My notepad of things webdev related.
You lost your leading zeros of your varchars importing/exporting your data. You have this example data in your table storagebins:
area = L, row = 1, rack = 2, shelf = 3
and it is supposed to look like this
area = L, row = 001, rack = 02, shelf = 03
Use this SQL to correct this:
UPDATE storagebins SET row=LPAD(row, 3, '0');
UPDATE storagebins SET rack=LPAD(rack, 2, '0');
UPDATE storagebins SET shelf=LPAD(shelf, 2, '0');
I used this hacked Excel-Macro to convert all dates in a selected range from a manual data import using Excel to generate all required INSERTs for our MySql database
In case you wonder, where you can find your Visual-Basic editor and execute your VBA-code… follow these instructions. Here is the code:
Sub PrefixSingleQuoteToRange()
Dim cell As Range
Dim year As String
Dim month As String
Dim day As String
For Each cell In Selection.Cells
' Convert 03.08.2011 16:51:01 to 2011-08-03 16:51:01
year = Mid(DateValue(cell), 7, 4)
month = Mid(DateValue(cell), 4, 2)
day = Mid(DateValue(cell), 1, 2)
cell = "'" & year & "-" & month & "-" & day & " " & TimeValue(cell)
Next
End Sub
If you scratch your head… This is how I ‘generated’ my INSERT-statements:
="INSERT INTO orders (order_id, processing_start_datetime, processing_end_datetime, delivery_datetime, staff_id, store_id, name, phone, comment_order, comment_procession, created_at, updated_at) VALUES ('"&A2&"', '"&B1&"' ,'"&C1&"' ,'"&D1&"' ,'"&E1&"' ,'"&F1&"' ,'"&G1&"' ,'"&H1&"' ,'"&I1&"','"&J1&"','"&K1&"','"&L1&"');"
If you know a smarter way to ‘import’ MSSQL data into MySql, please let me know. And I guess there must be many of them ;).
I hope you geeks out there do any sports regularly despite the common prejudices. I do and I am getting a lot in return. Moving your body in a skilled way running, cycling, swimming, playing whatever is a form of intelligence, gives you new energy for your work, clears your mind and sometimes even delivers unexpected inspiration too.
So, I would like to share a very interesting ‘life hack’ with you in order to have more fun and less pain running and improve distance, endurance and speed at the same time.
What happened: One year ago I simply started running, bought myself a basic set of running gear and exercised once or twice a week – without any training or professional advice. My distances increased during the first months from 2km up to the point where I could run around 10km. My average pace was 6:30min per km at that time (very slow like a power walker). I thought I needed to be as slow as that in order to make the 10km.
Then I registered for a half marathon and tried to increase the distance to 20km – I thought this would just be as simple as getting from zero to 10km. But I couldn’t. It was so exhausting to run 10km or maybe sometimes even 13km. The complete crash came, when I bought myself new running shoes – you know, not the ugliest and not the cheapest ones I could jog around the local running store without thinking that they do not fit well…
Honestly, I frequently read some running magazines and books but never ever came across the things I really needed to know to be able to run a half-marathon without hurting myself.
After the first exercises with the new shoes distances decreased and I felt more and more pain the day after the exercise in my left knee. This must have been the point where most people stop running and do something else! Despite the pain I forced it and got very frustrated. Sometimes it happened, that after 5/8km I made a clumsy step on uneven ground and BANG I had to stop and sometimes take the tram or a taxi or at least take a shortcut and walk back home. Distances I could run decreased rapidly. The last run was just some 100 meters and BOOM. What a mess!
So I went to a doctor, seriously concerned. 5 weeks before my first half-marathon event. This was the first time I heard about pronation and supination and about how this incredibly built foot absorbes the shock from each of your steps when running. The doctor asked me that type of runner I was and I had no f#$%&ng clue what he was talking about. It turned out, that I bought just the wrong shoes for my anatomy. Shocks went directly into my knee causing direct damage there and in my lower back too. Diagnose: irritated knee. Prescription: 2 weeks pause and painkillers. Advice: Beginner, buy yourself the right shoes and make your homework before you ruin your health! The doctor gave me a contact to a good physical therapist and urged me to do some training sessions with him.
