iTechPosts - Wherever You Go, Technology Follows !

HTML5 Validation with CodeIgniter Form Helper

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 30 Oct 2013 09:16:00 +0000

Setting up validation in HTML5 is a nifty task. In this post I'll show you how to set HTML5 validation using Codeigniter Form Helper.

$this->load->helper('form');
echo form_open('');
$data = array(
   'name' => 'search',
   'id' => 'search',
   'maxlength' => 100,
   'placeholder' => 'Search',
   'pattern' => '.{3,}',
   'oninvalid' => "setCustomValidity('Minimum 3 characters.')",
   'oninput' => "setCustomValidity('')",
   'required' => 'required'
);
echo form_input($data);
echo form_close();

So, what this will generate is a input search field with custom HTML5 validation that will only accept minimum of three characters. The only thing to remember is that we only write 'required' in HTML5 input field but for Codeigniter to understand we need to set required => 'required' (line 11) in the data array.

The above code will produce the following html:

If you don't understand the HTML5 attributes used above: refer to the HTML5 Reference. Cheers!

Hackathon on Violence Against Women(VAW) - Team Young

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 17 Aug 2013 05:35:00 +0000

Well, me and my friends attended this Hackathon on VAW some months back. I thought to write about it back then but I didn't had time. So, now let's talk about it. Hackathon is basically a collaboration of computer programmers, designers to make some applications, web portals or any useful software within a defined time. In our case the time was about 8 hours (a day). This hackathon was based on gender violence and mostly focused on violence against women. The first thing to do was to register our team and to pitch an idea on what problem are we looking into and how will we try to make a solution for it.

We pitched a simple idea that we had thought of a day ago which was to map all the NGOs working for the Women Sector in different districts of Nepal. After pitching our idea, me and my group (Team Young) began to work swiftly. The first thing was to get the data to map. The data was put on Social Welfare Council, Nepal as a pdf file. After some work the PDF was converted to open data format CSV which could be easily imported to a database. After doing this I began to work on the mapping. My other team members were working on the design and SMS based service for the portal as many people in Nepal don't have access to the internet but do have a mobile phone. The SMS API was provided free that day by Sparrow SMS - leading company for VAS services in Nepal. After some hours of serious collaboration and teamwork we were able to finish our work in time. The mapping was completed and the SMS based service was working fine too. The front-end was done using Foundation. Whereas, the back-end was done with PHP and MySQL. For mapping, JavaScript library leaflet.js was used.

The work we had done in these 8 hours was satisfying for all of our team members. After this we had a short presentation to impress the judges with what we've done. The presentation went quite well. We were the first team to present among the 18 teams that were participating in the event. The winner was then announced. We had a hope that we could make it into the top 3 but sadly we didn't make it. It was disappointing but the experience we had was worth more than winning. To know more about the event and winners please visit http://vawhack.org

The event was organized by World Bank Nepal along with co-organizers Young Innovations Pvt. Ltd. and Computer Association Nepal. Large amount of people and CSO(Civil Society Organizations) were involved in the event along with many volunteers. The event was a major success and it was great fun to be a part of such a event.

The project can be found on GitHub as: VawNepal

VAW Nepal - Screenshot

Dynamic Dropdown with CodeIgniter and Ajax

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 24 Jul 2013 19:44:00 +0000

In this post I will show you a simple way to create a dynamic dropdown in CodeIgniter with some Ajax ofcourse. So, you have a dropdown menu and depending upon the choice made by the user in that one, another dropdown gets triggered with appropriate choice.

So, what will we do is:

Create a dropdown menu with a list of table names.
As the user selects any one of the table names - we will auto-populate the second dropdown with a year dropdown corresponding to the table from our database.

You probably didn't understand the above points? No worries, you'll know something at the very end of this post and what it is all about.

Let's look at the table 'road_growth' in the database:

After the database table(s) has been set up, let's make a model 'resource' for getting the 'year' column to setup the next dropdown:

function get_year($table) {
 $this->db->select('year')->from($table);
 $query = $this->db->get();
 return $query->result();
}

The view 'get_year' will contain the original dropwdown list which will trigger the ajax after the change event on the dropdown with the POST method. We will grab our next dropdown from the 'ajax_call' method in the controller 'resources'. If successful the callback function would be run. The dropdown is made from CodeIgniter form helper. To know more about the form helper please refer to the CodeIgniter manual. We have to load the form helper before we can use it.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.8.3.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
 $(document).ready(function(){
  $('#table').change(function(){
   var selTable = $(this).val(); // selected name from dropdown #table
   $.ajax({
    url: "ajax_call",  // or "resources/ajax_call" - url to fetch the next dropdown
    async: false,
    type: "POST",     // post
    data: "table="+selTable,  // variable send
    dataType: "html",    // return type
    success: function(data) {  // callback function
     $('#year').html(data);
    }
   })
  });
 });
</script>

