Supriya's Blog

PHP : Wordpress : Comments template not rendering

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Sat, 14 Nov 2015 09:45:00 +0000

Somehow my new custom post type was not able to get the comments section. After debugging and looking for option found solution for this issue at WP Questions.

I just updated the wp_posts with below mentioned query:

UPDATE wp_posts SET comment_status = 'open' WHERE post_type = 'myposttype';

And it worked.

PHP : Wordpress : Increase media file size

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 06:08:00 +0000

Working on WordPress was a great change for me. But for media upload I wanted to increase the upload size for file selected. Checked several plugins but was not working properly. One of the comment by Shane G on WordPress support site I found useful.

Just add below code in .htaccess file.

php_value upload_max_filesize 20M
php_value post_max_size 20M
php_value max_execution_time 200
php_value max_input_time 200

And it works like a charm.

Eclipse : Birt : Build JDBC:MYSQL connection

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 06:00:00 +0000

For connecting the reports to mysql database was fun.
For that I followed the birt-installation-and-configuration which was easy to understand.

Now as per the tutorial for adding external file
Select Project > right click > properties > Classpath > Add external JARs and go to path /usr/share/java folder(For Ubuntu and for windows please check the link above).

Once this is done we create the new data source with mysql connection.
Navigator(in sidebar) > Data Source > Right Click > New Data Source

Once data source name is given click Next and
Select com.mysql.jdbc.Driver(v5.1)
Database URL add : jdbc:mysql://your_host_name/your_db_name
User Name and Password of the connection
Click on Test Connection
It should display dialog box as shown in the image below indicating that the connection is successfully build.

Liferay : Portlets : Task cannot continue because ECJ is not installed

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 06:48:00 +0000

While going through Liferay Portal 6.0 - Development Guide : Creating a Portlet I got error on running ant task.

Task cannot continue because ECJ is not installed.
ECJ was automatically installed. Please rerun your task.

After searching for solution got Solve ECJ error in liferay IDE on Liferay Solutions.

Just followed the steps suggested.
Window -> Preferences -> Ant -> Runtime
Then Ant Home Button and Add external jar called ecj.jar which was in plugin-sdk-folder-path/lib

And After running the Ant Task portlet deployed successfully.

SQL : Stored Procedures : Next working date

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 05:17:00 +0000

Working on stored procedures is fun. For 1 functionality, wanted to get next working date which will exclude saturday sundays and dates from holiday list table.

I got really nice solution on mysql-stored-procedure-for-computing. But only draw back was Recursive limit. But tried the solution added in comments.

Checked and it worked fine. Only change done in this solution that if no date provided for function it should take current date. And parameter numDays removed.

So if current date is 2013-09-04. 2013-09-05 and 2013-09-06 in holiday list table. 2013-09-07 is Saturday and 2013-09-08 Sunday.

The output should be

And instead of both functions changed one to stored procedure as below.
Stored Procedure : sp_get_next_working_date

/**
Stored Procedure : sp_get_next_working_date
Parameter : p_date as date
Description : Returns next working date excluding Saturday/ Sunday OR Date in holiday list table.
Dependency : Function fn_check_date_if_in_holiday_list 
**/

BEGIN
  DECLARE next_working_date DATE;
  SET next_working_date = p_date;

  IF p_date = 0 THEN 
    SET next_working_date = DATE(NOW()); 
  END IF;
  SET next_working_date = DATE_ADD(next_working_date, INTERVAL 1 DAY);

  WHILE fn_check_date_if_in_holiday_list(next_working_date) DO 
    SET next_working_date = DATE_ADD(next_working_date, INTERVAL 1 DAY);
  END WHILE;

  SELECT next_working_date;
END

Function : fn_check_date_if_in_holiday_list

/**
Function : fn_check_date_if_in_holiday_list
Parameter : p_date as date
Description : Checks if date is Saturday/ Sunday OR in holiday list table.
Dependent : sp_get_next_working_date
**/

DETERMINISTIC
BEGIN
  DECLARE dayOfWeek INT DEFAULT 0;
  DECLARE result BIT DEFAULT false;
  DECLARE holidayCount INT DEFAULT 0;

  SET dayOfWeek = DAYOFWEEK(p_date);
  SELECT COUNT(*) from TBLholidays where holiday_date = p_date INTO holidayCount;

  IF dayOfWeek = 7 or dayOfWeek = 1 or holidayCount > 0 THEN 
    SET result = true;
  END IF;

  RETURN result;
END

Rails : Tasks : Truncate db with 1 command

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Fri, 06 Sep 2013 06:38:00 +0000

Back to rails is fun.

