Monthly Archives: July 2009

JSON and CakePHP

Last few articles in this blog are only for stupid problems and unfortunately this one will be the same.

I had to use JSON to update some chained select boxes. I am using one jQuery plugin for this. The problem is that if you code, most likely your debug setting in the core.php file is set to 1 (or 2). This way the developer can see errors from CakePHP.

When the level is set to 1, at the end of the page, there is an comment, displaying the processing time for the page, but when you use JSON, this comment causes troubles (probably, because JSON doesn’t accept this type of comments) and the JS fail to process the response.

In order to check JSON, I needed to disable set debug level to 0 and after this to reset it again to 1 (for debugging purposes in other parts of the application).

So, the conclusion: bear in mind, that JSON doesn’t like HTML comments.

Hope this helps.

linxspy.com – track your links

Today I want to present you a small service which I wrote for a week /including the design/. πŸ™‚

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? πŸ™‚

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. πŸ™‚

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.

Script tag and attributes

I’ve lost precious time wondering why a Javascript code is working properly in FireFox, while on IE it’s not working at all. First thought was that the script is incompatible, but the final result was pretty stupid.

The reason:
The script tag was written this way:

<script type="application/x-javascript">
....
</script>

changing the type attribute to “text/javascript” do the magic:

<script type="text/javascript">
....
</script>

The first code is created from autocomplete snipped in Komodo Editor. So, use “text/javascript” type attribute in order to reduce headaches πŸ™‚