I first met this problem, while was dealing with Doctrine’s enums. So let’s define a sample model that we will use in examples, and which will show the bottle neck:

<?php
class Chick extends Doctrine_Record
{
    public function setTableDefinition()
    {
        $this->hasColumn('name', 'string');
        $this->hasColumn('address', 'text');
        $this->hasColumn('boobs', 'enum', null, array(
            'values' => array('cranberries', 'peaches', 'oranges', 'balloons')
        );
    }
}

As you can see every Chick has boobs of some type. So somewhere we’ll write them as:

/** @var $chick Chick */
printf(_('%s has boobs similar to %s'), $chick->name, _($chick->boobs));

Let’s do it easy
The most simple way to achieve our goal (pot file creation with xgettext or poedit) is to use a block with desired messages that will never be executed:

if (0) { // will never be executed
    _('cranberries');
    _('peaches');
    _('oranges');
    _('balloons');
}

This is quite easy way. But it has very big disadvantage — you have to keep that block always up-to date — every time you change something related to the variable string, you have to pay attention on that block. So we are ready for second way now…

Let’s do it smarter
Another option we can deal with variable strings is to mark such strings with something. And then gather such strings into separate dummy file that will be used as one of sources of strings but will never be used in real world. Let’s modify enum definition in the way it will have some marker, like this:

// ... skipped ...
        $this->hasColumn('boobs', 'enum', null, array(
            'values' => array(
                'cranberries', //_
                'peaches', //_
                'oranges', //_
                'balloons' //_
            )
        );
// ... skipped ...

Now all we need is a some dummy parser that will be able to deal with such strings, for example, let’s write it in Ruby (so it can be included as one of Rakefile tasks):

require 'find'

files_pattern = /\.(?:php|phtml|inc)$/

single_quoted = /'(?>(?:\\.|[^'])+)'/
double_quoted = /"(?>(?:\\.|[^"])+)"/
quoted_string = /#{single_quoted}|#{double_quoted}/
match_pattern = /(#{quoted_string}).+\/\/_/

result = "<?php\n"
Find.find('.') do |f|
  next unless File.file? f and f.match('')
  File.open(f).each_with_index do |s, i|
    m = s.match(match_pattern)
    result << "_(#{m[1]}); // #{f}:#{i}\n" unless m.nil?
  end
end

puts result

The output of it’s execution will produce something like this:

<?php
_('cranberries'); // ./models/Chick.php:9
_('peaches'); // ./models/Chick.php:10
_('oranges'); // ./models/Chick.php:11
_('balloons'); // ./models/Chick.php:12

Now we can use both of described ways, and they are good enough for variable strings. But for Doctrine_Record’s enums there is much more beautiful way to achieve this :)) So let’s find it…

Let’s do it our way
Doctrine ORM allows you to define a mutator for each property your model has. So according to our Chick model we can define a special getter getBoobs() and setter setBoobs which will auto translate our boobs’ types :)) Basically this can become an idea of how to achieve this with some of your objects. Here’s dummy version of such getter/setter:

// ... skipped ...
    public function getBoobs()
    {
        switch ($this->_get('boobs')) {
            case 'cranberries': return _('little cranberries');
            case 'peaches': return _('smooth peaches');
            case 'oranges': return _('tasty oranges');
            case 'balloons': return _('mighty balloons');
            default: throw new Doctrine_Exception("I don't have a clue how this chick boobs looks like.");
        }
    }

    public function setBoobs($boobs)
    {
        switch (_($boobs)) {
            case 'little cranberries': return $this->_set('boobs', 'cranberries');
            case 'smooth peaches': return $this->_set('boobs', 'peaches');
            case 'tasty oranges': return $this->_set('boobs', 'oranges');
            case 'mighty balloons': return $this->_set('boobs', 'balloons');
            default: throw new Doctrine_Exception("I don't have any idea about specified boobs type.");
        }
    }
// ... skipped ...

