Mark's Tech Stuff

HTTP/1.0 302 Found - PayPal IPN in PHP

2011-11-28T22:45:00.000-08:00

I was getting the error "HTTP/1.0 302 Found" when trying to configure some old PayPal IPN code that I had in PHP.

So I found on this forum that what I needed to do was open my paypal.inc.php file and change the following line:

$fp= @ fsockopen($this->paypalurl,80,$errno,$errstr,30);

to this one:
$fp = fsockopen('ssl://'.$this->paypalurl,"443",$err_num,$err_str,30);

Looks like the PayPal IPN is not taking non SSL connections anymore?

Removing Chinese or non ASCII Characters from the end of a string in MySQL

2011-11-25T06:02:00.000-08:00

Step 1. First make sure the string has Chinese or non ASCII characters in it:

select asciiname from table1
where asciiname regexp(concat('[',char(128),'-',char(255),']'));

Step 2. If the Chinese name is definitely at the end of your field, you just need to trim the last occurrence of a space in your field. Confirm it is doing the right thing first:

select asciiname, reverse(substring(reverse(asciiname), locate(' ', reverse( asciiname ) )+1))
from table1
where asciiname regexp(concat('[',char(128),'-',char(255),']'));

Step 3. Execute:

update table1
set asciiname = reverse(substring(reverse(asciiname), locate(' ', reverse( asciiname ) )+1))
where asciiname regexp(concat('[',char(128),'-',char(255),']'));

My sources for this were (I am very grateful to):
1. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/461871/find-rows-with-non-ascii-values-in-a-column

2. http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/string-functions.html

Update from one mysql table to another

2011-11-25T05:54:00.000-08:00

Something I did a lot of today. Updating from one table in mysql to another:

UPDATE table2 t2, table1 t1
SET t1.t2name = t2.name
WHERE
t1.id = t2.id

Yii. Rbac. No such file or directory (trying to connect via unix:///var/mysql/mysql.sock

2011-11-22T08:15:00.000-08:00

To resolve the error in the title of this post:

1. Set the following in "/etc/php.ini"

pdo_mysql.default_socket=/tmp/mysql.sock
mysql.default_socket = /tmp/mysql.sock
mysqli.default_socket = /tmp/mysql.sock

2. Comment out the following line in "/protected/config/main.php" of your app:

'ipFilters'=>array('localhost','::1'),

3. Restart Apache:

sudo apachectl restart

Upload with CyberDuck causing Internal Server Error

2011-11-20T01:44:00.000-08:00

I was getting the following error when trying to add a new file to my server with CyberDuck

"Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@blahblahblahblah.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request."

When I took a closer look at my logs, I saw the error:

Blah blah blah is writeable by group

So then I realised the way to resolve this is:

In CyberDuck:

1. Right click on your file. Find the menu item 'info.' Click on it.

2. Change your file's permissions to 644.

Done

PHP Warning: session_start() [function.session-start]: Cannot send session cache limiter

2011-11-11T09:04:00.001-08:00

session_start() must go on the very first line of your php file.

How to put Google Adsense inside a WordPress Blog Entry or a Page

2011-09-18T00:41:00.000-07:00

1. Download Adsense Deluxe from this page: http://www.acmetech.com/blog/adsense-deluxe/

2. Install the plugin by uploading it to your WordPress installation.

3. Follow these instructions on my previous post: http://www.markstechstuff.com/2011/09/adsense-deluxe-plugin-for-wordpress-you.html

AdSense-Deluxe Plugin for WordPress: You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page.

2011-09-18T00:37:00.000-07:00

I tried installing the AdSense-Deluxe Plugin for Wordpress and I was getting the error:

"You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page."

What I did to solve this was:

1. Open the file "adsense-deluxe.php"

2. Search for the line: "add_action('admin_head', 'add_adsense_deluxe_menu');"

3. Place the following line before it:

add_action('admin_menu', 'add_adsense_deluxe_menu');

4. Find any place where the variable $action_url is used. Replace it with:

adsense-deluxe_wp_plugin_v0.8/adsense-deluxe.php

Then it should work properly. Woo...

