Developer Tips

Zend Db Select with like

2011-08-31T15:10:00.000-07:00

Like keyword can be used with Zend_Db select query


$query = $this->select()

           ->where("firstname like ?", $letter."%");

try that works.

SQL to select comma separated data from table

2011-08-17T18:30:00.000-07:00

There is a way to select comma separated data from any mysql table.


SELECT poll_id,group_concat(option_id) FROM `poll_elements` 

group by poll_id

this will output as follows:

poll_id | group_concat(option_id)
1 | 3855,5098,8474
3 | 3855,9469,15677
6 | 509,3855,9469,10489

Zend Form - Adding a hidden field without decorators

2011-06-24T16:33:00.000-07:00

If the hidden field added to the Zend form leaves extra space between elements, remove those tags around it.



$this->addElement("hidden", "id", 
                   array('disableLoadDefaultDecorators' => true));

That will do it.

Select records from tables of different databases

2011-06-21T15:17:00.000-07:00

This is the way to select records from tables of different databases


SELECT * FROM `db`.table tb
INNER JOIN `db2`.table2 tb2 ON tb2.id = tb.id

hope it helps someone.

Zend Form - Adding Custom Error Messges to element

2011-06-19T07:35:00.000-07:00

Custom error messages can be added to a form element:

The following shows how to add custom error message to a select element


$countryList = array("0" => "select" ,"1" => "Canada", "2" => "India", "3" => "America");
$countries = new Zend_Form_Element_Select('country');
$countries->setLabel("Country")
     ->setRequired(true)
     ->addFilter('Int')     
     ->addMultiOptions($countryList)
     ->addValidator('GreaterThan',false, array("min"=>1, "messages" => array("notGreaterThan"=>"country is required")));

validator name = GreaterThan
message for = notGreaterThan ( get it from validator library file or api doc)

The customr error message will display now.

Merging two arrays without changing numeric keys

2011-03-12T00:54:00.000-08:00

Merge two arrays together using array_merge function



$result = array_merge(array(0=>"Hello"), array(3=>"World"));

The result will have an array with keys got re-numbered
therefore the key 3 will be changed to 1.

If you want to keep your array keys unchanged



$result = $arr1 + $arr2;

That will do it.

Zend Form - make a text field read only

2011-02-18T05:13:00.000-08:00

A text element of a form can be made read only therefore user cannot touch the value



$this->addElement('text','current_date',array(            
            'attribs' => array('readonly' => 'true')));

that will do it.

Zend Framework - Fetch rows in key value pair

2011-02-18T05:07:00.000-08:00

If you happened to select records in key value pair, try this way



$query = $this->select()
->from($this->_name, array('id', 'name'));

$this->getAdapter()->fetchPairs($query);

that will return
222 => "Velvom"

MySQL Update on Same Table

2011-02-09T17:08:00.001-08:00

If any chance to do an UPDATE on the same table, here is the SQL for that



UPDATE my_list AS a 
INNER JOIN my_list AS b 
ON a.id = b.id 
SET a.list_name_val = md5( b.list_name )

the above SQL will update list_name_val column with md5 of list_name.

Let User Selects Language in Joomla 1.5

2010-11-01T18:44:00.000-07:00

If you'd like to let visitors select their language on your site, do the following in your index.php file



$lang_request = JRequest::getWord('lang'); 
$lang_choice = implode("-", str_split($lang_request, 2));
$currentSession = JFactory::getSession();

if(!empty($lang_choice))
{
 $currentSession->set("langChoice",$lang_choice); 
 $lang =& JFactory::getLanguage();
 $lang->setLanguage( $lang_choice );
 $lang->load();
}
elseif($currentSession->getState())
{ 
 $lang =& JFactory::getLanguage();
 $lang->setLanguage( $currentSession->get("langChoice") );
 $lang->load();
}

when user clicks on a link have your url like the following:
http://www.yoursite.com/?lang=de-DE or /?lang=en-GB

the lang would be stored in session so you don't need to worry about it anymore.

Get SQL out of Zend select object

2010-03-11T16:10:00.000-08:00

To display SQL of Zend_Db_Select object, try this


$query = $this->select()
                    ->where("permitted = 'Y'")
                    ->order("id DESC")
                    ->limit($count);

echo $query->__toString();

that will do it.

Add Select option to your Joomla select list

2010-01-02T15:00:00.000-08:00

If you like to add 'Select Category' option to the option list you got from DB.