A long story, but important to understand where I came from. I would like to share with you geeks what I learned about running and running equipment and I hope to save you from experiencing a similar disaster:
I really hope, to save you from the pain and frustrations I experienced. In the end I finished with the official time of 2:20h on my first half marathon and it will not have been the last one.
Update: Finished 5th www.lucernemarathon.ch (half-distance) on 30.10.2011 in 1:58:40.
Have fun running!
In order to prevent email delivery during development and log all email messages that would have been delivered, you can actually do a simple trick: Replace the file /usr/sbin/sendmail (on Ubuntu, use ‘locate sendmail’ to find it if it lies elsewhere) with this little shell-script, or rather make a _bak of the original and save the following instead of the sendmail binary:
#!/bin/bash LOGDIR="/tmp" PREFIX="sendmail" NOW=$(date +%Y-%m-%dT%H.%M.%S) CNT=1 PRIVATELOG="$LOGDIR/$PREFIX-$NOW.$CNT.log" COMBINEDLOG="$LOGDIR/$PREFIX-combined.log" # If privatelogs are being used... if [ ! -z "$PRIVATELOG" ]; then # ...make sure the filename is unique and create the file while [ -f $PRIVATELOG ]; do CNT=$(($CNT + 1)) PRIVATELOG="$LOGDIR/$PREFIX-$NOW.$CNT.log" done echo "$0 $*" > $PRIVATELOG else # ...otherwise swap filenames PRIVATELOG=$COMBINEDLOG COMBINEDLOG='' fi echo "[$NOW]" >> $PRIVATELOG while read BUF do echo $BUF >> $PRIVATELOG done # Append privatelog to combinedlog when both logs are used if [ ! -z "$COMBINEDLOG" ]; then echo "[$NOW]" >> $COMBINEDLOG cat $PRIVATELOG >> $COMBINEDLOG fi exit 0
When your application now sends mail, these things happen:
Inspired by http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3710864/simulating-sendmail-with-dummy-script
If you are looking for a simple way to display lines like a roundtrip on a map, Google’s Static Maps API might be for you.
Documentation and examples: http://code.google.com/intl/en-US/apis/maps/documentation/staticmaps/
Limits:
- There is a query limit of 1000 unique (different) image requests per viewer per day.
- URLs are restricted to 2048 characters.
Here are some self-explanatory examples:
Using geo-coordinates:
http://maps.google.com/maps/api/staticmap?path=color:0x0000ff|weight:5|49.584486,8.462219|49.441343,8.462219|49.384161,8.654230&size=400x400&sensor=false
Using city names:
http://maps.google.com/maps/api/staticmap?path=color:0x0000ff|weight:5|Stuttgart|Mannheim|Bad Homburg|Frankfurt|Würzburg|Stuttgart&size=500x200&sensor=false
This is how you would use it on your website just use it like a local image:
<img src="http://maps.google.com/maps/api/staticmap?path=color:0x0000ff|weight:5|Stuttgart|Mannheim|Bad Homburg|Frankfurt|Würzburg|Stuttgart&size=500x200&sensor=false" alt="my roundtrip" />
Pretty slick!
In case you need to extract geocoordinates, there are lots of online browser tools available, just click on a spot and copy-paste the coordinates into your static maps-URL:
If you have to deal with very old PHP4 legacy code containing every syntax crime you may know from the early years, how would you handle it? Give it to your junior people to fix it manually? I like to have at least some handy helpers for the first rough corrections. I found sed to be a very powerful helper here.
Code you might encounter - associative array elements without quotes.