Working on some project I wanted to clean the database to clear all junk data added while testing.

But wanted to do that with 1 command and checking if I can get clear database without opening pgadmin or run several commands like drop/ create/ migrate. And I also added seeds in the project to get default data for functionality.

I checked rake --tasks. Check below screen-shot with selected text.

That was the command which I was looking for. It worked. But it thrown error first that it can not drop database as per the notes in --tasks. But it first truncated/ migrated and at last the seeds were added to the tables. Easy....:). Loved it....:D

SQL : CASE statements

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 11:21:00 +0000

Using conditions in SQL statements is really useful. Specially when we need to compare 1 value based on conditions with multiple columns.

For example I have 1 table called tasks. Where I need to check the given date parameter should be greater than or equal to multiple columns based on the current tasks category.

I can easily do that by code. Can be ROR or PHP. But if we can get the data directly from database it gets really fast for any language.

In this situation CASE statements are really useful.

In this example I need to compare parameter date to start_date column if category is 'appointment' and to end_date if category is 'todo'.


SELECT * FROM tasks 
WHERE '2013-09-02' >=
CASE 
  WHEN tasks.category='appointment' THEN (date(start_date))
  WHEN tasks.category='todo' THEN (date(end_date))
END

Rails/ PHP : Ubuntu : Add autostart on system boot

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 05:33:00 +0000

There is never a thought of starting an application if working in PHP.
But for one of the project we were using node.js and if the PC gets restarted we have to manually start the node.js.

I have done this before for my local rails application previously(http://stefanwienert.net) and applied the same for this issue.

First added .conf file

sudo gedit /etc/init/run_nodejs.conf

This will open default editor with new file called run_nodejs.conf
Now add following text to the file


description "Run Node JS"

start on (net-device-up and local-filesystems)
stop on runlevel [016]
chdir /path_to_nodejs

setuid user_name  # set to the user, which should run the app
exec sudo -u user_name  "/path_to_nodejs/nodejs.sh"

respawn
## give up if I respawn 3 times in 60 seconds...
respawn limit 3 60

Now create 1 .sh file named nodejs.sh at location /path_to_nodejs.

and in nodejs.sh add following commands, to start node js services.

Also give permissions to the file as chmod +x nodejs.sh to make is executable.
and then just check with (.conf file name for following command)

sudo start run_nodejs

You can also restart and stop the service.

As I mentioned I have done this for rails application.
But had 1 issue. By default I have 1.9.3 ruby version for other projects and for only local project I am using 2.0.0.

In demoapp.sh I have added following code


#!/bin/bash
PATH=$PATH:/home/supriya/.rvm/bin
source "/home/supriya/.rvm/scripts/rvm"
source ".rvmrc" 

rvm use 2.0.0
rails s # -p port_u_want -e env_u_want

So with these commands after starting my pc I get my local demoapp project always running with 2.0.0 and no worries about the default gemset.
And while working on project I can run log with if any error checking

sudo tail -f /var/log/upstart/demoapp.log

Collection : Thenewboston (Video Tutorials)

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Tue, 23 Jul 2013 07:30:00 +0000

Most of people find video tutorials very helpful more than reading books. As we understand more with watching practical examples.

Looking forward to other technologies I found a very useful site TheNewBoston by Bucky Roberts, who provides video tutorials for multiple languages like java, android, php, ruby and more.
Just go to tutorials section and check the list, for technologies you want to learn.

PHP : Excel Reader

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 06:39:00 +0000

Reading excel sheets now a days is not that big challenge, but reading it with very advanced formulas is definitely a very big challenge. One of team really spent a very pressured day to work on this functionality.

We used PHPExcel but was not reading values from other sub-sheet while performing getCalculatedValue(). Everything else was working fine. Like dynamically adding new values and generating the excel. After opening the new excel it worked like the original with new values. But the main functionality which we wanted, was getCalculatedValue() to display the calculations on web page.

After checking other plugins we found one more excel reader at devzone.zend.com. Tried with our excel sheet which worked like a charm.

Really useful for getting advanced formulas calculated values. There is also a excel writer but I didn't check it yet.
The only limitation to this plugin is that it do not work with xlsx file.

