SloshDev

MySQL Regex Column Name Selection

2013-01-23T11:53:00.000-06:00

If you're like me, or if you're not you might be at some point in your life... You may have a reason to lazily select all columns where the column name matches a pattern of sorts.

In my particular case, the data was organized in a fashion where several columns had the same name, but were also numbered. Since there were about 50 columns with the same pattern, I didn't feel like writing out each column name.

SELECT CONCAT('SELECT ', 
    GROUP_CONCAT(COLUMN_NAME SEPARATOR ', '),
    ' FROM ', 'test_db.test_table')
    FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
    WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA = 'test_db' 
    AND TABLE_NAME = 'test_table'
    AND COLUMN_NAME RLIKE '^FieldDesc';

And this outputs the select statement for you

SELECT DISTINCT FieldDesc6, FieldDesc7, FieldDesc8, 
                FieldDesc9, FieldDesc10, FieldDesc11, 
                FieldDesc12, FieldDesc13, FieldDesc14, 
                FieldDesc15, FieldDesc16, FieldDesc17, 
                FieldDesc18, FieldDesc19, FieldDesc20, 
                FieldDesc21, FieldDesc22, FieldDesc23,
                FieldDesc24, FieldDesc25, FieldDesc26, 
                FieldDesc27, FieldDesc28, FieldDesc29, 
                FieldDesc30, FieldDesc31, FieldDesc32, 
                FieldDesc33, FieldDesc34, FieldDesc35, 
                FieldDesc36, FieldDesc37, FieldDesc38, 
                FieldDesc39, FieldDesc40, FieldDesc41, 
                FieldDesc42, FieldDesc43, FieldDesc44, 
                FieldDesc45, FieldDesc46, FieldDesc47, 
                FieldDesc48, FieldDesc49, FieldDesc50, 
                FieldDesc51, FieldDesc52, FieldDesc53, 
                FieldDesc54, FieldDesc55, FieldDesc56 
                  FROM test_db.test_table;

Recursive File Count with Powershell and Linux Shell

2013-01-04T19:21:00.000-06:00

Today, I needed a quick count of all of the files in Magento in order to set the "apc.num_files hint=xxx" in APC. Since all of the source files were on my Windows machine already, I started with Powershell.

Powershell (Windows)

  
(gci .\magento -recurse | Where-Object {-not ($_.PSsContainer)}).Count

After that, for accuracy sake, I checked on the server as well.

Linux Shell (Ran from inside the directory)

  
find . -type f | wc -l

Powershell String Formatting to Html

2012-08-21T22:32:00.000-05:00

Ever had a bunch of rows in a text file that you would like to format as an html table, but don't want to take as much time formatting all of the tr and td rows. You can do something like this:

Say you have a comma-delimited text file with some rows like:


foo1,foo2,foo3

And you want to output them as html or something, you can do something like this:


Get-Content .\thetext.txt | %{ $data = $_.split(","); Write-Output "<tr><td class=""first"">$($data[0])</td><td class=""second"">$($data[1])</td><td class=""third"">$($data[2])</td>" } > text-output.html

You should get something like this:


<tr><td class="first">foo1</td><td class="second">foo2</td><td class="third">foo3</td></tr>

It certainly speeds up some tedious formatting of some static or maybe dynamic data.

jQuery Regex Selector/Filter

2012-07-17T21:00:00.000-05:00

This came in handy today.

http://james.padolsey.com/javascript/regex-selector-for-jquery/

Changing SQL Schema in Mysql Dump Files using Powershell

2012-06-13T19:56:00.000-05:00

Quick way to change the schema name in all mysql dump files in a directory using Powershell. Or you could just use it to change a string in files of particular type in a directory

  
C:\Users\SloshDev> foreach($f in gci("*.sql")){ (Get-Content $f.fullname) | %{ $_ -replace "magento_1_9","magento_1_12" } | Set-Content $f.fullname }

Here's how I changed the default character set from latin1 to utf8. May not want to use if different columns use different character sets.