I spent quite some time to find useful regular expressions to help me. This is how I did this:
A way to test your regular-expression is to echo a sample and apply your regex to test the results:
echo '$_REQUEST[action] reise_l_topic_ids[] $dat[ticket_order]' | sed "s/\$\([a-zA-Z0-9_]\+\)\[\([a-zA-Z0-9_]\+\)\]/$\1['\2']/g"
Once it works you can apply your regex to one file:
sed -i "s/\$\([a-zA-Z0-9_]\+\)\[\([a-zA-Z0-9_]\+\)\]/$\1['\2']/g" my_old_file.php
Or apply your regex to all *.php-files recursively below the current directory to a whole project:
find . -name "*.php" -exec sed -i "s/\$\([a-zA-Z0-9_]\+\)\[\([a-zA-Z0-9_]\+\)\]/$\1['\2']/g" '{}' \;
By the way: The usage of sed works fine on your linux command line, but not on OSX. The syntax is slightly different here (sed -i “” -e “s/blah/blubb/” file). This is of course only a start to automate otherwise painfull and boring corrections down to just a few seconds. It will not save you from special manual work and break syntax at some points. But it weeds out 90% and leaves you with the other 10% acutal manual work.
You could imagine many more sed regexes e.g. to replace short tags <?=$my_var?> to a proper <?php echo $my_var; ?> etc.
echo '<?=$out?> sakdhs sakdhas k <?php echo $xyz; ?> ddd' | sed "s/<?=/<?php echo /g";
I will collect more regexes as I need and find them. If you have ideas please add them in the comment section.
Set ignore to all files of a directory with subversion:
$ cd cache
$ svn propset svn:ignore '*' .
$ svn ci . -m 'Ignore set on cache dir.'
Show changed files between two revisions, overview
$ svn diff -r 300:HEAD --summarize
Show changed files between two revisions, for each revision:
$ svn log -v -r 300:304
See overall latest 20 commit-messages:
$ svn log -l 20
Branching and merging:
See: http://blog.evanweaver.com/2007/08/15/svn-branching-best-practices-in-practice/
Only grep in php source files, not jpgs, movies etc.:
$ grep -i 'whatever' `find . -name '*.php' -print`
Setup external libraries in subversion:
svn mkdir zendframework-1.11.0;
cd zendframework-1.11.0;
svn propset svn:externals 'Zend http://framework.zend.com/svn/framework/standard/tags/release-1.11.0/library/Zend' .;
svn commit;
svn up;
or
cd libraries;
svn propset svn:externals . Propel http://svn.phpdb.org/tags/1.6.0/runtime/lib/;
svn ci Propel -m 'Added external Propel 1.6';
svn up .;
Correct date problems in a mysql database – 2020 instead of 2011 in YYYY-MM-DD dates:
UPDATE accounts SET member_startdate = CONCAT('2010', '-', MONTH(member_startdate), '-', DAYOFMONTH(member_startdate)) WHERE YEAR(member_startdate) > 2011;
What is it you guys always look up?
This is a receipe how I save stuff to S3 from my Mac:
1.) Signup with S3: http://aws.amazon.com/s3/ (check pricing!). This will give you access to the AWS Management Console.
2.) Create a Bucket: This can be done via the AWS Management console. If you are not familiar with the concept of ‘buckets’ check-out the S3 documentation. Simply put, it is a virtual storage device that has a fixed geographical location.
3.) Go to ‘Security Credentials’ in your account settings in the AWS Management console and create an accesskey.
4.) Download JetS3t. You then have the following directory on your Mac:
/Applications/jets3t-0.7.3
Open the Terminal and change into the bin directory:
$ cd bin;
Create a file named synchronize.properties there:
$ nano synchronize.properties;
and save the following content using your keys from step 3:
accesskey=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX secretkey=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
5.) To sync the contents in the path /Users/marco/MySyncStuff with the bucket myBucketName use this command:
$ ./synchronize.sh UP myBucketName /Users/marco/MySyncStuff/ –properties synchronize.properties;
Of course you can create as many buckets as you like and script and schedule your data syncs now from here as you wish. Use the command
$ ./synchronize.sh –help
to see what the synchronize.sh else has on offer.
