Archive for the ‘Labs’ category

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CakePHP: CakeMenu plugin

September 1st, 2010

I am using it for a while, but today I’ve decided to publish in the github.com.

What this plugin does?

The plugin is complete solution to add menu in your applications. It uses the nifty Superfish – jQuery menu plugin. You can find more info for it at http://users.tpg.com.au/j_birch/plugins/superfish/

Cakemenu can work with multilevel menus and reduces the database calls by caching the menu nodes. The plugin working with Authake plugin if you need to apply filter to menu nodes (user need to see only allowed locations)

Cakemenu working with CakePHP 1.2 but it’s tested with Cakephp 1.3 (RC3) and it would not have any problems with the future releases so far.

Requirements

  • CakePHP 1.3 (of course)
  • jQuery in the head tag
  • Authake (optional) if you require your menu nodes to be filtered when user with limited privileges is logged in. Actually it’s possible to use other authorization class, but you have to extend it.

I believe that’s it. Check the large README file in the project’s directory.

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Posted in CakePHP, Development, Labs, PHP

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isUnique validation of limited length field

July 24th, 2010

Working on a project I had following problem.

I had to set isUnique validation of a field. The field has VARCHAR(10) type. When I save the data the “isUnique” validation doesn’t work as expected while I was sure that the there is such record in the database. Digging through the problem it turn out that the problem is in the length of the DB column.

Let me explain. The field was length 10, but in the form I’ve put the value which is 11 characters long, so when the first data is submitted instead of the 11 characters, only 10 are saved in the DB table. My value was 456-23-2010 while in the db it’s saved 456-23-201.

So when inserting the new data the script checks 456-23-2010 against the database where is stored 456-23-201. and of course it passes the validation. While on the edit action strangely it appear that the value it is not unique any more (because there are already 2 records 456-23-201 in the db. :)

A little bit tricky, because at first glance the data is almost the same. For sure if the inserted string was large than the saved in the DB I would spot it easily, but to me the number was really the same.

There are 2 possible ways where I would think how to solve this problem in the future: Either modifying the Bake template for my applications, or using better validation technique – where the value is trimmed up to length of the field.

I was wondering what would be the better way?

3 comments »

Posted in CakePHP, Labs

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Online html to pdf tool

June 27th, 2010

html to pdf converter I just want to present a new tool for converting HTML to PDF – html-2-pdf.com. It’s basically an online converter which could transform any* web site to a PDF document. Generally it could be useful if you want to print a website, or for example if you want to save the content of the website for offline reading.

The site is really simple – just insert the address of the web page which you want to be converted and few seconds after that it is ready to be downloaded. The site is just an interface of the amazing wkhtmltopdf library.

I am open for suggestions about the functionality of the site.

* – for some reasons there are web sites which are not converted correctly. This is because of HTTP headers which these sites restricting.

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Posted in CakePHP, Development, Labs, Tools

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Careful with the links in the layout

April 24th, 2010

When you building application most likely there are common links within the layout. They could be in a menu, or let’s say “edit profile” and ‘logout’ links which are visible everywhere. As you probably know if you use Html Helper the link could be either Cake-relative URL or array of URL parameters.

The problem may occur if you using the second option – the array.
» Read more: Careful with the links in the layout

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Posted in CakePHP, Development, Labs

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How to – layout with fixed sidebar

March 13th, 2010

Today I was working on a page layout where a page width had to be fluid, while the sidebar had to be with fixed width. So here is my solution:

The layout looked like this in the beginning:

Layout

» Read more: How to – layout with fixed sidebar

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Posted in Development, Labs

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Problem with mysql_real_escape_string when Sanitize your data.

February 28th, 2010

When building applications is always smart to check and clean the user input. This is a must when you building a website or public application.

I create always an instance of Sanitize class in my AppController and then using it in all of my controllers like this
» Read more: Problem with mysql_real_escape_string when Sanitize your data.

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Posted in CakePHP, Development, General, Labs, PHP

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Detecting if the cookies are enabled with PHP

January 16th, 2010

For my current project I need a detection if the cookies are enabled or not in the user’s browser.

The easiest way to do this is by using this code:

<?php
setcookie('test', 1, time()+3600);
if(!isset($_GET['cookies'])){
    header('Location:/info.php?cookies=true');
}
if(count($_COOKIE) > 0){
    echo "Cookies are yummy!";
} else {
    echo "You didn't bring any cookies here. We are hungry!";
}
?>

The CakePHP way is almost similar:

<?php
$this->Cookie->write('test', 1);
if(!isset($_GET['cookies'])){
    header('Location:/info.php?cookies=true');
}
if(count($_COOKIE) > 0){
    echo "Cookies are yummy!";
} else {
    echo "You didn't bring any cookies here. We are hungry!";
}
?>

Ok, it’s not rocket science, but it helps :)

2 comments »

Posted in JavaScript, Labs, PHP

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How to use aggregation SQL functions with CakePHP

September 10th, 2009

Have you ever wondering how to find MAX, MIN or AVG of a database table column in CakePHP way? Well I haven’t since yesterday. The solution is quite simple and obvious.

Lets say you want to show the average views per post (in the example we have the views field in every post).
The SQL should be something like this:

SELECT AVG(views) FROM posts

Instead of using query() function you can use the CakePHP way:

$this->Post->find('first', array('fields'=>array('AVG(views) as avg_views')));

Hope this will help someone.

2 comments »

Posted in CakePHP, Development, General, Labs, PHP

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linxspy.com – track your links

July 17th, 2009

Today I want to present you a small service which I wrote for a week /including the design/. :)

I’ve wrote it, because few times I’ve exchanged some links with strangers and few weeks after this, my link was disappeared from their sites while their was on mine. It is a bit unfair isn’t it? I know that link exchange is not promoted from Google, but people still do it. Do you? :)

The service is called Linxspy.com and in general it is a simple interface, where you can define your links and partner’s websites. On a regular basis /at this moment every week/, the service will check the partner site and will look for your link. If everything is ok and link is there, no action will be taken, but if the link is missing, you will be notified by mail.

It should be very usefull for web masters which exchanging or buying links with unknown or not well known partners.

Basically if everything is cool with your partners, you should forget about Linxspy, because it will bother you only for troubles. :)

A little bit for implementation: As I said it was build for a week and as you probably guess it’s CakePHP app. On this project I’ve used Console Shell interface for triggering the weekly check.

Here you could find more information on about the service page

Here are some screenshots from Linxspy:

Hope it would be useful for you.

4 comments »

Posted in CakePHP, Development, Labs, PHP

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CakePHP ajaxed pagination and sort

May 16th, 2009

Here I will describe how I did an Ajaxed pagination for one of my projects using jQuery and Livequery Plugin. Currently I am working on a huge project which, hopefully, will feed me with some ideas for blog posts and this is one of them :) . So:

1. Loading the javascript libs

Loading the jQuery and Livequery was done by Autoloader helper, but if you don’t use it just include jQuery and Livequery in your layout with following code

<?php
echo $javascript->link('jquery.min');
echo $javascript->link('plugins/jquery.livequery');
?>

» Read more: CakePHP ajaxed pagination and sort

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Posted in CakePHP, Development, General, JavaScript, Labs

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