CakePHP = Rails Framework

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Thu, 30 May 2013 07:52:00 +0000

As I said in previous posts I really miss rails framework while working for PHP web applications. Just looking around the best sites on rails I found that CakePHP has a similar framework like rails.

Was really excited to get hands on it. Downloaded the latest version of the framework and started the application. But crashed with several warnings like 'Warning: _cake_core_ cache was unable to write...'

After reading warnings and checking around for solution, found, that need to provide writable permissions to tmp in app folder chmod -R 777 app/tmp which really helped for starting the project smoothly. Also found the answer which is helpful for other errors.

Until now I found that it contains functions similar to rails like beforeFilter() and so on, although I am not yet familiar with this framework. But it contains many function which I tried to build in my framework like render or helpers.

I am really going to love this if it works like rails, and will have no complaints about PHP.

QA : 3 : How to implement the twitter authentication in rails 3.2?

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Fri, 17 May 2013 04:32:00 +0000

Question from Bala Chandar :

How to implement the twitter authentication in rails 3.2?

Answer :

There is a gem available for twitter authentication oauth-plugin by Pelle Braendgaard

Please check the link Twitter Authentication Settings.

Collection : Javascript : Using select tags for date selection

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 10:54:00 +0000

Now a days generally most of sites use calendar dialog boxes for selecting a date in forms. We get all functionality for that including leap years and 30 or 31 days depending on the month. But how can we get these all when we are using simple drop downs or select is the question. Well we can use javascript to validate the fields.
In this post we will use jquery for validating 3 dropdowns which are year, month and date. As I was working on PHP the example will hold PHP code.

In this example consider that we are working on employee joining form and we want to add a joining date.
In html


<div id="joiningDate">
  <?php 
    $joining_date = select_tag("employees[joining_date][month]", unserialize(MONTHS), date('F'), array('class' => 'month'));
    $joining_date .= select_tag("employees[joining_date][date]", unserialize(DAYS), date('j'), array(class' => 'date'));
    $joining_date .= select_tag("employees[joining_date][year]", array("2012", "2013", "2014", "2015", '2016', '2017'), date('Y'), array('class' => 'year'));
    echo $joining_date;
  ?>
</div>

Note : For select_tag please check Collection : PHP : select_tag

Define some constants for long arrays.
Constants


defined('MONTHS') or define("MONTHS", serialize(array('January', 'February', 'March', 'April', 'May', 'June', 'July', 'August', 'September', 'October', 'November', 'December')));
defined('DAYS') or define('DAYS', serialize(array('01', '02', '03', '04', '05', '06', '07', '08', '09', '10', '11', '12', '13', '14', '15', '16', '17', '18', '19', '20', '21', '22', '23', '24', '25', '26', '27', '28', '29', '30', '31')));

Finally the javascript function which will actually play the magic in html. Check the comments for explanation. In Javascript file


$(document).ready(function(){
  validateDateFields('#joiningDate');
});

function validateDateFields(divID){
  // Jquery objects of date and month fields in new function
  var dateField = $(divID).find('select.date');
  var monthField = $(divID).find('select.month');

  // Months hash for adding or removing the options tags 
  var monthsHash = {
    'January' : 1, 
    'February' : 2, 
    'March' : 3, 
    'April' : 4, 
    'May' : 5, 
    'June' : 6, 
    'July' : 7, 
    'August' : 8, 
    'September' : 9, 
    'October' : 10, 
    'November' : 11, 
    'December' : 12
  };
  // Months with 31 days
  var fullMonth = [1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12];
  
  // Current values of the fields
  var dateVal = dateField.val();
  var monthVal = monthField.val();
  var yearVal = $(divID).find('select.year').val();
  