C:\Users\SloshDev> foreach($f in gci("*.sql")){ (Get-Content $f.fullname) | %{ $_ -replace "latin1","utf8" } | Set-Content $f.fullname }

Virtual Host Info from the Shell

2012-05-10T09:08:00.000-05:00

Quick way to get all of the ServerName's values from the Apache configuration? Especially useful if VirtualHosts have been split into multiple files:

cat *.conf | egrep "ServerName (.*)" | sed "s/ServerName\s\(.*\)/\1/"

Find String in Files with Given Extension Using PowerShell

2012-05-10T09:07:00.001-05:00

Steve Smith, Founder of NimblePros, Speaker, Author, and Software Craftsman. Microsoft MVP and Regional Director. Gives a great example on Recursively locating files with particular text strings and a given extension in PowerShell.
Find String in Files with Given Extension Using PowerShell

Imagick Powershell Resize Images In Folder

2011-11-17T18:30:00.000-06:00

Here's a quick one-liner to re-size photos if you have Imagick installed using PowerShell. It also renames the files with the dimensions specified:


PS C:\Users\SloshDev> gci("*.jpg") | %{convert  $_.FullName -resize 500x500 $_.Name -replace '\.jpg$','-500x500.jpg'}

Ultimately ended up with this to rename the file based on the actual dimensions of the file in the end:


PS C:\Users\SloshDev> gci("*.jpg") | %{convert $_.FullName -resize 500x500 -set filename:area '%wx%h' ($destination + ($_.Name.Trim("\.jpg") + "-%[filename:area].jpg"))}

This is great if you want to do this within the file itself, however if you need to specify dimensions, source and destination directories, and specific image file extensions you could use a script like this:



$source = 'C:\User\SloshDev\My Pictures\'
$destination = 'C:\User\SloshDev\My Pictures\500's\'
$ext = "jpg"
$size = "500x500"
#Resize Images

gci("$source*.$ext") | %{convert $_.FullName -resize $size -set filename:area '%wx%h' ($destination + ($_.Name.Trim("\.$ext") + "-%[filename:area]." + $ext))}

Append Extension to All Files in Directory

2011-11-10T20:15:00.000-06:00

IIS 6.0 did not save configuration files with ".xml" extension automatically. So I needed to add the .xml to the files. So this is what I did:



 PS C:\_old-IIS-site-configurations> Get-ChildItem *.com | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name + ".xml"; }

Nice, quick one-liner to quickly eliminate what would be a pain otherwise.

Miva Merchant Product Attribute Export - Update Pricing with Powershell

2011-11-08T21:00:00.001-06:00

If you've ever wanted a tab delimited list of product attributes and prices to update pricing, here's one way:

Export product attributes through 'Utilities > Export Data > Export Attributes to XML File'

When exporting choose 'Replace All Mode
You will have to add a root level <Products></Products> element around the xml generated by miva and the file:
PS C:\>$a = Get-Content .\provide.xml PS C:\>Set-Content .\provide.xml -value "",$a,""
Now bring in file as xml:
PS C:\>$xml = [xml] (Get-Content .\provide.xml)
Run this command to generate a tab delimited list of Product_Code, Code, & Price
PS C:\>$xml.Products.ProductAttributeOption_Add | foreach { $_.product_code + "`t" + $_.Price } > .\provide-list.txt

For more information on Powershell's xml capabilities and how easy it is to use XML with Powershell visit Powershell XML on Code Project.

Grooveshark Konami Code

2011-11-08T20:49:00.009-06:00

If you're a fan of Grooveshark...

Give the Konami Code a try.

Would you like to see what other sites have some Konami effects? Check out Konami Code Sites.

