Category Archives: PHP

CakePHP: CakeMenu plugin

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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.

CakePHP: Authake plugin with installation guide

Finally the Authake Plugin have an Installation guide.

Basically the plugin provide Authentication and Authorization functionality for CakePHP’s appliation with few line of code. Authake has advanced User-Group-Role interface and allow you to secure your CakePHP’s application within a minute.

The current version of the Plugin is “wrapped” in a single folder (according to CakePHP 1.3 conventions) under the Plugins.

Update: This plugin has been addapted for CakePHP 2.0 by Mutlu Tevfik Kocak. Please use his repository for actual version of the plugin. https://github.com/mtkocak/authake

Problem with mysql_real_escape_string when Sanitize your data.

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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
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Detecting if the cookies are enabled with PHP

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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 πŸ™‚

Web based CakePHP Project generation tool

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Yesterday I found a tool which could be handy for rookie CakePHP developers. Atlas is a web code generator based in CakePHP. As a glance it’s a web alternative of CakePHP bake console which is a nice idea indeed.

My first impression was that tool is like diamond in the mud and I was wondering how I didn’t hear about this tool till now, but after installing I realized that it’s not so good as it looked like.

Why?

The first problem occurs in the generation of my first project – I’ve got a error message in Spanish which I couldn’t understand. I had to use Google translate for it, but after the translation, the message still doesn’t say much – “Failed to generate project skeleton”.

After debugging the code figuring out why this error means, I found that the application uses backslash as directory separator (\) ?!? and of course this lead to directories and files with strange names like /var/www/ctest\app\controllers directories where ctest\app\controllers was the full name of the directory :). I am on Ubuntu Desktop machine where backslash is not a directory separator.

Pros and Cons about this tool:

Pros:

  • Very nice interface – really big point for Atlas
  • It should work properly on windows environment and based on the features list and screenshots it quite intuitive.
  • I like web based development everything is in your web browser, so another big plus.

Cons

  • Not working as expected – the backslash problem described above
  • If you are not Spanish speaking person – you are in the middle of nowhere when you see error like this: Error: no se ha podido generar el esqueleto del proyecto
  • No documentation at all. I had to look in the code in order to get idea why I cannot create a project – Not clear labels (or at least no hints). Probably a hint like: Directory (enter a full path to the empty directory under htdocs) or similar could help a lot.

The conclusion:
Atlas looking like promising tool, still it’s far from the final version, but it’s worth to try it in Windows environment. πŸ™‚ I definitely will follow that project in the future, so hopefully I could use it one day πŸ™‚

How to use aggregation SQL functions with CakePHP

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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.

JSON and CakePHP

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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

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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.

Passing variables to all Models from the Controller – strict MVC way

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It’s really easy to find inspiration when you developing on CakePHP. For the current project I need to create global (for all models) behavior which stores creator and modifier as well as deleter and deleted (for soft-delete).

What are the requirements

1. For every table (or at least the most of them) there are fields 6 fields:

  • creator (int) – user who create the the record
  • created (datetime) – date when the record was created
  • modifier (int) – user who modified the the record
  • modified (datetime) – date when the record was modified
  • deleter (int) – user who delete the the record
  • deleted (datetime) – date when the record was modified

2. Some tables doesn’t have such fields (like aros, acos, settings etc), so it should update tables which has such fields.

I’ve seen Soft Deletable Behavior as well as recently added WhoDidIt behavior, but I don’t like the approach of using _SESSION. I’ve also decided to use datetime field to determine if the record is active (field deleted is NULL) or deleted (if the field is set with date).

So the result was – I’ve write my own behavior who serves this.
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