  // Check current year if leap year
  var isLeap = new Date(yearVal, 1, 29).getMonth() == 1;
  // Date field child node with options 29, 30 and 31
  var dateOption29 = dateField.children('option[value=29]');
  var dateOption30 = dateField.children('option[value=30]');
  var dateOption31 = dateField.children('option[value=31]');
  // defining other variable 
  var appendOptions;
    
  if(monthsHash[monthVal]==2){
    // First : If selected month in 2 or February
    if(isLeap){
      // If the selected year is leap year
      if(dateOption29.length == 0){
        // If date field child nodes do not have any option with value 29
        dateField.append('<option value=29>29</option>');        
      }
    }else{
      // If its not a leap year remove date field child node option with value 29
      dateOption29.remove();
    }
    // In month 2 or february by default remove date field child options with value 30 and 31
    dateOption30.remove();
    dateOption31.remove();
  }else if($.inArray(monthsHash[monthVal], fullMonth) > -1){
    // If the selected month is of 31 days 
    if(dateOption31.length == 0){
      // If option with value 31 do not exist 
      if(dateOption29.length == 0){
        // If option with value 29 do not exist 
        appendOptions += '<option value=29>29</option> <option value=30>30</option>';
      }else if(dateOption30.length == 0){
        // If option with value 30 do not exist 
        appendOptions += '<option value=30>30</option>';
      }
      appendOptions += '<option value=31>31</option>';
      // append options which do not exist in date field child nodes
      dateField.append(appendOptions);
    }
  }else{
    // If the selected month is of 30 days 
    if(dateOption29.length == 0){
      // If option with value 29 do not exist 
      dateField.append('<option value=29>29</option> <option value=30>30</option>');
    }else if(dateOption30.length == 0){
      // If option with value 30 do not exist 
      dateField.append('<option value=30>30</option>');
    }else if(dateOption31.length > 0){
      // If option with value 31 exist
      dateOption31.remove();
    }
  }
  
  // Add other code for updating any values here.
}

PHP : Apple Push Notification (APN)

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 05:45:00 +0000

Hope you have read my previous post for Rails 3 : APN on Rails in which I tried apn_on_rails gem for sending notification to apple devices. I have also added the link for ManiacDev.Com in which you will get the steps for certification creation which are the most important steps for notifications.

Now for sending notification in PHP there is a great example available at raywenderlich.com : Apple Push Notification Services Tutorial: Part 1/2. You can download the example file at from given link in the post.

This is a PHP sample code. Just change the deviceToken, passphrase and message variables. Make changes as per your requirement. But again I faced some certification errors which were : ssl_connect returned=1 errno=0 state=sslv3 read finished a sslv3 alert certificate unknown and Neither PUB key nor PRIV key:: nested asn1 error. Nothing else got the wrong certificate generated. Just get the required certificate and you are good to go.
I really loved it.

Rails : Code : Split Records

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 09:02:00 +0000

I was very much impressed when I saw the split entry functionality in time-sheet project we were using. I wanted to try out same in ROR. But I will also try this out in PHP now. First we will look at ROR code.

Assume that we are creating a time-sheet project and we need to split the duration and considering, we already have the rails project with authentication, and now we generate a new section 'Time Records', which will store the records of users with duration.
I am running scaffold so we will have all views, controller and model.

 rails g scaffold time_records description:text duration:float parent_id:integer

Run migration to add table in database.

 rake db:migrate

Now we will add new record

This is a basic setup what we need till now. Once this base is complete we will start with actual requirement. Now first we need to add a anchor tag (link) with which the functionality will work. SO I have added it in index page.

In this example I am using javascript function for ajax call but it is not complusory, we can directly use send the user to the form page with out javascript. So I am using onclick attribute for calling a function.

<%= link_to 'Split', '#', :onClick => "split_duration_for_entry('split_#{time_record.id}', #{time_record.id})" %>

In that function

/* this is for spliting the duration */
function split_duration_for_entry( div, id ){
  var divid = "#"+div
  var classes = jQuery(".split_box");

  jQuery(classes).each(function(){
    var thisid = $(this).parent('td').attr('id')
    var v = jQuery("#"+thisid).next().val();
    jQuery("#"+thisid).html("<a href='#' onClick=\"split_duration_for_entry('"+thisid+"', "+id+")\">Split</a>")
  });

  actual_duration = $('#split_'+id).prev('td').html();
  jQuery.ajax({
    type: 'GET',
    url: '/time_records/split_entries_div',
    data:{'record_id' : id, 'actual_duration': actual_duration},
    success: function(transform){
      jQuery(divid).html(transform);
    }
  });
}

So this function will

Hide opened split duration divs if open.
Send the parameters(id and duration) to split_entries_div action in our controller.
Once the action is called display the partial with data and links.

In controller

def split_entries_div
  id = params[:record_id].to_i
  time_record = TimeRecord.find(id)
  render partial: "split_entries", locals: {record_id: id, old_duration: time_record.duration.to_f}, layout: false
end

So here comes the partial.

