Skip to main content

Mobilesite: Thomas H. Heist Insurance Agency

Let me share my experience of creating a mobile-site using using jQuery Mobile for one of my client heistinsurance.com.

They already have the website for desktops. It is based on WordPress. Now they want a mobile-site for the same. And they choose to use the same database for the form submission, so that there will be a single point of reference.

Though it was a bit tricky but somehow I had successfully completed the project. Here is the snapshot.

Link: http://heistinsurance.com/m/

Since I was using jquery-mobile for mobilesite development but the main website was based on WordPress  So it became very difficult to merge these technologies & platforms. The jquery-mobile is a JavaScript based client-side framework while WordPress is php based server-side framework.

So the major challenge I had faced was to merge these technologies.

One way is to write a script that can insert the submitted form-data directly into the database. But it is not that easy in WordPress because the forms were made dynamically, so if there is 5 fields in a form then after submission you will see the 5 entry in the database that will contain 1 field entry per row. Since it is sharing a common id as a key to extract it back. It seems too complicated to make that plugin which can bypass the flow. As I was not in a mood to change the server-side scripts, so I chose to hack around it.

Then, I thought if there is a form on jquery-mobile then it can submit the data to the database via the main website form. So I had extracted the link where the main website form is submitting data, and modified that relative link into absolute one and put it in my jquery-mobile form. Then tested it ... voila ... it worked! The only hitch was that after submission it re-directs the mobile-site to the website. Now I need to stop this redirection. Then, AJAX came to me as life-saver. Though finding a way to use it perfectly was too tricky. But after banging my head for few days or may be a week got me through it. I swear, this was the biggest challenge in this project. But as I got through the form submission, the validation was also happening for free. It is happening because the serve-side script was handling that. So now I have to just catch those messages and put them at there respective places. That's it!

Now this mobile-site is running successfully at http://heistinsurance.com/m/.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Unlock protected blocks in Siemens SIMATIC Step 7

Recently I'd been called by Hindalco's Fabrication Plant division to unlock the protected blocks in Siemens SIMATIC Step 7. They were in need to unlock those blocks since an year because of 1 million Rupees of loss per month. They want to re-program those blocks but it was locked by the man who'd done the setup. From the people working in that department, I came to know that they were trying to call that man (someone from Italy) right here but he's not coming. Actually, what he'd done was that he'd locked some of the blocks and deleted the source file. And Siemens didn't provide any feature to unlock. Department people also told me that even the people working in Siemens don't know how to do it. Being a software engineer I know that any thing can be reverse engineered. So I took up the challenge. How did I unlocked the blocks? The first thing I'd done was searched about this software at Google and read about what is this software all about. Aft
49 comments
Read more

App: Calculate your job experience or age in years

Usually, all of those who works have to put years of experience on their resume or curriculum vitae. But 90% people put it wrong when they convert their experience in years only. Although they know the exact number of months and years but the conversion, they do is wrong. This happens because there are 12 months while the digit after decimal would be 0-9, i.e., 10 digits. Which means that we have to represent the number of months in terms of year. So here I have provided a small gadget to calculate it. Just put the date when you had started working in the From Date field and put current date in the To Date field. You can also calculate your age as well with this tool by putting your date of birth in the From Date field and put current date in the To Date field. As an alternative, you can use the hassle-free and simple to use  Date Differentiator  micro webapp. Bookmark it so you may easily access it later.
Post a Comment
Read more

How to convert JIRA story into sub-task or defect?

Many times we entangled in the situation where we have made a  story  in JIRA but later on realised that it should have to be  defect  or in other case,  sub-task  of another  story . Story → Sub-task So the workaround for converting the story into defect is given below: Open your  story Click on  more  option Click on the  Convert to sub-task  option in the dropdown You would be asked to choose  Parent  story, so chose relevant story After submit, your  story  gets converted into  sub-task Story → Defect Now if you want the story to be converted into defect, then you should first convert it into sub-task. Thereafter, you can convert that sub-task into defect as given below: Open the  sub-task Click on  more  option Click on the  Convert to issue  option in the dropdown You would be asked to fill up relevant fields required for raising a  defect , fill them up as required After submit, your  sub-task  gets converted into  defect .
Post a Comment
Read more