Table: 
<?php
 $options = array(
  '' => 'Select',
  'road_accidents_trends' => 'Road Accidents Trends',
  'road_growth' => 'Road Growth',
  'vehicle_numbers' => 'Vehicle Numbers'
 ); 
 echo form_dropdown('table', $options, '', 'id="table"');
?>
 <div id="year" style="display: inline-block"></div>
 <div id="result"></div>
<?php echo form_close(); ?>

Finally, in the controller 'resources' we will have a function 'ajax_call' which will use function 'get_year' of model 'resource' to retrieve the data and make a dropdown of it using the CodeIgniter form helper. We run the 'ajax_call' function only if the post method is encountered. A function 'year' is also setup to simply load the view 'get_year'.

function year() {
 $this->load->helper('form');
 $this->load->view('get_year');
}

function ajax_call() {
 if ($_POST) {
  $table = $_POST['table'];
  $arrYear = $this->resource->get_year($table);
  foreach ($arrYear as $years) {
   $arrFinal[$years->year] = $years->year;
  }
  echo form_dropdown('year',$arrFinal);
 } 
}

That's it. Navigate to 'resources/year'. The result will look like this:

Cheers !

geoJSON for Nepal - Districts and Development Regions

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:00:00 +0000

I was planing to visualize some data over the map of Nepal. After some time spent on Google, I came across some good JavaScript libraries that could do this. They were Kartograph, Google Maps API. Then, I came across Leaflet, it is a simple open-source JavaScript library for interactive maps. It is a lightweight JavaScript library with plenty of interactive and visual features. It also is one of the many libraries supporting geoJSON.

GeoJSON is a format for encoding a variety of geographic structures. So, if you are looking for an accurate geoJSON for Nepal - I have posted it in my github repository which is compatible with leaflet.js: https://github.com/mesaugat/geoJSON-Nepal

The repo contains two geoJSON files:

nepal-development-region.geojson (For Development Regions)
nepal-district.geojson (For Districts)

Both of these are valid and accurate geoJSON you'll find for Nepal. These geoJSON contain different properties which can be removed by using QGIS if you don't want it. The QGIS tool can also generate geoJSON from KML. KML is the native format for Google Maps and Google Earth. There is also a library available to convert KML to geoJSON written by Mac Wright available on github: https://github.com/tmcw/togeojson

If you want to make your own geoJSON then this website: http://macwright.org/edit-geojson/ will help you do so, also made by Mac Wright.

Enjoy !

Comparison of Communication Status in South Asia and Nepal

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 17:53:00 +0000

Well, it's been quite a while that I've not written some stuff or shared something. Recently, I went to "Open Nepal Hackathon 2013" where developers and designers sit for some hours to create a useful product at the end of the day. The basic idea of the program was to use open-data to build something useful.

Open-data is the data that is free(open) to everyone so that they can use it, know about it and let others know about it. It is kind of a open-source concept. Open-data is available in open formats such as CSV, JSON or XML. If the required data is available through a website or a PDF or a DOC then it can be scraped to make it open format so that anyone can use it. Open-data is basically required by data journalists, developers to manipulate and make use of it to make different visualizations, services or even applications. Example of some open data could be census, GDP, etc.

So, talking about the hackathon me and my group went and gathered some data from the internet about the status of internet, mobile phones in South Asia and Nepal. As it was our first hackathon experience we didn't want to make things hard for us. So, we kept it simple. We were looking to make visualizations of the data we collected which would help us know the position(status) of country in South Asia. For data visualization we used a JavaScript library Highcharts. With a database and some simple php scripts up and running we finished our work in the available time.

The source code and required data-sets of our project can be found at:
https://github.com/crazyNeo/CommunicationSouthAsia.git

Do read the 'How To' section to know how to run the project.

Some the screenshots from our project:

Peace, Cheers !

Electronic Payment and Challenges !

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 13:23:00 +0000

Recently I did a case study on "E-payment Systems and It's Challenges". For those of you wanting to know about E-payment you can take a look at my report and feel free to redistribute it. Only a brief compilation of the system and challenges that needs to be faced.

Download this pdf.

Cheers !!!

Delete Your Skype Username From Skype Login

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 09:29:00 +0000

If you use Skype with different accounts then you must have noticed that Skype remembers all the usernames that you have logged in. The login screen has all the list of usernames. So, if you want to stop the names showing up in the login screen for some reason then follow these steps:

For Windows Users:

Quit Skype if running, open Run.
Type in %AppData%/Skype, hit Enter.
Then, delete the folder with your Skype username.