  
<div class="split_box">
  <div>
    <%= hidden_field_tag "actual_duration#{record_id}", params[:actual_duration] %>
    <%= text_field_tag "old_duration_#{record_id}", params[:actual_duration], size: 5 %>
    <%= text_field_tag "new_duration_#{record_id}", 0, size: 5 %>
  </div>
  <div>
    <%= link_to 'Split', "#this", onClick: "split_entries(this, #{record_id})" %>
    <%= link_to "Cancel", "#this", onClick: "cancel_split_entry(this, #{record_id})" %>
  </div>
</div>

In CSS

.split_box{
  background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #EFEFEF;
  border: 4px solid #CCCCCC;
  width: 100px;
}

In this partial we will have

2 main text fields which will contain the old duration for updating the original record and new duration for which we will be creating a new record.
1 hidden field to keep the original duration so if the validation is called then we can again store the original duration value to old duration field.
2 anchor tags for calling actual functionality and canceling the div poped up.

First the main functionality. Actual spliting/ updating the entry will be performed if the user clicks the split link. On which 'split_entries' function is called by passing record's id.

function split_entries( id ){
  var newrecrd;
  var new_record_val = jQuery("#new_duration_"+id).val();
  var old_record_val = jQuery("#old_duration_"+id).val();
  
  var actual = $("#actual_duration"+id).val();
  var total = parseFloat(old_record_val) + parseFloat(new_record_val);
  
  if(parseFloat(actual) < total ) {
    alert("Total duration for OLD and New records can not be greater than original value");
    jQuery("#old_duration_"+id).val(actual);
    jQuery("#new_duration_"+id).val(0);
    return false; 
  }else if(parseFloat(old_record_val) < 24){
    if(new_record_val==0 || new_record_val==""){
      newrecrd = false
    }else{
      newrecrd = true
    }

    cancel_split_entry(id);

    jQuery.ajax({
      type: 'GET',
      url: '/time_records/split_entries',
      data:{
        'newrecrd' : newrecrd,
        'old_id' : id,
        'old_duration': parseFloat(old_record_val).toFixed(2),
        'new_record_val' : parseFloat(new_record_val).toFixed(2)
      },
      success: function(transport){
        window.location.reload();
      }
    });
  }else {
    alert("Duration can not be greater than 24 hrs. Enter valid duration");
    return false;
  }
}

I have added some validations to this functionality

Duration can not be greater than 24 hours OR
The total of both value can not be greater that the original duration

We can just remove/ modify these validation as per our requirement

Other than that

If it passes the validation it will first check if the new duration value should not be blank or equal to 0. This will set true or false to local variable 'newrecrd' which will be passes to the action as parameter via ajax.
Original record is will be passes and old_id.
Both new duration and old duration will be passed to the action.

  
# split duration
  def split_entries
    @time_record = TimeRecord.find(params[:old_id].to_i)
    description = @time_record.description
    @time_record.update_attributes(description: description, duration: params[:old_duration])
    if params[:newrecrd]=='true'
      TimeRecord.create(description: description, duration: params[:new_record_val], parent_id: @time_record.id)
    end
    redirect_to :back
  end

In which get the original record and update the duration

if params[:newrecrd] is true then create a new record with new duration value.

And now in routes add

resources :time_records do 
  collection do 
    get 'split_entries'
    get 'split_entries_div'
  end
end

Once the set up is done restart the application and check the output

Get the code at Github : Split-Records

Collection : Dabblet

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 08:23:00 +0000

There are many tools now a days to check your HTML and CSS code directly in browser for quick development. Tools like Firebug or inbuilt developer tools in browsers helps a lot, to check instant changes and don't have to wait for loading the page each time for small changes.

Dabblet is also a very useful tool to develop and test your CSS and HTML code.

This supports the modern versions of browsers like chrome, firefox and safari. But do not support IE.

You can get more information on dabbel help page. Advantage of this is that you don't have to keep the file on local machine. You can just save it on the gist.github.com as anonymous or you can also sign in with your account for storing the changes.

The output can be viewed at http://dabblet.com/gist/5062815 or you can just view the code at github.com/anonymous/5062815. Also you can view the whole page result at result.dabblet.com.

Now as I have mentioned earlier that dabble do not support IE but you can just check the output after storing the changes to github.