6.) Browsing buckets: JetS3t has its own S3 browser. To start and use it do the following:
$ cp cockpitlite.sh cockpitlite.command;
$ ./cockpitlite.command &;
You should see the Java coffee cup on your task bar. Use your keys to log in and browse your buckets.
You can also use the free S3 Browser for Mac.
I recently came across an interesting table comparing typical mindsets of freelancers to those of entrepreneurs, which I immedately printed out and sticked to my refrigerator as a reminder. Since we currently have startup conditions too in our company, I know that it takes a lot of discipline to make adjustments to a mindset that served you well for the last 10 years but now more often gets in your way as daily tasks, priorities and responsibilities (must) change.
| Area | Freelancer / skilled employee |
Entrepreneur |
| Employees, colleagues | I can get stuff done best on my own. | My employees are better trained, specialized and have more skills. |
| Complexity | More complexity makes things more interesting. | Simple things make you more successful. |
| Value in own work | I cost less than my employees, since they get a fixed salary. | My work is the most expensive and should not be wasted. |
| Time | Money has more value to me than time. I spend time to save money. | Time is more valuable than money. I spend money to save time. |
| Money | Money means security. | Money yields opportunity for investments and ventures. |
| Education, learning | My professional development is important to me. | My personal development is most important. |
| Risk | I try to avoid risk whenever I can. | Steps to success are naturally accompanied by risk-taking. Being employed is for example more risky than being an entrepreneur. |
| Mission | My profession is my mission. | My mission is to build a great company and actively build my environment with it. |
| Comfort zone | I am best at, where I feel save and comfortable. | My success and growth both lie exactly where I feel uncomfortable. |
Thanks to Google I also found the source of the table: It is taken from a German blog post titled ‘Warum manche Selbständige nicht zu Unternehmern werden‘ (Why some freelancers never become entrepreneurs).
Hope it helps some of you too.
I have recently been playing with the new MODx (‘Revolution’) and I must say, I love the concept and it’s flexibility. Just to make things easier for folks starting out with MODx or who migrate from MODx Evolution here are some recommended links.
General:
Focus topics:
What I dont like with MODx Revolution is the slow Manager interface based on ExtJS. If you have to go through a longer configuration or exploration session, waiting for the frontend to finish loading can be a drag. But the ajaxy Manager helps you to perform some actions in parallel without you losing your form content, e.g. if you need a href and need to lookup the document-ID you just click on the Resource tab and look it up in the tree.
Overall I must say MODx Revolution makes the expression to me like a very well crafted, cutting-edge and thought through CMS. Congratulations and many thanks to all contributors! You are awesome!
Just in case somebody has a similar problem… Coming mainly from MySql I had to deal with some MsSql/SQL Server specialties. Consider the following working SQL for MsSql:
SELECT AK.AK_TEXT, BU.BUDGET_BEREICH ,TY.AKTIONSTYP_TEXT ,AK.AK_STARTDATUM ,AK.AK_ENDEDATUM
FROM AKTIONEN AS AK WITH (nolock)
LEFT JOIN BUDGET_TRAEGER AS BU
ON AK.AK_BUDGET_NUMMER=BU.BUDGET_NUMMER
LEFT JOIN AKTIONSTYP AS TY
ON AK.AK_TYP=TY.AKTIONSTYP_TYP
LEFT JOIN AKTIONEN_FILIALE AS AF
ON AK.AK_LFDNR=AF.AF_LFDNR
WHERE (
( AK.AK_ENDEDATUM<=CAST('2010-06-30' AS smalldatetime)
AND AK.AK_ENDEDATUM>=CAST('2010-01-01' AS smalldatetime)
)
OR ( AK.AK_STARTDATUM<=CAST('2010-06-30' AS smalldatetime)
AND AK.AK_STARTDATUM>=CAST('2010-01-01' AS smalldatetime)
)
)
GROUP BY AK.AK_TEXT, BU.BUDGET_BEREICH ,TY.AKTIONSTYP_TEXT ,AK.AK_STARTDATUM ,AK.AK_ENDEDATUM;
Interesting parts explained:
(a) The addition ‘WITH (nolock)’ prevents my application from locking the table during select queries.