Custom domain for blogger.com blog with Moniker

2011-09-10T11:08:00.000-07:00

After years and years of thinking about it, I just registered a domain for this blog with Moniker.com.

It probably doesn't do anything for SEO at all... all it does it give me the options to perhaps host a classifieds or a Q&A site on subdomains of this blog (thinking thinking).

Blogger is pretty good... I managed to get it up and running within minutes. Moniker on the other hand, is the most non-obvious and clunky thing ever (mostly undocumented by Google too!).

1. At moniker, click on 'Domain Manager'

2. Click the checkbox next to your domain then click on 'Zone Records: IP, MX, etc.'

3. Click on your domain name.

4. Click on the checkboxes for the records that are already existing and then click 'Save' to delete them (kinda weird).

5. Add the CNAME ghs.google.com by selecting 'CNAME' from the 'record type' box, put 'www' in the 'address' box then click 'Add'

6. One-by-one, Add the A records by selecting 'A(Address)' from the 'record type' box, put '*' in the 'address' box then click 'Add' for the following four addresses:

216.239.32.21
216.239.34.21
216.239.36.21
216.239.38.21

That's the Moniker part over and done with.

7. Next, go to your existing blogger account and click on 'Settings' then 'Publishing'

8. From there you can go to 'Advanced Settings' and enter the domain name that you bought and check the 'Redirect blahblahblah.com to www.blahblahblah.com'

Then you're done!

The good thing about this is that any links to your old blahblahblah.blogspot.com will be redirected to your new domain. So all backlinks to your site should still work. Woo hoo!

Batch convert tif to jpg on Mac

2011-09-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

I found a pretty neat tool on the App Store called batchConverter.

The only problem I found is that when I converted directly from tiff to jpg the image was getting messed up. Another thing was that batchConverter didn't list tif as an input format... only tiff. (However the author responded to my email almost immediately to say he'd add the feature request into newer versions).

Anyway... here's what I did:

1. Used muCommander to batch rename my files from tif to tiff.

2. Did a batch conversion from tiff to png using batchConverter.

3. Did a batch conversion from png to jpg.

Saved me a lot of time!

Where do I find the Google Analytics table id?

2011-08-03T03:04:00.000-07:00

Your table id should be in the format of "ga:PROFILE_ID"

Which brings us to the next question. How do you find the profile ID?

The profile ID should be accessible by clicking on 'Edit' in the 'Actions' column of your website profiles overview (in the old interface).

Google Weirdness

2011-07-11T03:07:00.000-07:00

This reminds me of that scene from 'Dumb & Dumber'

Four reasons to use a CMS

2011-07-10T03:36:00.000-07:00

I get a lot of traffic on this blog from people searching for help with Joomla issues. So I thought this might be relevant to some of my readers.

Question: Should you really use a content management system for your web project?

Some advantages involve ease of setup, ease of administration, adding new posts etc. Which are often a key selling point, especially when developing a website for users who deem themselves to be non-technical and don't want to mess around editing HTML and the likes.

Anyway, I just read this in something I was reading and would like to share it here:

Four Reasons to Use a Content Management System

1. Do you need to update your website's content more than once a month?
2. Do you plan to have a regularly updated blog on the site? (Note: Regularly updated = someone will be responsible for it. Blog posts don't come out of nowhere.)
3. Will non-technical/non-web developers be writing posts, updating the site, etc?
4. Will you need the ability to update/manage/maintain the site from any location, without using special software like an FTP client etc?

If you answered 'Yes' to any of those questions, then you're likely to need one. If you didn't, then why not consider just making a static website?

MySQL Create Table Syntax Example

2011-07-08T22:01:00.001-07:00

Quick one:

CREATE TABLE mytable
(
myid INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
unique_name VARCHAR(255),
full_name VARCHAR(255),
phone_number VARCHAR(255),
loyalty_points INT,
PRIMARY KEY(myid,full_name)
);

Excel: Copy and paste the actual number rather than the formula

2011-07-05T23:49:00.000-07:00

1. CTRL + C (to copy the number)

2. Move to the cell you wish to copy it to.

3. ALT+E, then S

4. Select 'Values' and click 'OK'

Suppress "Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to parse RSS file."