For Linux Users:

Quit Skype if running.
Go to the folder: /home/YOURLINUXUSERNAME/.Skype
Then, delete the folder with your Skype username.

Done !

Delete System Folder Trace Left in My Computer by Nokia PC Suite or Sony Ericsson PC Suite

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 12:24:00 +0000

If you are getting a strange system folder in the others category of My Computer. This is due to any 3rd Party Applications like Sony Ericsson PC Suite or Nokia PC Suite. This normally happens after you uninstall the product. Thus, to remove this system folder you need to do a registry edit.

Goto the following path in regedit and delete the unwanted folder with a random name:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MyComputer\NameSpace

If this doesn't solve your problem then re-install the PC Suite and then remove it by using Revo Unistaller Pro.

Cheers !!!

iPhone/iPod White Apps FieldTest, iOS Diagnostics, AdSheet on Jailbroken Device : Remove Solution

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 18:30:00 +0000

White Apps Problem

I got this strange problem on my jailbroken iPhone 3G (iOS 4.2.1) after updating my apps from the app store. Some white apps/icons appeared automatically. The apps were FieldTest, iOS Diagnostics and AdSheet. You cannot delete these apps by the default method. The problem is due to libhide a thing that lets you hide icons.

There are two ways to solve this problem:

By doing a Hard Reset. To do a hard reset press the Sleep/Wake and Home button for sometime until the Apple logo appears on the screen.
(Note: This method solves 80% of the iPhone Problems!)
Update libhide via. Cydia and then open SBSettings and click "More", "Mobile Substrate Addons" make sure libhide is toggled on. After this hard reset your iPhone for the changes to take place.

This will help you to get rid of those unknown white apps from your device. Enjoy!

iPhone/iPod Home Button Not Working : Software Solution

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 13:23:00 +0000

My iPhone 3G is giving me some trouble lately. The home button is not working due to some reasons, it only works when pressed hard. Thus, to solve this problem without trying to repair the home button you need to download Activator from your jailbroken device through Cydia. It is available for free download via Big Boss Repository.

After you've installed Activator you can apply certain gestures, motions to specify your required command. For Example: I am using Double-Tap on Status Bar for Switching Between Apps.

Here's the example, to Activate Switcher when you double tap on the status bar.

Peace !

Deauthorize All Computers Associated With Your Apple ID

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 16:21:00 +0000

If you are trying to authorize a new computer for your Apple ID (iTunes) and having trouble due to 5 authorized computers then you can follow these steps to deauthorize all those computers. This may be not new to you but I didn't know about this.

Open iTunes, sign in to the iTunes store.
After signing in, view your account through -> Store -> View My Account. ( You may need to enter your password again. )
In the Account Information window, click Deauthorize All.
Done!

Now, you're ready to authorize your new computer.
For more information: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1420

Setup Google Analytics in Dynamic Views Provided By Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 06:19:00 +0000

If you have changed your blogger from the simple view to dynamic view or have just setup a new dynamic view page and you are unaware of how to setup Google Analytics for it, then follow the following easy steps:

Log in to your Blogger account.
Go to Settings, and then Other.
At the end of that page you'll find Analytics Web Property ID.
Fill in the box with your Tracking ID (provided by Google Anlaytics) after you've setup your blog on Google Analytics.
Save settings.

You've just setup Google Analytics for your blog.

Blue Screen : Dell XPS L502X Solution

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 04:43:00 +0000

Blue Screen of Death

My laptop is Dell XPS L502x and I was having this Blue Screen (BSOD) problem some days back showing some MEMORY_MANAGEMENT problem. I did a memory check with Windows 7 but it showed everything was fine. Thus, after some research I found that the problem would occur if any of the Hardware or Software(Drivers or Anti-Virus or Bios) was not working properly. Thus, after knowing this I did a hardware check with Dell Support Center but it too didn't show any problem with the hardware.

Then through the Dell Drivers website I downloaded the latest update to the BIOS (i.e. L502XA10) and to my surprise I haven't seen the blue screen for quite a while.

The problem is also sometimes due to Intel Wireless Driver. So, please update your wireless driver from http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/detect.

After the blue screen crash windows makes a copy of the dump file in C:\Windows\Minidump. So, in order to read such dump files to extract information from it you need to download the Windows Debugger tool from:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg463009.aspx

This tool helps to know your problem and solve your problem.
Hope this helps.