PHP : MVC : Framework

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 10:53:00 +0000

I really missed rails framework and available helpers a lot while working on PHP.
But I really learned a lot while finding the similar functionalities in PHP.
I tried the some of the available PHP frameworks but didn't find anything like rails.

So I started to define helpers and functions for my current PHP project.
Currently it's not complete but working with minor bugs.
Bugs like
If I try to call view without .php extension it works fine, but with .php extension it crashes.

Still missing the actual flow of MVC (model, views and controller)(need to work on it).

Folder structure for this application is as follows:

  
app    
    |- assets    
        |- fonts
        |- images
        |- javascripts
        |- stylesheets
    |- classes
    |- helpers
    |- views
        |- Folder
  config
    |- config.php
    |- constants.php
    |- database.php
    |- path_includes.php
    |- routes.php
  docs
  includes
    |- classes
        |- application.class.php
    |- helpers
        |- common_helper.php
    |- php
        |- active_queries.php
        |- authentication.php
        |- base.php
        |- structure.php
        |- word_plurals.php
  lib
  index.php
  login.php
  logout.php
  navigation.php
  session_settings.php
  signin.php
  ReadMe.txt

Need to do lots of changes.
I have uploaded the code to GitHub. If anyone can help me to solve the current bug that will be a great help.

PHP : API : Documentation

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 06:00:00 +0000

Documentation is very necessary for every project. I usually add comments for every function in my project but getting the whole summary to one place was important.

In rails I knew how to do it but in php?
I came across apigen for php project 'professional API documentation tool'.
Really great to see the result. Loved it.

So we need to download the pack from apigen.org

Extract it to required path and then follow the steps given at blogs.oracle.com. Nice post.

Thats it and we are ready with the api for our projects.

PHP : mod_rewrite services

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 05:19:00 +0000

Experience working with PHP is really good. But really missed the way rails for handling urls dynamically.
Really feeling nice when I found the way to add such method for dynamic urls.
Just need to use mod_rewrite in .htaccess file for the respective project.

In the beginning didn't work as per the requirement.

After some research found the post enable-mod_rewrite-in-a-ubuntu-server which helped a lot for starting the mod_rewrite services.

By default it showed that mod_rewrite services are running but need some changes in the files which are as below.

Just need to run

sudo gedit /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default

and in <Directory /> and <Directory /var/www/> section change

AllowOverride None

AllowOverride All

And then just

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Collection : PHP : Insert Data Function

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 08:27:00 +0000

In my previous post we added select_tag function for views as a helper function. Now we will add some function for inserting record. The names of functions might be similar to rails methods. This becomes easy for me to keep it simple to remember.

Lets consider we have some products table with id, name and description columns. As I have kept id auto generated we will not add if field in form.

In new.php

<form id="product" method="POST" action="create.php" >
 <input name="product[name]" type="text" value="" />
 <textarea rows="6" name="product[description]"> </textarea>
 <input id="product_submit" type="button" value="Save" onclick="submit();" />
</form>

Check View.

Now when you click on save button it should redirect you to create.php. For now just add

<?php print_r($_POST); ?>

and you can see (in view) Check View.

If you need to validate the records you can just add some code before the function we are going to add.
But I will just keep it simple, so directly going to add it to the database.

In create.php

require_once 'includes/php/active_queries.php';
insert_record($_POST['product'], "products");
header('Location: index.php');

I have added active_queries.php, with this we will insert the data in table.

/**
 * For Inserting a single record
 * @param array $record <p>Array of single record</p>
 * @param string $model <p>Table name in which you want to make changes</p>
 */
function insert_record($record, $model) {
  $fields = count($record);
  if ($fields > 0) {
    $i = 0;
    $k = 0;
    $insert = "INSERT INTO " . $model . " (";
    foreach ($record as $key => $value) {
      $k++;
      $insert .= $key;
      if ($fields > $k) {
        $insert .= ", ";
      }
    }
    $insert .= ") VALUES (";
    foreach ($record as $key => $value) {
      $i++;
      if (gettype($value) == 'string') {
        $insert .= " '" . pg_escape_string($value) . "'";
      } else {
        $insert .= $value;
      }
      if ($fields > $i) {
        $insert .= ", ";
      }
    }
    $insert .= ")";
    $result = pg_query($insert);
    return pg_affected_rows($result);
  }
}

This function will run loop of array twice. First to get the keys and then the values. And then it will add the data to the database. Once the query runs successfully it will return to the index page as we have mentioned header location as index.php. And you can see the inserted records.
Check Form View and Check Index View.

