog I spent a lot of time reading through to get more familiar with the history of the project.