Looks awful! Too many similar code. So let’s define a map of values like this:

// ... skipped ...
    private static $_boobs = null;

    private function _getBoobs()
    {
        if (null === self::$_boobs) {
            self::$_boobs = array(
                'cranberries'   => _('little cranberries'),
                'peaches'       => _('smooth peaches'),
                'oranges'       => _('tasty oranges'),
                'balloons'      => _('mighty balloons')
            );
        }

        return self::$_boobs;
    }
// ... skipped ...

Now we have values kept in one place, so let’s extend model with mutators keeping in mind this map, so here’s final version of model:

<?php
class Chick extends Doctrine_Record
{
    private static $_boobs = null;

    public function setTableDefinition()
    {
        $this->hasColumn('name', 'string');
        $this->hasColumn('address', 'text');
        $this->hasColumn('boobs', 'enum', null, array(
            'values' => array_keys(self::_getBoobs())
        );
    }

    private static function _getBoobs()
    {
        if (null === self::$_boobs) {
            self::$_boobs = array(
                'cranberries'   => _('little cranberries'),
                'peaches'       => _('smooth peaches'),
                'oranges'       => _('tasty oranges'),
                'balloons'      => _('mighty baloons')
            );
        }

        return self::$_boobs;
    }

    public function getBoobs()
    {
        $boobs = self::_getBoobs();
        return $boobs[$this->_get('boobs')];
    }

    public function setBoobs($value)
    {
        if (false !== ($boobs = array_search($value, self::_getBoobs()))) {
            $value = $boobs;
        }

        return $this->_set('boobs', $value);
    }
}

So now, previous printf call can become:

/** @var $chick Chick */
printf(_('%s has boobs as good as %s'), $chick->name, $chick->boobs);

And you might noticed that setBoobs() allows both translated and untranslated strings as input. So both of following lines will work as expected:

/** @var $chicks Array of Chick
$chicks[0]->boobs = 'oranges';
$chicks[1]->boobs = $chicks[0]->boobs;

Now that’s all! :))

After I have asked FlashCode about this bug, he told me that I’m free to make a patch. So after this, even the fact that I’m not very familiar with Python could not stop me to produce such. So I will appreciate any critics and comments on my patch :)) I have sent my patch to FlashCode, so probably he will include it into his repo.

For those who want it right now, you can grab either a patch to original plug-in or already patched version right here.

UPDATE Sebastien (AKA FlashCode) merged this patch into repo, so it’s now publically available at unofficial WeeChat scripts repo :))

UPDATE Woo-hoo! jabber.py is in official WeeChat repo! ;))

In order to avoid this (and make qTip v.1.0.0-rc3 compatible with jQuery v.1.4.2) I have extended such conditions with something like null === $(this).data('qtip') just to keep close to the original, but become v.1.4.2 compatible :))

I have already sent patch to Craig Thompson (author of qTip), so proably when he’ll have some time he will apply it and upload new version of qTip on it’s official homepage. But before it will (or will not) happen, you can grab your very own copy of patch (or simply patched version) from here.

UPDATE: Seems like next release of jQuery will bring “broken” parts fixed again. The problem with v.1.4.2 was because of $.data() function returned null upon undefined value instead of undefined as previous releases. And right now in the trunk it’s code was fixed, so it returns undefined again :)) So instead of using this patch you can simply update your jQuery to the bleeding edge ;))

Of course you can spend some time and connect your own logging system. But do you really think someone will thank you for this? Nope. If it’s not an application you are going to support long time and nobody ‘s going to pay for such improvement, there’s no such need. So what you can do? For CLI application, you can simply use STDOUT or STDERR to output some info there:

fwrite(STDERR, '$var is: ' . $var);

In fact it will help even with web application, at least if you know where error log is placed in the system and if it’s enabled. But there’s more robust and easier way — syslog():

syslog(LOG_DEBUG, '$var is: ' . $var);

This will write a message into your system log (which is the most easy to find place) with DEBUG priority. And here’s little bit more complex but very useful snippet with output buffer control and syslog() functions:

ob_start();
var_dump($var);
syslog(LOG_DEBUG, ob_get_clean());