If you use YUI on your site, there's a built-in event for handling the Konami Code... see YUI Konami Event by Luke Smith

Magento Custom Form Field Validators using Prototype (MySQL Date Format)

2011-11-08T20:08:00.001-06:00

Here I needed to make sure that the user input was formatted correctly for a MySQL database. The javascript calendar code was set to automatically input the date into the text field in the correct format, but the user still had the option to type it in manually. This was the Prototype validator I used to verify that the user had entered it correctly as 'YYYY-MM-DD':



<script type="text/javascript">



   Validation.add('required-date-format','Please Enter date as YYYY-MM-DD. Click the calendar icon to select a date.', function(v) {



       return  !Validation.get('IsEmpty').test(v) && /^([0-9]{2,4})-([0-1][0-9])-([0-3][0-9])$/.test(v);

 });

        var warrantyregistrationForm = new VarienForm('warrantyregistrationForm', true);



</script>

PHP Function Dictionary_Explode

2011-11-08T20:05:00.001-06:00

If for any reason you've needed to explode data into a key/value pair array similar to .NET's dictionary, this function allows you to split a string based on two delimiters into a dictionary-like array. The $groupDelimiter separates the groups of key/value pairs, while the $pairDelimiter separates the key/value pairs into key and value within each entry:



//for exploding into 'key => value' pair based on two delimiters



public function dictionary_explode($subject, $groupDelimiter, $pairDelimiter){



   $dictionary = array();



   foreach(explode($groupDelimiter,$subject) as $pair){

   

      list($pairKey, $pairValue) = explode($pairDelimiter, $pair, 2);

    

      $dictionary[$pairKey] = $pairValue;



   }

}

DailyTech - Google's iPad Rival to be Powered by Verizon

2010-05-11T19:07:00.000-05:00

DailyTech - Google's iPad Rival to be Powered by Verizon

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HDR photography - 1st Attempts

2010-04-24T16:36:00.002-05:00

After looking at davehillphoto.com, I had to find out the type of photography that Dave primarily used in his 'Advertisng' section. According to a friend, High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging is the primary technique Dave Hill used to produce the effect those images have.

So... here are my first attempts at making some HDR images. I used GIMP and Qtpfsgui.

I kind of cheated on this first one... I just used a single image and set the exposure levels in GIMP. Then, saved those three, and loaded them into Qtpfsgui.

Before:

After:

Storm in Front Yard

On this second one... I attempted to use the three different shots / three different stops technique using a Canon Rebel. However, without a tripod, lining those three shots required some additional rework. Even then, I think the images are slightly out of alignment. I'm still happy with the result with it being a first go around.

Before:

After:

Maybe someday:
http://www.2expertsdesign.com/inspiration/85-examples-of-beautiful-hdr-photography

Some other resource I used:

Canon Rebel XT Tutorials from Canon:
http://www.usa.canon.com/content/rebelxt_tutorial/rebelxtlessons.htm

HDR tutorial: how to create HDR photos with free Qtpfsgui and GIMP:
http://garmahis.com/tutorials/hdr-tutorial-free-software/

Rocket racers rise again

2010-04-14T20:03:00.006-05:00

Rocket racers rise again

Posted: Tuesday, April 13, 2010 9:52 PM by Alan Boyle

[@From : http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2010/04/13/2266979.aspx on Wednesday, April 14, 2010 7:55:29 PM]

The Rocket Racing League's Mark III rocket-powered plane fires up during a test
flight in Oklahoma. Fins have been added to the fuselage for stability's sake.

After shifting its business plan, the Rocket Racing League is revving up again for a gee-whiz demonstration of its X-Racer planes next week in Oklahoma. The new-look racing planes will feature crowd-pleasers such as rocket fins and colored flames - as well as an innovative system that will display a virtual "raceway in the sky" on the pilot's helmet visor.

The demonstration flights are to take place on April 24 at the QuikTrip Air and Rocket Racing Show in Tulsa, Okla. The event marks the first outing for the "X-Racers" in front of a paying audience since a series of flights in 2008 at the EAA AirVenture show in Oshkosh, Wis...... read more on MSNBC.com

Robonaut ready for duty

2010-04-14T19:38:00.003-05:00

Robonaut ready for duty

Posted: Wednesday, April 14, 2010 5:20 PM by Alan Boyle


	Click for video: Engineers from NASA and GM discuss the Robonaut project.

When Discovery's six astronauts take the final space shuttle ride to orbit in September, there'll be one more rider sitting in the back of the bus: Robonaut 2, the semi-humanoid robot created by NASA and GM.