$db    =& JFactory::getDBO();
$query = "SELECT id as value,name as text FROM  categories WHERE parent_id > 0 ORDER BY name";
$db->setQuery($query);
$categories = $db->loadAssocList(); 
$begin_categories = array(array("value"=>0,"text"=>"Select Category"));
$categories = array_merge($begin_categories,$categories);
$lists['categories'] = JHTML::_('select.genericlist',  $categories, 'categories', 'class="inputbox" size="1"', 'value', 'text', null);

I am not sure any better way to do with Joomla classes.

How to add jQuery to Joomla ?

2010-01-02T10:44:00.000-08:00

The Joomla 1.5 is coming with Mootools therefore you might experience some conflict with jQuery now.
Just follow the way below to avoid any conflicts. Add the following lines to your view.html.php.



$document = &JFactory::getDocument();
$document->addScript( 'http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js' );
$document->addCustomTag( '' );

The above code fragment would solve your problem.

How to add Javascript / css to Joomla?

2010-01-02T10:39:00.001-08:00

How to add Javascript or css to your Joomla template?

Just do the following to get it working. Add the following lines to your view.html.php.



$document = &JFactory::getDocument();
$this->document->addStyleSheet('your path/style.css');
$this->document->addScript( 'http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js' );

That would solve your problem.

Adding a calendar / date picker to Joomla form

2009-11-07T15:58:00.000-08:00

This is how you add a calendar / date picker to Joomla form.

add the following code to your
xx.html.php class



$document = &JFactory::getDocument();
$document->addScript("includes/js/joomla.javascript.js");

JHTML::_('behavior.calendar');

and add the following code to the default.php template file

All those codes above will have a calendar / date picker close to the input field.

Enjoy your coding.

Debugging view of 2D array

2009-11-03T13:42:00.000-08:00

If you are in a position to have a better view of 2 dimensional array then try this



$fruits["apple"] = array("Canada","US","Extra");

print_r($fruits) won't show a better view but the following way would show a clear view of arrays and values



echo "";
print_r($fruits);
echo "
";

Enjoy.
cheers.

Redirect dynamic URL using .htaccess

2009-10-29T09:18:00.000-07:00

If you are trying to redirect a dynamic URL follow the steps to do it.

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^product_id=(.*)$
RewriteRule ^product_view\.php$ /products/%1? [R=301,L]

The above statements would do the following,

http://www.example.com/product_view.php?product_id=4

redirected to

http://www.example.com/products/4

Hope it helps someone.
cheers.

select records whose id is not present in the other table

2009-09-07T12:46:00.000-07:00

If you are trying to select records whose ids are not present in the other table,

eg: articles table has article_id, categorized table has article_id and cat_id.
If you are trying to select the article that is not categorized yet



SELECT * FROM articles WHERE article_id NOT IN ( SELECT article_id FROM categorized );

That will solve your problem.

SQL to filter duplicate records

2009-09-02T06:42:00.000-07:00

If you are trying to filter out duplicate records from your table.



SELECT DISTINCT column_name,id FROM table_name 
GROUP BY coulumn_name
HAVING COUNT(column_name) > 1

The above sql would filter out duplicate records with their ids.

cheers.

SQL to get count of records

2009-08-31T12:01:00.000-07:00

This is for MySQL I have no idea about other DBs



$query = mysql_query("SELECT count(*) FROM accounts");
$ctr = mysql_result($query,0,0);

Hope it helps someone.

Remove ^M from your PHP script file

2009-08-03T08:51:00.000-07:00

If you happened to see ^M at end of every line of your code, it's a real pain. You can remove the character from the file somehow.

from your command line (Linux)

1) sed -e 's/^M//g' index.php > ind.php
[ ctrl v + ctrl M would give your ^M char on command line ]

2) mv ind.php index.php

Now, your index file is free of ^M characters. Enjoy coding.

Modify User Registration of Joomla

2009-08-02T08:56:00.000-07:00

If you'd like to change user registration page of Joomla, follow the following steps to accomplish it.

1) Change in template file (under components/user/)
2) modify /libraries/joomla/user/user.php
3) modify /libraries/joomla/database/table/user.php

and also modify users table of joomla using any db admin scripts eg:phpMyadmin

Modify those files as per your request, you will see a modified user registration page of Joomla.

How to enable Javascript in different browsers?

2009-07-26T08:07:00.000-07:00

If you are looking forward to enable Javascript in different browsers, just check whether it's disabled first by visiting the site.

www.isjavascriptenabled.com

That would tell you whether it's enabled or disabled

How to enable the Javascript now?

Go to the site get info as per your browser.

www.tranexp.com/win/JavaScript-enabling.htm

Redirect using mod_rewrite

2009-07-19T23:16:00.000-07:00

if you are trying to redirect any subdomain request to the root, try the following method. The URL will not change in the address bar.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^business\.rootdomain\.com
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/business/
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.rootdomain.com/business/$1 [P]

if you get any internal error, add proxy & proxy http modules to Apache.

restart the web server,it should work now.