But don’t forget that syslog() has limited length of message. :)) And in fact it’s really not the best place for such output so you should use it only for one-two times check — don’t forget to wipe out it from application once you’ll got what you wanted :))

And finally here’s one helping thing. When you need to figure out call trace of application’s request, you can use powerfull PHP debugger — XDebug. It has special mode in which it will trace every function/method call. To use it you might want to enable it from within CLI:

$ php -d xdebug.auto_trace=1 test.php

By default (if you have not configured tracing of XDebug) it will create a file under /tmp with file named something like this: trace.180077614.xt. File is really easy to read. So for example let’s say we have test.php with following content:

<?php
syslog(LOG_DEBUG, 'test');
echo 'boo';

For this file trace will be like this:

TRACE START [2010-07-12 13:14:55]
    0.0004     320332   -> {main}() /tmp/test.php:0
    0.0198     320496     -> syslog() /tmp/test.php:2
    0.0205       8252
TRACE END   [2010-07-12 13:14:56]

PHP
There are many ways to achieve this. But I’m going to show the most short and clean variants :)) Let’s start with regular expressions usage. First way is to split string with regular expression into an array of chunks and then join them with comma clue, like this:

$ php -r 'echo implode(",", preg_split("/(?<=\d)(?=(\d{3})+$)/", $argv[1])) . "\n";' 1234

Also, you can use preg_replace() function:

$ php -r 'echo preg_replace("/(\d{1,3})(?=(\d{3})+$)/", "\\1,", $argv[1]) . "\n";' 1234

And finally you can simply use number_format() function:

$ php -r 'echo number_format($argv[1], 0, ".", ",") . "\n";' 1234

Ruby

$ ruby -e 'puts ARGV[0].gsub(/(\d{1,3})(?=(\d{3})+$)/, "\\1,")' 1234

Python
In fact I don’t have lot’s of practice in Python every-day usage, so if you know better variant, feel free to share it and point me that I’m shit ;))

$ python -c 'import sys,re; print re.sub(r"(\d{1,3})(?=(\d{3})+$)", "\\1,", sys.argv[1])' 1234

Update

Perl
Basically this is alternative version of Marco’s variant, that I’ve just posted as a comment to his post :)) So I’m placing it here jsut to keep it for myself :)) In Perl you can achieve this with only assertions (like with preg_split() of PHP):

$ perl -pe 's/(?<=\d)(?=(\d{3})+$)/,/g' <<< 1234

Or with only one asserion:

$ perl -pe 's/(\d{1,3})(?=(\d{3})+$)/\1,/g' <<< 1234

$arr = array('green', 'apple');
list($color, $fruit) = $arr;

You should pay attention to the order of variables you assign if one of them has same name as initial array. Else you’ll run into madness, trying to find a bug…

I met such bug when I found my modified version of form to model filler not working. Well ther’s not much to say. According to PHP’s manual:

list() assigns the values starting with the right-most parameter.

This means, that if you will place variable with same name as initial one at the most right position you’ll not receive what you expect. Here are two vivid examples that will explain it better:

The Good

$name = array('John', 'Doe');
list($name, $surname) = $name;

var_dump($name);    // string(4) "John"
var_dump($surname); // string(3) "Doe"

The Bad

$path = array('Point A', 'Point B');
list($point, $path) = $path;

var_dump($point); // string(1) "P"
var_dump($path);  // string(7) "Point B"

The Queen
list() works with array directly (not a copy of an array). Let’s look at the bad more preciously. As list() assigns values from right most parameter, $path becomes second value of initial array, so when it’s $point’s turn, $path is a Point B string. But you can avoid it by passing a copy of array :)) Just prepend variable with (array) cast instruction:

$path = array('Point A', 'Point B');
list($point, $path) = (array) $path;

var_dump($point); // string(7) "Point A"
var_dump($path);  // string(7) "Point B"

As I track everything with git, this list is simply .gitignore file. But it’s easy to read and understand, so you can adopt it for your needs:

/administrator/backups/*
!/administrator/backups/index.html

/administrator/cache/*
!/administrator/cache/index.html

/cache/*
!/cache/index.html

/logs/*
!/logs/index.html

/tmp/*
!/tmp/index.html

/configuration.php

I was going to start with similar simple and really dumb example. But some restrictions of QT disallowed me. So, to show a system tray icon, you need to call show instance method. But before this, you must set icon instance property, else it will throw a corresponding exception. So here’s most simple variant:

require 'Qt4'
app = Qt::Application.new(ARGV)
si  = Qt::SystemTrayIcon.new

si.icon = Qt::Icon.new('/path/to/some/image.png')
si.show

app.exec

There’s no stock images like in GTK, at least I didn’t found them, if you know — let me know. According to QT’s SDK there’s QIcon::fromTheme() static method, but unfortunately there’s no corresponding one in qt4ruby. So we can skip step with different types of icon image settings and go next. All snippets below will assume that there are app and si initializations before, and app.exec call after them. Now let’s make our icon start|stop blinking on left click.

In QT all clicks (left, middle, right, etc) are handled by one signal — activated(QSystemTrayIcon::ActivationReason). Not the easiest name of the signal to remember ;)) I spent about two hours trying to understand why SDK says that QStatusIcon has activated() signal, but my app tells me that there’s no such signal. Anyway, finally I got it. Here’s sample activated() signal handler:

si.connect(SIGNAL('activated(QSystemTrayIcon::ActivationReason)')) do |reason|
  case reason
    when Qt::SystemTrayIcon::Trigger:       puts 'Left Click'
    when Qt::SystemTrayIcon::MiddleClick:   puts 'Middle Click'
    when Qt::SystemTrayIcon::Context:       puts 'Right Click'
    when Qt::SystemTrayIcon::DoubleClick:   puts 'Double Click'
    else
  end
end

There’s also Qt::SystemTrayIcon::Unknown reason but this is not very useful IMHO. After we figured out how and where we need to handle left click, let’s make icon blinking. You probably will be surprised, but it’s not trivial as with GTK. Qt::SystemTrayIcon don’t have neither blinking instance property, nor any single method to make it blink. So to make icon blink we need to create a timer which will be replacing icon with empty one and restore original back again every 0.5 second:

# define standard icon, alternative (blank) one and current state handler
std_icon = Qt::Icon.new('/path/to/some/image.png')
alt_icon = Qt::Icon.new
blinking = false

# assign default icon
si.icon  = std_icon
si.show

# run timer to swap icons every 0.5 second if blinking is true
Qt::Timer.new(app) do |timer|
  timer.connect(SIGNAL('timeout()')) do
    si.icon = (si.icon.isNull ? std_icon : alt_icon) if blinking
  end
  timer.start(500)
end

# finally assign left click handler
si.connect(SIGNAL('activated(QSystemTrayIcon::ActivationReason)')) do |reason|
  if Qt::SystemTrayIcon::Trigger == reason
    blinking = !blinking
    si.icon  = blinking ? alt_icon : std_icon
  end
end

OK. It was not as easy as with GTK, but still, it works :)) So now let’s create context menu with exit item. First of all we need to create a Qt::Menu and populate it with Qt::Actions:

menu = Qt::Menu.new
quit = Qt::Action.new('&Quit', menu)

quit.connect(SIGNAL(:triggered)) { app.quit }
menu.addAction(quit)

And now the most interesting part, as I told before QT’s system tray icon handles all clicks by one signal. But for context pop-up menu there’s a special instance property contextMenu exist. So to show a popup menu you need to assign it with menu so it will be popped up on right click! But remember, activated(QSystemTrayIcon::ActivationReason) will also be handled. So following code will pop up a menu and will output Right Click to the console:

si.contextMenu = menu

si.connect(SIGNAL('activated(QSystemTrayIcon::ActivationReason)')) do |reason|
  if Qt::SystemTrayIcon::Contex == treason
    puts 'Right Click'
  end
end