The 300-pound (137-kilogram) robot, known as R2 for short, is being outfitted for its first tour of duty on the International Space Station - a tour that marks one small step toward a world where robots and humans work side by side in space..... read more on MSNBC.com

Check out this great MSN Video: Air Force to launch 'mini' shuttle

2010-03-19T23:06:00.001-05:00

Air Force to launch 'mini' shuttle

March 19: Air Force is ready to test the X-37, a new "mini" shuttle, without a crew. WESH's Dan Billow reports.

Is It Time for the Web to Abandon Flash? - PCWorld Business Center

2010-02-04T00:31:00.000-06:00

By Tony Bradley

The public battle between Adobe and Apple over bringing Flash to the iPhone, and now iPad, platforms has heated up the debate over the life expectancy of Flash as newer technologies, specifically the emerging HTML5 standard, enter the scene.

Adobe Flash helped to fill a void for a cross-platform multimedia experience on the Web. With the glaring exception of the iPhone and upcoming iPad, Flash can be found on virtually every other operating system--desktop and mobile, and for every Web browser....

Read Entire Article on PCWorld Business Center

Make Your Web Site 'Groovy'

2010-02-02T08:54:00.000-06:00

Forbes - Dan Woods
Instead, PHPers argue that PHP is the best choice for simple tasks involved in most Web sites and is actually faster to program for these tasks. ...
Read Entire Article on Forbes

CBC News - Canada - N.S. company helps build plasma rocket

2010-01-30T17:19:00.001-06:00

N.S. company helps build plasma rocket
Last Updated: Thursday, January 7, 2010 | 2:06 PM ET
CBC News
Engineers at Ad Astra Rocket Co. assemble a prototype plasma rocket engine using Nautel's radio-frequency amplifiers. (Ad Astra Rocket Co.)A Nova Scotia company that builds transmitters for radio stations is helping develop a new plasma rocket engine that could cut a trip to Mars down to just 40 days...

Read Entire Article from CBC News

How Will Oracle Ownership of MySQL Affect IBM, Microsoft? - Database from eWeek

2010-01-30T17:05:00.004-06:00

By: Brian Prince
2010-01-27

With its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Oracle is bringing the MySQL database into the fold, which analysts agree will pose a challenge for Microsoft and IBM. IBM, however, says its strategy will be unaffected...

Read entire article from EWeek

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Web Development Renewed In ASP.NET MVC 2.0 -- InformationWeek

2010-01-30T13:10:00.000-06:00

ASP.NET MVC provides added flexibility and control.

By Dino Esposito
InformationWeek
January 30, 2010 12:01 AM (From the February 1, 2010 issue)

ASP.NET is a stable, mature, and productive Web development platform, but the 8-year-old framework is showing signs of age. One alternative is MonoRail, a variation of the classic Web Forms model based on views (the HTML output) and controllers (methods executed in response to requests). MonoRail's views are produced by an ad hoc engine that uses a source template and input data to produce the HTML.With MonoRail, you don't focus on pages as you do with Web Forms. Instead, you focus on the actions being taken from the page (methods on a controller class) and its user interface (markup and data placeholders in the view). This leads to separation of concerns (SoC), where the functions of each feature in the program overlap as little as possible, and higher testability...

See Entire Article from InformationWeek

CONTEST: Tweet to Win a Free Apple iPad!

2010-01-30T10:10:00.001-06:00

CONTEST: Tweet to Win a Free Apple iPad!

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Barnes & Nobles Nook - Wired.com

2009-12-03T08:04:00.005-06:00

If you just ordered a Kindle, stop reading now or you’re in for a giant dose of buyer’s remorse. Barnes and Noble unveiled a new e-book reader called ‘Nook’, and it is hot, both inside and out.

Nook looks a lot like Amazon’s white plastic e-book reader, only instead of the chiclet-keyboard there is a color multitouch screen, to be used as a keyboard or to browse books, cover-flow style. The machine runs Google’s Android OS and it will have wireless capability from AT&T.

The $260 Nook–same price as the Kindle 2–is expected to be on sale at the end of November.

read more on Wired.com

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