Installing Secure Shell PHP SSH2 on CentOS

2009-07-06T14:15:00.000-07:00

If you are looking forward to install SSH2, follow the link to do so. It works and save you a lots time.

http://cubiclegeneration.com/web-servers/installing-secure-shell2-ssh2-php-extension

if you experience any issue at these lines

gunzip libssh2-0.18.tar.gz

tar -xvf libssh2-0.18.tar.gz

Just remove the .gz from the end, would work.

Done.

htaccess issue with SEF URL in Joomla

2009-06-10T05:39:00.000-07:00

On your developer box: You enabled SEF in Joomla by doing the following way:

1.rename htaccess.txt to .htaccess
2.Global Configuration -> SEO Settings (set yes to everything) and save it

Refresh your Joomla site
click on your site links - if the short url is working then everything is cool if NOT

open up your Apache config file and

add the following lines to your virtual host setup

        
    AllowOverride      all

save the config file and restart the apache.
DONE.

Installing flash player on centOS 5 (64bits)

2009-05-09T14:02:00.000-07:00

If you having trouble with your flash player in CentOS 5 ( 64 bits) then follow the link to make it work. I googled for help and found out this after a long time. It's good.

http://www.yqed.com/install-flash-player-10-centos-64-bits/

Enjoy your flash player.

isset, empty functions of PHP

2009-04-05T14:12:00.000-07:00

Always pay attention to these functions.


$a = 0;
// isset() - treats $a as not empty
if(isset($a))
  echo "a has ".$a;

// empty() - treats $a as empty

having trouble with empty() with the editor

if(empty($a))
echo "a has ".$a;

both functions will display "a has 0".

Reading a file into a string in PHP

2009-04-03T23:59:00.000-07:00

If you'd like to get the entire content of a file into a string then follow the way



// have your filename with path
$file_name = "yourfilename.ext";   
$content_string = file_get_contents($file_name);
echo $content_string;   // will display the content

want to display total chars in the file?


echo strlen($content_string);

To read file into array.


// have your filename with path
$file_name = "yourfilename.ext";  
$content = file($filename);         
foreach($content as $content_row) 
  echo $content_row;

Regex for validating Canada postal code and US zip code

2009-02-05T12:58:00.000-08:00


// checks postal code format L4X-1S9
$regex = '/[a-z][0-9][a-z][- ]?[0-9][a-z][0-9]$/i';
if( preg_match($regex, $zip) )
  echo "Valid postal code";


// checks for 5 digit or 9 digit zip code or 12345-6789
// or 123456789
$regex = '/(^\d{5}$)|(^\d{5}-\d{4}$)|(^\d{9}$)/'
if( preg_match($regex, $zip) )
  echo "Valid Zip code";

Passing a PHP array to Javascript

2009-01-26T06:39:00.001-08:00

PHP array:


$fruits = array("Apple","Mango","Banana");

convert $fruits to Javascript array


echo 'var fruits = new Array("',join($fruits,'","'),'");';

The above statement will convert PHP array to Javascript array. This saves a lot of time.

Registration and Login Script in PHP

2008-11-18T16:24:00.001-08:00

not completed yet

PART 1

Lets create the table structure we need to register our users.


CREATE TABLE members (
member_id int(10) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
first_name varchar(100) NOT NULL,
last_name varchar(100) NOT NULL,
email_address varchar(100) NOT NULL,
date_registered datetime NOT NULL,
last_accessed datetime NOT NULL,
password char(32) NOT NULL,
profile_name varchar(30) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY  (member_id)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;

copy and paste the sql into phpMysqladmin sql window and execute it. You would create a table members in your database.

PART 2

copy and paste the following code into a php file called register.php. If anybody wants to register with your site they have to access through the site.

http://www.yourserver.com/register.php



if($_POST['submit_registration']) {

   // enter your database info here -----

   $db_name =   ;     // find your db name and add it over here
   $user =    ;          // find your db username and add it here
   $password  =   ;    // add your password to the db here