Now what if we want to add multiple records in one form/ click. This is not required for now but this can be used in nested_attributes.

So I added multiple_products.php in which we will add multiple fields.

<form id="products" method="POST" action="create.php" >
  <input name="multiple" type="hidden" value="true" /><br />
  <?php for ($i=1; $i<=3; $i++) { ?>
    <i><?php echo $i ?>. Name :</i><br />
    <input name="products[<?php echo $i ?>][name]" type="text" value="" />    
    <i>Description :</i><br />
    <textarea rows="6" name="products[<?php echo $i ?>][description]"> </textarea><br />
  <?php } ?>
  <input id="product_submit" type="button" value="Save" onclick="submit();" />
</form>

Check View

We are not creating another php file to submit these products to database. We will use the same create.php for which I added hidden field as multiple=true

In active_queries.php

/**
 * For Inserting multiple records
 * @param array $records <p>Array of records</p>
 * @param string $model <p>Table name in which you want to make changes</p>
 */
function insert_multiple_records($records, $model) {
  foreach ($records as $record) {
    insert_record($record, $model);
  }
}

And in create.php need to change some code. Instead of

insert_record($_POST['product'], "products");

change code to

if(isset($_POST['multiple'])){
  insert_multiple_records($_POST['products'], "products");
}else{
  insert_record($_POST['product'], "products");
}

Check View.

This will just get all data in and will run in loop which will call previous function(insert_record()) for each record array.

So after redirecting to index page we can view the inserted to reqords . Check View.

You can download whole source from github

Collection : PHP : select_tag

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 05:28:00 +0000

Learning PHP is fun to me but really miss the available helpers in Rails.
For example form helpers like form/ select_tag/ text_field and others.

I dont know whether these are already available in php or not.
So I added one file as common_helper.php and that can be directly required or just added separate (module_name)_helper.php and require common_helper.php in the new file. I have added module wise view helpers, so that I can keep the common helper functions and module wise helper function separate from each other.

This function creates a HTML select with options and selected option. Parameters required are :

$name as string (Name for select node).
$options as array (Array for generating options).
$selected as string or integer - optional - (Selected value or blank string).
$css_class as string - optional - (Css class name(s)).
$onchange as string - optional - (onchange functionality)

This will append the given name and class name to select tag. Selected value will be selected in options by comapering the $selected.
Options send to the helper function needs to be array.
For example:
1. array(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7);
Or
2. array(array(0,"0 Hours"), array(1,"1 Hour"), array(2,"2 Hours"), array(3, "3 Hours"), array(4, "4 Hours"));
Still for making work this code you will need to pass first 2 mandatory parameters which are name and array of options which will create the option tags for select_tag.

<?php 
   /** 
  * Creates a HTML select with options and selected option.
  * @param string $name <p>Name for select node</p>
  * @param array $options <p>Array for generating options</p>
  * @param string $selected <p>Selected value or blank string. Can be string or integer.</p> 
  * @param string $css_class <p>Css class name(s) as a string</p>
  * <p>
  * This will append the given name and class name to select tag.
  * Selected value will be selected in options by comapering the $selected.
  * Options send to the helper function needs to be array
  * For example:
  * 1. array(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7);
  * Or
  * 2. array(array(0,"0 Hours"), array(1,"1 Hour"), array(2,"2 Hours"), array(3, "3 Hours"), array(4, "4 Hours"));
  * </p>
  */
  function select_tag($name, $options, $selected="", $css_class="", $onchange=""){
    $select_tag = '<select class="' . $css_class . '" name="'.$name;
    if($onchange!=""){
      $select_tag .= '" onchange="'.$onchange;
    }
    $select_tag .= '">';
    $select_options = "";
    foreach($options as $a) {
      if(is_array($a)){
        $ky = $a[0];
        $val = $a[1];
      }else{
        $ky = $a;
        $val = $a;
      }
      $select_options .= '<option value="' . $ky . '"';
      if($selected==$ky){ 
        $select_options .= ' selected="selected"';
      }
      $select_options .= '>' . $val . '</option>';
    } 
    $select_tag .= $select_options . '</select>';   
    return $select_tag;
  } 
?>

So now in view we can directly add in php tag

<?php echo select_tag("select_name", array(), $selected_value, "classname", "onchange_javascript_function(this.value);"); ?>

In the project I am working on needed the onchange javascript function.
Its not mandatory. So you can just avoid or remove that from the code.

