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COMP284 Practical 7
JavaScript (2)
Introduction
- This worksheet contains further exercises that are intended to familiarise you with JavaScript programming. While you work through the tasks below compare your results with those of your fellow students and ask for help and comments if required.
- This worksheet can be found at
https://cgi.csc.liv.ac.uk/~ullrich/COMP284/notes/practical07.pdf
and you might proceed more quickly if you cut-and-paste code from that PDF file. Note that a cut-and-paste operation may introduce extra spaces into your code. It is important that those are removed and that your code exactly matches that shown in this worksheet.
- The exercises and instructions in this worksheet assume that you use the Department’s Linux systems to experiment with JavaScript. If you want to use the Department’s Windows systems instead, then you can do so.
- To keep things simple, we will just use a text editor, a terminal, and a web browser. You can use whatever text editor and web browser you are most familiar or comfortable with.
- If you do not manage to get through all the exercises during this practical session, please complete them in your own time.
Exercises
- Hopefully, so far all your JavaScript code worked without problem. Once you write your own code, this is not likely to always be the case. If your code contains syntax errors, you have already seen that the console can give you an indication where those errors are. But logical errors are harder to find. Your code contains logical errors if the code does not produce any syntax or runtime errors but produces an incorrect result or incorrect behaviour. Here we look at two ways that you can use to pinpoint logical errors in the code.
a. Start a new file js07A.html in your public_html directory with the following content:
JavaScript 07A Then create a separate file js07A.js in your public_html directory with the following content: function random() { var mode = Math.floor((Math.random()4)+1) / Add debugging code here / switch (mode) { case 1: randvar = Math.round(Math.random()100); break case 2: randvar = String(Math.random()) break case 3: randvar = Math.random()/(Math.random()+1) break default: randvar = Boolean(Math.random()+0.5) break } }
b. Save the files and make sure that their access rights are set correctly using the command
chmod u+r,og-rwx $HOME/public_html/js07A.*
(Note: No space after the comma!) You will only have to do so once. File permissions should not change while you continue to edit the file. c. Open a web browser and access the URL https://student.csc.liv.ac.uk/∼/js07A.html
where should be replaced by your departmental user name, and inspect the output that our JavaScript script has produced. The output might be something like this: Random value: (number)0. Random value: (string)0. Random value: (boolean)true Random value: (boolean)true Random value: (string)0.
d. Suppose that you are not sure what branch of the switch-statement is executed each time the function random() is called and you would like to know what the values of the variables i and mode in each iteration of the for-loop are to figure that out. To get this information you can add the following debugging code at the point inside the definition of random() indicated in the code. console.log("i =",i," mode =",mode)
a. Open a text editor and enter the following JavaScript code:
Practical 7: JavaScript Objects b. Save the code to a file named js07B.html in $HOME/public_html/. Make sure that the access rights for the file are set correctly. c. Open js07B.html in a web browser. Right now the scripts do not do much and the output you should see is simply The sum of cells around [1,1] is undefined
You can also have a look at the console where you should see that a two-dimensional array has been created and filled with random natural numbers between 0 and 100. d. Complete the function showArray with code that displays the content of the two- dimensional array ar as a two-dimensional HTML table. Each HTML table cell should contain the co-ordinates of the cell and value in ar stored at those co-ordinates. Here is an example of what the HTML table should look like: [0][0] 34 [0][1] 9 [0][2] 40 [1][0] 39 [1][1] 18 [1][2] 74 [2][0] 38 [2][1] 77 [2][2] 1 e. Next, we want to define the function sumAround(). The function takes an array ar and natural numbers x and y as arguments and should return the sum of the values stored in ar at co-ordinates ‘surrounding’ (but not including) [y][x]. For [y][x] = [1][1], the cells ‘surrounding’ [1][1] are ar[0][0], ar[0][1], ar[0][2], ar[1][0], ar[1][2], ar[2][0], ar[2][1], ar[2][2]. The return value of sumAround(ar,1,1) for the array ar above should be 312. For [y][x] = (2, 2) the cells ‘surrounding’ [2][2] are just [1][1], [1][2], [2][1]. The return value of sumAround(ar,2,2) for the array ar above should be 169. f. Finally, we develop the function maxAround(). The function takes an array ar and natural numbers x and y as arguments and should return the maxium value stored in ar in cells ‘surrounding’ (but not including) [y][x]. For the array ar above and co-ordinates [y][x] = [0][1], maxAround(ar,1,0) returns 74. For the array ar above and co-ordinates [y][x] = [2][0], maxAround(ar,0,2) returns 77.
- In the lectures we have also considered various aspects of objects in JavaScript, in par- ticular, the way instance variables and ‘class’ variables are declared and how these can be made public or private. The following exercise is intended to reinforce those considerations.
a. Open a text editor and enter the following JavaScript code:
Practical 7: JavaScript Objects 