And now altogether again:

require 'Qt4'

app = Qt::Application.new(ARGV)
si  = Qt::SystemTrayIcon.new

std_icon = Qt::Icon.new('/path/to/some/image.png')
alt_icon = Qt::Icon.new
blinking = false

si.icon  = std_icon
si.show

Qt::Timer.new(app) do |timer|
  timer.connect(SIGNAL('timeout()')) do
    si.icon = (si.icon.isNull ? std_icon : alt_icon) if blinking
  end
  timer.start(500)
end

menu = Qt::Menu.new
quit = Qt::Action.new('&Quit', menu)

quit.connect(SIGNAL(:triggered)) { app.quit }
menu.addAction(quit)

si.contextMenu = menu

si.connect(SIGNAL('activated(QSystemTrayIcon::ActivationReason)')) do |reason|
  case reason
    when Qt::SystemTrayIcon::Trigger
      blinking = !blinking
      si.icon  = blinking ? alt_icon : std_icon
    when Qt::SystemTrayIcon::MiddleClick:   puts 'Middle Click'
    when Qt::SystemTrayIcon::Context:       puts 'Right Click'
    when Qt::SystemTrayIcon::DoubleClick:   puts 'Double Click'
  end
end

app.exec

Useful links

1. qt4ruby homepage — packages contains good examples
2. Qt4 Ruby Tutorial
3. Qt::Timer example

First of all let’s create a really simple (and absolutely dumb) version, which will only create a new system tray icon:

require 'gtk2'
Gtk::StatusIcon.new
Gtk.main

As you can see, first line require 'gtk2' include GTK bindings. Then we creating a new instance of Gtk::StatusIcon. And finally run main GTK loop with Gtk.main. So basically first and the last lines are not very interesting and all following code snippets will be without these two lines to keep you focused on things that are really important ;)) But don’t forget them when you’ll be trying these snippets…

If you tried the snippet above, you might notice that it adds a blank icon into system tray. Looks at least strange, so let’s add some image to it. With GTK you can use stock image, by setting stock instance property of StatusIcon:

si        = Gtk::StatusIcon.new
si.stock  = Gtk::Stock::DIALOG_INFO

Or you can you your own custom image by setting pixbuf instance property:

si        = Gtk::StatusIcon.new
si.pixbuf = Gdk::Pixbuf.new('/path/to/some/image.png')

You can specify both stock and pixbuf — but only the last one will be used. So:

si        = Gtk::StatusIcon.new
si.pixbuf = Gdk::Pixbuf.new('/path/to/some/image.png')
si.stock  = Gtk::Stock::DIALOG_INFO

Will initiate a system tray icon with Gtk::Stock::DIALOG_INFO stock image.

Now, when out system tray icon has a nice looking image, let’s add some funkiness. Let’s make icon start blinking on left clicking it, and stop on clicking it again. To make icon blink, you need to set blinking instance property to true, e.g.:

si.blinking = true

But we want it to be turned on|off mouse left click. To do so, we need to connect an activate signal:

si.signal_connect('activate'){ |icon| icon.blinking = !(icon.blinking?) }

Cool! Now it’s cool! But don’t stop. Let’s add a pop-up menu for mouse right clicking. To handle right click you need to use popup-menu signal, something like this:

si.signal_connect('popup-menu') do |tray, button, time|
  # something to do?
end

Creating a popup-menu is little bit out of the scope, but to accomplish my first system tray idiotic application, I will show it too. First, we need to create a Gtk::Menu instance:

menu = Gtk::Menu.new

Fill it with items, call show_all instance method, and call popup method when we need it to be popped up. Now let’s create a new item quit item, make it call Gtk.main_quit on click, and append it to the menu:

menu = Gtk::Menu.new
quit = Gtk::ImageMenuItem.new(Gtk::Stock::QUIT)

quit.signal_connect('activate'){ Gtk.main_quit }
menu.append(quit)
menu.show_all

So all we need no is to call menu.popup inside popup-menu signal handler:

si.signal_connect('popup-menu') do |icon, button, time|
  menu.popup(nil, nil, button, time)
end