This code is available on github : php_common_helpers.git.

Collection : Javascript : Validating max length

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 11:35:00 +0000

There are some scripts/ functionalities which are commonly and mostly used in many web based applications. I would like to keep some in the collection with us. These might be simple for the readers but are very important to make a note of it.

In this post I will keep note of 1 javascript function which restricts the user by adding more than the specific limit for the input. Or validating the input for certain limit to enter.

In Javascript file

/* check_the_max_length(input, maxLen) 
  input  : need a id or class of input
  maxLen : IE do not accept maxlength so passing it as a parameter.
*/
function check_the_max_length(input, maxLen){
  var val = $(input).val();
  var left = maxLen - val.length;
  var remaining_points = left<=0 ? 0 : left
  $('#counter').html(remaining_points + '/' + maxLen);
  if (val.length >= maxLen) {
      $(input).val(val.slice(0, maxLen));
  }
}

Considering in view


<%= f.input :description, :as => :text, :input_html => {:style => "width:450px;"}

I added some javascript in views, as application's most of the views are on popups. In main view, where popups will get displayed, add following lines at bottom in script tag.

$('#description').live('keyup keydpress', function(e) {
  check_the_max_length('#description', 220);
});

As we read, for IE, maxlength was not working, there was another bug. while entering paragraphs it do no calculate properly. For example: if I enter 4 paras the count will show I still have 4 values to enter. But max length attribute actually do not let you enter the value. So removed the maxlength attribute from views for inputs and added slice method which will actually cut down the text to original required count. SO the above function is the solution for both bugs.

Postgres : Server Installation and settings

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 08:40:00 +0000

Postgres is one of the popular database server for Ruby on Rails Applications. This post takes us step by step, installation and some important settings.

Postgres 9.1.x installation steps

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pitti/postgresql
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install postgresql

This will install the postgresql to the server/ your local machine. If you just want to use it locally then these steps are enough. But if you also want to use this database available for other machines then you have to add the ip to pg_hba.conf for making availablity for that ip machine only.
There is also other option for making database available if your ip is not stable. which is as given below. But also suggested use this only if server is only for internal use. For this we need to make following changes in

/etc/postgresql/9.1/main/pg_hba.conf(find following and make changes as shown)

# TYPE  DATABASE     USER  ADDRESS        METHOD
  local all          all                  trust
  host  all          all   127.0.0.1/32   trust

And another to the same file

# IPv4 local connections:

# host  all          all   127.0.0.1/32   md5
  host  all          all   0.0.0.0/0      trust

other file to make changes is /etc/postgresql/9.1/main/postgresql.conf

port = 5432
listen_addresses = '*'

And then just restart the server.

sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql restart

Install pgAdmin3

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:flexiondotorg/postgres
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install pgadmin3

Phonegap : adb command not found

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 06:20:00 +0000

As many people must have known that Phonegap is really nice for cross platform mobile app development. I installed android development environment via eclipse and downloaded the latest plugin of phonegap.

Tried out the sample application given in the plugin. It worked well in emulator but while running it on my sony ericsson x10i I faced some problems as I will say I am new to android development.

First my phone was not recognized by Android device chooser in eclipse. So I got that I will have to add rules file to users/udev/something folder. So I followed the dimitar.me. Also the information is given on developer.android.com.

Even for sony need to add sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules and the required information in the file.

Now when I completed most of the steps command

adb devices

was not getting the output. But instead throwing the error as below.

Changed the permissions for the same file. I again run the adb command, but no positive result still the same in terminal and in eclipse. Finally restarted the pc and checked the command in terminal. Still the same error. But when I checked it in eclipse it showed the device chooser.

Thats it and the device detected and apk installed successfully.

PHP : phpmyadmin not found

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Surve) — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 10:02:00 +0000

Recently I installed php on my pc. But got some trouble when I installed phpmyadmin and tried to view it in browser. It displayed as Not Found.

But after some research found that I will have to move the phpmyadmin folder from usr/share location to var/www
So I run the below command from terminal

sudo mv /usr/share/phpmyadmin /var/www/phpmyadmin

And phpmyadmin was running as required in browser.