2011-06-25T00:14:00.000-07:00

If for some reason you really want to suppress this error:

1. Find the file rss_fetch.inc. In my case it was inside the folder "/magpierss-0.72/"

2. Search for the text "Failed to parse RSS file"

3. Comment out the following line:

error($errormsg);

That should do the trick. A dirty fix, but a fix nontheless.

Hide Status Bar in iPhone

2011-04-15T23:11:00.000-07:00

In applicationDidFinishLaunching:

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:YES];

GADRequest Test Mode (isTesting)

2011-04-15T22:59:00.000-07:00

To set the GADRequest into test mode you are told to set 'isTesting.' This can be done by loading your GADBannerView like so:

GADRequest *r = [[GADRequest alloc] init];
r.testing = YES;
[bannerView_ loadRequest:r];

Apparently you don't need to care about this when you submit you app, since AdMob will never be in test mode when deployed on a real device.

Select rows in excel based on criteria without FIND and nasty #VALUE errors

2011-04-10T04:04:00.000-07:00

So I want to get rid of all fields in an Excel spreadsheet that contain the value "{". The way I would think to do something like this in any programming language would be to use an 'instr' type of function and delete records accordingly.

The problem with Excel is that you need to use a function like FIND. The problem with FIND is that it returns that nasty "#VALUE" if there is no such field.

I came across this solution on the _interwebs_ that is pretty nifty. The way it works is to get the length of a string where you have replaced (or substituted) the character "{" and compare that with a string that has not been replaced. If the string lengths are different, then boom... you can show/not show that field. I approve of this!

Here's an example:

=IF(LEN(SUBSTITUTE(D5,"{",""))=LEN(D5),D5,"")

Enjoy.

Sqlite database not accessible after change of bundle identifier

2011-04-10T03:26:00.000-07:00

Noticed the strangest behavior today.

After I changed the bundle identifier in my XCode project, the sqlite database no longer had the tables I'd created before. Changing the bundle identifier back made the tables accessible again. Even from the command line interface they had disappeared.

The way to resolve it was to re-enter the data :\

Not sure why this happened or how it could be easier to migrate the data over yet. I need to investigate this more.

iPhone force rotate to portrait

2011-04-09T04:33:00.000-07:00

[[UIDevice currentDevice] setOrientation:UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait];

//Probably works for iPad too

Unsafe JavaScript attempt to access frame with URL

2011-03-26T10:53:00.001-07:00

Getting a "Unsafe JavaScript attempt to access frame with URL" message in Chrome when trying something dodgy across domains or subdomains with iframes?

It is pretty much a browser security feature. So there's no way it is going to work.

Eventually I settled for doing everything from within an iframe.

Cannot access empty property PHP

2011-03-20T02:24:00.000-07:00

Don't use the '$' when accessing a member variable. i.e.:

Wrong:
$MYTHING->$dbhost = 'localhost';

Correct:
$MYTHING->dbhost = 'localhost';

PayPal IPN not working in sandbox

2011-03-14T21:32:00.000-07:00

So I was testing the IPN with the PayPal Sandbox and it was just refusing to trigger the IPN at all.

In the end, after some hardcore Googling, I realized that it was because the test account I created in the Sandbox was not 'Verified.'

So I tried verifying the email by looking at the sandbox emails under the link 'Test Email.' However, that didn't accept my password.

I had to take another step, which was to 'automatically' verify the US account by adding a bank account to the account.
To do this:

1. I logged on to the sandbox by using the test account

2. Clicked on 'profile->add bank account' (a set of fake bank account numbers should be autofilled).

3. Verified the account by entering two random digits into the verification screen. (I entered 0.01 and 0.01).

4. Then I was able to test my transaction and the IPN worked from the sandbox. Great stuff.

ReplaceAll in Javascript Example

2011-03-13T18:45:00.000-07:00

ReplaceAll in Javascript Example:

Instead of:

mynicestring = mynicestring.replace("find","replacement");

Use:

mynicestring = mynicestring.replace(/find/g,"replacement");