And altogether now:

require 'gtk2'

si        = Gtk::StatusIcon.new
si.stock  = Gtk::Stock::DIALOG_INFO

si.signal_connect('activate'){ |icon| icon.blinking = !(icon.blinking?) }

menu = Gtk::Menu.new
quit = Gtk::ImageMenuItem.new(Gtk::Stock::QUIT)

quit.signal_connect('activate'){ Gtk.main_quit }
menu.append(quit)
menu.show_all

si.signal_connect('popup-menu') do |icon, button, time|
  menu.popup(nil, nil, button, time)
end

Gtk.main

After all, I want to thank Vincent Carmona, whose example was a vivid tutorial of how to make a much smarter (than mine) system tray icon with GTK and ruby. You will find his example as an attachment to this post. I recommend you to read it, if you are still reading this ;))

Useful links:

1. Gtk::StatusIcon documentation
2. Vincent Carmona’s example

Basically all you need to do is to remove a “spy” block out of admin/merchant_account.php file. Here’s a patch you can use to clean it out:

29,79d28
<
< $action = (isset($_GET['action']) ? $_GET['action'] : '');
<
< $error = false;
< if (isset($action) && ($action == 'send')) {
<
< $company = tep_db_prepare_input($_POST['company']);
< $full_name = tep_db_prepare_input($_POST['full_name']);
< $telephone = tep_db_prepare_input($_POST['telephone']);
< $nightphone = tep_db_prepare_input($_POST['nightphone']);
< $country_id = tep_db_prepare_input($_POST['country_id']);
< $country = tep_get_country_name($country_id);
< $email_address = tep_db_prepare_input($_POST['email_address']);
< $businessyears = tep_db_prepare_input($_POST['businessyears']);
< $website = tep_db_prepare_input($_POST['website_url']);
< $processing = tep_db_prepare_input($_POST['processing']);
< $start_processing = tep_db_prepare_input($_POST['start_processing']);
< $comments = tep_db_prepare_input($_POST['comments']);
<
< if($company == '' || $full_name == '' || $telephone == '' || $website == '' || !tep_validate_email($email_address) || $full_name == 'Salvatore Iozzia' || $company == 'CRE Loaded Store' || $email_address == 'noreply@creforge.com') {
< $error = true;
< }
<
< if(!$error) {
< //all good send
< $message = '';
< $message = "\n\n" . sprintf(TEXT_EMAIL_BODY_TITLE,$full_name) . "\n\n" .
< TEXT_COMPANY_NAME . ' ' . $company . "\n" .
< TEXT_FULL_NAME . ' ' . $full_name . "\n" .
< TEXT_TELEPHONE . ' ' . $telephone . "\n" .
< TEXT_NIGHT_PHONE . ' ' . $nightphone . "\n" .
< TEXT_COUNTRY . ' ' . $country . "\n" .
< TEXT_EMAIL_ADDRESS . ' ' . $email_address . "\n" .
< TEXT_YEARS_IN_BUSINESS . ' ' . $businessyears . "\n" .
< TEXT_WEBSITE . ' ' . $website . "\n" .
< TEXT_PROCESSING . ' ' . $processing . "\n" .
< TEXT_START_PROCESSING . ' ' . $start_processing . "\n" .
< TEXT_COMMENTS . "\n" . cre_html2txt($comments) . "\n" .
< CREM_EMAIL_SEPERATOR . "\n\n" .
< TEXT_CUSTOMER_IP . $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] . "\n" .
< TEXT_CUSTOMER_ISP . gethostbyaddr($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']) . "\n";
<
< @tep_mail(TEXT_SEND_TO_NAME, 'sales@creloaded.com', sprintf(TEXT_EMAIL_SUBJECT,$full_name), $message, $full_name, $email_address);
< @tep_mail(TEXT_SEND_TO_NAME, 'application@cremerchant.com', sprintf(TEXT_EMAIL_SUBJECT,$full_name), $message, $full_name, $email_address);
<
< }
<
< } // end action
<
<   if($error) $messageStack->add('merchant', TEXT_ALL_FIELDS_REQUIRED, 'warning');
<

PS If you have bought a new version CRE Loaded PCI Pro or B2B and want to bring freedom (and justice) back — just send me the distro package and I’ll help ;))