SpringBoard Crash Fix While Multitasking iOS 4.2.1

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 May 2012 10:09:00 +0000

If you have jailbroken your iPhone 3G or iPod 2G device to iOS 4.2.1 and experiencing SpringBoard restart while switching between applications (multitasking) ?

In order to stop your SpringBoard from restarting you need to follow some simple steps. There are lots of ways to do this but this one is definitely the easy one that I've found till now.

Download iFile from Cydia.
Goto: System/Library/Coreservices/Springboard.app then edit N82AP.plist for iPhone 3G and N72AP.plist for iPod 2G.
Change the line < key > opengles-1 < / key > to: < key > opengles-2 < / key >. (i.e. only change the integer : 1 to 2)
Restart your device.

The problem should be gone now. Enjoy!

Run Any Game In Windowed Mode Using DXWND

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 04:17:00 +0000

Well, if you are trying to run any games like FIFA12 in windowed mode and have been trying to edit the .ini files and make it work with no success. Then, here is a method to do so. This method works for most games that I've tried so far. Results will vary depending on how your DirectX application was written.

The task is pretty simple. Just download DXWND - MS tool from here. Found this tool on the web, pretty useful.

Now to go ahead with the process:
1. Extract the zip and open dxwnd.exe (Some anti-virus software may take this as a threat so make a exception of the extracted folder.)
2. Select Add in the Edit tab.
3. Now, add the path of the executable file.
4. Then select the path of the required game that you've added and Execute it from the Edit Tab.

This should do the job. Enjoy, for more information you can go through the readme. Enjoy!

Remove Grub As Your Boot Loader (Switch To Windows Boot Loader)

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 18:25:00 +0000

Have you ever installed Linux operating systems such as Ubuntu alongside Windows (Not Inside Windows) then you may have found that the boot is different than the normal Windows boot after you have installed the Linux. This is because your main boot loader is set to GRUB instead of the Windows Boot Loader.

Now, if you want to get rid of Ubuntu for instance, then you need to remove the GRUB first. Thus, to remove the GRUB I have found a lot of solutions on the web and tried many of them but the most simple and less time consuming is the with an executable file called mbrfix.exe for Windows.

Here are the steps:

Download the mbrfix from here. (Zip file with instructions)
Extract all the mbrfix.zip to C:\.
Open the command prompt. (Run as administrator)
Type cd \ to goto the root directory.
Then type mbrfix /drive 0 fixmbr /yes and press Enter.
Now you can delete the Ubuntu partitions using any partition editors.
Restart your PC.

You're done. This process will overwrite the GRUB with Windows Boot Loader. When you reboot the PC you'll see Windows Boot Loader instead of GRUB Loader.

Enjoy!!!

Windows 7 - PC Resumes Automatically When Hibernated (Solution)

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:02:00 +0000

I use my PC many times a day. So, I usually hibernate it when there is no work to be done. Yesterday, I came across this strange problem. My PC got automatically resumed after I hibernated it. I tried to hibernate it again but once again the same thing happened. This left me stranded so I had to shutdown my computer.

Later, I searched the problem on the web and found a solution for it on a Windows Forum.

This happens usually due to incompatible hardware driver which is unlikely in most cases. So, always Update Your Drivers.
Check the setting of your Keyboard, Mouse or some other External Devices :

Click on Start-> Type in devmgmt.msc-> In the Device manager Window double click on “Mouse". In the Properties Window Click on “Power Management”, Uncheck the option : “Allow this device to wake the computer”. Click OK.
Prevent Programs from waking your computer :

Change the Power Plan Settings and on the Advanced settings tab, expand Sleep, expand Allow wake timers, choose Disable for both when your computer is running on battery and when it's plugged in, and then click OK.

The 3rd step worked in my case. I hope, it helps.

Portable Apps - Your Favorite Apps On The Go

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:47:00 +0000

If you want to take your favorite applications with you then PortableApps.com is the best software for you to do so. It is completely free and works on any portable storage device so to speak. It is a very lightweight (6MB installed), handy tool to use and has a support of almost all the usual open source software and some compatible freewares.Simply, make every PC feel like your own.

It is indeed a very flexible tool for business personnel's and students as well. You may think that it may not support a lot of applications but in fact it supports a list of applications under different categories (accessibility, development, education, games, internet, office, security and much more). Some of the available software's are Google Chrome, Notepad++, XAMPP, LibreOffice, etc.

Download it from it's official website:

http://portableapps.com/download (Windows and Wine under Linux, BSD, Mac OS X)

http://portableapps.com/apps (List of Portable Apps)

Enjoy!