   // check user input and filter them
   $firstname = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['fname']);
   $lastname  = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['lname']);
   $profile   = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['pname']);
   $email     = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['email']);
   $password  = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['password']);
   $cpassword = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['cpassword']);

   if(!$firstname || !$lastname || !$profile || !$email || !$password || !$cpassword) {

         echo "All fields are required, please fill them";
   }
   else {

       // ------------------- DON'T TOUCH BELOW NOW-----------------
        $db_link = @mysql_connect("localhost",$user,$password);

        if($db_link)
              @mysql_select_db($db_name);
        else {
              echo "Error in your db connection, check db_name, user_name and password";
              exit;
        }

 if(!mysql_query("select member_id from members where email='$email' or profile_name='$profile')) {
  $has_success = @mysql_query("insert into members values(null,'$firstname','$lastname','$email',now(),now(),md5($password),'$profile')");
  if($has_success)
   echo "Your registration was successful";
 }
 else
  echo "The profile name / email is already registered");
   }
else {
 // display registration form    
?>


<form method="post">
<table  cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
 <tbody><tr>
  <td>First Name</td>
  <td></td>
  <td><input name="fname" maxlength="255" size="20" value="" type="text"></td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td>Last Name</td>
  <td></td>
  <td><input name="lname" maxlength="255" size="20" value=""  type="text"></td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td>Email</td>
  <td></td>
  <td><input name="email" maxlength="255" size="20" value="" type="text"></td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td>Profile Name</td>
  <td></td>
  <td><input name="pname" maxlength="255" size="20" value="" type="text"></td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td>Password</td>
  <td></td>
  <td><input name="password" maxlength="255" size="20" value="" type="text"></td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td>Confirm Password</td>
  <td></td>
  <td><input name="cpassword" maxlength="255" size="20" value="" type="text"></td>
 </tr>
</tbody></table>
</form>

Registration and Login Script in PHP

2008-11-18T07:55:00.001-08:00



CREATE TABLE members (
  member_id int(10) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
  first_name varchar(100) NOT NULL,
  last_name varchar(100) NOT NULL,
  email_address varchar(100) NOT NULL,
  date_registered datetime NOT NULL,
  last_accessed datetime NOT NULL,
  password char(32) NOT NULL,
  profile_name varchar(30) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (member_id)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;

PHP Introduction

2008-11-15T02:24:00.001-08:00

1.Hello World example

Use any of your favourite text editor and type your first php code and save it with “helloWorld.php”. Upload it to your web server and then execute it.


echo “Hello World”;

to execute : http://www.yourserver.com/helloWorld.php ( place it in the root directory )

semicolon means end of a line.

2.Conditional Check if..else

check for a condition to be true or false. Why do you need to check for conditions? Take a scenario like this. If you are checking the site in the morning I should say "Good morning", so how do we handle this now.


// if time is less than 12'o clock the site would display 
// "Good Morning"
if($time < 12)
   echo "Good Morning";


How do we say good evening now?

if($time < 12)
   echo "Good Morning";
else   // time is more than 12
   echo "Good Evening";

Where are those curly braces? If you use one statement just after the if ..condition then you don't need it but if you have more than one line then you shuld open and close curly braces.


eg: 
if($time < 12) {
   echo "Good Morning";
   $num_of_visits = $num_of_visits + 1;
}

3.Looping

Loop is used to repeat a job as many time you want

while loop


$i=1;
while($i<5) {
   echo “Hello World”.$i;
}

The above code snippet would display
Hello World 1Hello World 2Hello World 3Hello World 4

for…loop


for($i=0; $i<5; $i++)
   echo $i;

The loop will display 01234 as output.

do…while

some times you need your loop to execute at least once regardless of condition


$x = 5;
do {
  echo “Hello World”;
}while($x<5);

though x=5 initially, the loop would execute once because the conditional statement is at the end. When it reaches the end the condition x<5 returns false the loop will not execute any more.

Regex for validating rgb / cymk color code input

2008-10-21T10:49:00.000-07:00


// to validate rgb input
 
static function is_valid_rgb($rgb_values) {
   // format expected is: array(255,125,60)
  if(!is_array($rgb_values) || count($rgb_values) != 3)
     return false;

  foreach($rgb_values as $rgb_value) {
    if(!preg_match('/^[0-9]{1}$|^[0-9]{2}$|^[0-1]{1}[0-9]{1}[0-9]{1}$|^[2]{1}[0-5]{1}[0-5]{1} $/',$rgb_value))
         return false;
  }
  return true;

}  // end of function
 



// to validate cymk input
 
static function is_valid_cymk($cymk_values) {
  
   // format expected is: array(255,125,60,199)
   if(!is_array($cymk_values) || count($cymk_values) != 4)
      return false;
  
  foreach($cymk_values as $cymk_value) {
      if(!preg_match('/^[0-9]{1}$|^[0-9]{2}$|^[0-1]{1}[0-9]{1}[0-9]{1}$|^[2]{1}[0-5]{1}[0-5]{1}$/',$cymk_value))
         return false;
   }
 
   return true;
}