PortableApps.com Menu Screenshot

LibreOffice - The Best Open Source Office Suite Available

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:00:00 +0000

LibreOffice is a office suite available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. It has quickly become a mainstream office suite for Linux users and is still growing, it is available in Ubuntu as a default. It has replaced Open Office at the top of the open source office suites available. It is very simple to use and also has a lot of functions with minimal system requirements. It is not as great Microsoft Office but is worth using as it comes for free and yet powerful too. It is compatible with most of all file formats. It can also be useful to edit PDF's which is a bonus. It also has a fully featured portable version packaged as a portable app so that you can take every documents you have on the go and play with them.

Approx. it is 200 MB in size. Download it at:

http://www.libreoffice.org/download/ (PC Version)

http://www.libreoffice.org/download/portable/ (Portable Version)

IrfanView - Lightweight, Compact and Innovative Graphic Viewer For Windows

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 03:32:00 +0000

Many of you may already have heard of IrfanView and also used it. It is a freeware/shareware Graphic Viewer for Windows. It is known for the ability to handle a large variety of graphic file formats with some image creation capabilities. It works under Windows and can also be run in Linux under Wine.

The program is compact and just occupies 2 MB(approx.), and with all plugins installed occupies about 10 MB(approx.). IrfanView can create icons, screensaver and do many more such operations such as image editing. Batch processing is one of the most important operations included in IrfanView. The program is also available in more than 20 languages.

The IrfanView team quotes it's program as:
"It is designed to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals."

Official Website: http://www.irfanview.com/

The HTML5 test - How well does your browser support HTML5?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 16:15:00 +0000

If you want to test the upcoming HTML5 capability of your browser then visit http://html5test.com/. It is a perfect website created by Niels Leenheer to test the capability of your browser. It doesn't test all the functionality of HTML5 but tries to check the basic and new features of the the HTML5 by giving points for the different attributes. Each attribute is given one or more points. The tests are only trying to detect if a feature is provided by the browser.

The test also checks audio and video capability of the browser and awards bonus points. If you have just got a new tablet, mobile phone with HTML5 support for the browser then you can easily know it's capability by going to this website. There's also a list of browsers and their scores provided in the website.

html5test.com Screenshot

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VirtualDub - Opensource Video Capture/Processing Utility for Windows

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 07:02:00 +0000

VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for Windows platform. It is a very useful, powerful and lightweight utility for processing linear video streams, including filtering and re-compression. This tool is very useful to compress large videos and also for quick capture and encoding. Different plugin filters further extend VirtualDub's capabilities.

Currently, there are two versions available for download:

VirtualDub v1.9.11 (stable)
VirtualDub v1.10.0 (exp.)

VirtualDub Official Website: http://www.virtualdub.org/index.html

VirtualDub Download Link:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtualdub/files/virtualdub-win/1.9.11.32842/VirtualDub-1.9.11.zip/download

Enjoy!

Screenshot:

VirtualDub v1.9.11 Preview

Touch Mouse - Make Your iPhone/iPod/iPad a Wireless Keyboard & Mouse

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 16:27:00 +0000

TouchMouse

Touch Phone is an app for iPhone/iPod/iPad which converts your iDevice to a wireless keyboard and mouse. This app is provided by Logitech Inc. completely free and is very easy to use. You just need to install the Logitech Touch Mouse Server onto your PC and then install the Touch Mouse app onto your iDevice. If you connect your computer to a TV then Touch Mouse is a perfect solution.

Note: Touch Mouse works over Wi-Fi.

Screenshot:

Website Down or Not?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 13:08:00 +0000

Today, I was checking Demonoid but it refused to open. So, I thought the website was down but I needed to confirm it. So, while go-ogling for it I found this pretty useful website which determined whether the website was responding or not.

Down Or Not is an online website (tool) that allows us to see whether the current website is online or not. It simply checks the status of the website. If you have your website and want to check whether everything is working fine or not then you can use downornot.com. The site is very basic which helps users to check sites quickly and efficiently. A listing of popular search terms are also included on the homepage which can help users check up on the sites they frequent to see if there is a problem.

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File Extensions Registry

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 19:06:00 +0000

FileInfo.com

Well, I was wanting to know about a strange file type or file extension (suffix at the end of the file name) residing on my computer. I couldn't figure out the extension of the file and was left disappointed. Thus, I came across this pretty useful website FileInfo.com which contains a searchable database of thousands of file extensions with detailed information about the associated file types which they call as the "File Extension Registry".

Nonetheless, the coolest thing about this website is we can easily register our own file extensions. Thus, developers can submit their file extensions along with its information.

Official Website: FileInfo.com - The Central File Extensions Registry:

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