(b) The fields from which I liked to select a bunch of records touching a daterange between AK_STARTDATUM and AK_ENDEDATUM were of the fieldtype ‘smalldatetime’. This is some strage SQL Server format. It needs to be converted to with the CAST() function in order to return the expected resultsets. It understands several input formats. You can test the correct conversion with a simplified SQL statement like this: SELECT CAST(’2010-03-29′ AS smalldatetime);
(c) The statement will not work and return an error if you do not include ALL your selected fields also in the GROUP BY clause.
Since feedback is a form of communication, excessive feedback will have the effect like an explosion in communication paths and will eventually produce more noise than signal.
Any feedback loop in the system must help facilitate the management of change and efficiently adapt requirements along the the way. If this is not the case for a feedbackloop, folks will try to avoid it.
As developers we also experience a decrease in quality and value of feedback if it is not immediate enough and/or requires too much effort from a team member to receive it. So most of the feedbackloops are built right into modern software development. Take a look at the following list of areas where a software development team or team member receives feedback in different forms:
I hope this article serves you as a short reminder for where and how feedback can create value in your software projects. And remember: Software is written by humans and feedback is the opposite of thought-reading, which often leads to unnecessary friction and pain.
Interesting Links:
I have just received a new book: “Apprenticeship Patterns“: Skimming through the first pages I noticed the words in the 3rd column extending from the points in the 2nd column and thought, ‘Hmm, I have heard about these 2nd column points’…
The following table popped up in my mind, which I would like to share with you:
Software development practices:
| Traditional <2000 |
Agile Manifesto 2001 |
Craftsman Manifesto 2010 |
| processes and tools | Individuals and interactions | but also a community of professionals |
| comprehensive documentation | Working software | but also well-crafted software |
| contract negotiation | Customer collaboration | but also productive partnerships |
| following a plan | Responding to change | but also steadily adding value |
Any ideas for a 4th column? Looking forward to actually reading the book…
We have just had the case of having ftp access to a site on a shared hosting LAMP webspace but needed also the database and mainly the database scheme to setup our own development-system for the app. This is actually very straight forward using the following snippet uploaded and executed on the webserver:
<?php
exec( 'mysqldump -h dbXXX.1und1.de -u dboYYY -pZZZ dbYYY > dump.sql', $ret );
var_dump($ret);
This is what you do:
If it does not work try something like “exec(‘ls -la’);”. If you see the contents of the directory you can use the exec-function and the problem is something else.
Happy hacking!
Recursively remove all .svn directories from a working copy:
find . -name .svn -exec rm -rf {} \;
Recursively remove all ._xyz-files (OSX meta file info) from your WebDav-Drive, set via hourly cron:
find /var/data/ -name "._*" -exec rm {} \;
Do not forget to set your path ;).
Check for syntax-errors (lint) in all php-files of current directory and only echo error messages if errors have been detected:
find . -name "*.php" -exec php -l {} \; | grep -v 'No syntax errors'
This is just a link to a very good tutorial on how to make your own SVN post-commit hook using a PHP script. It sends the following information via email:
http://techchorus.net/writing-php-script-send-svn-commit-changeset-email-notification
I recently played the ballpoint game for the first time and was impressed…
You can find various explanations on how the ballpoint game is organized and played.
Here is a nice video that illustrates what happens through the iterations: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4-El7gJuZE
Thanks to Stefan and René for the inspiration!
It is not brand new but still a very interesting talk: Robert Lefkowitz on open source software development methodologies with lots of nice anecdotes.
Watch the 21min video: http://oscon.blip.tv/file/1108217/
Or listen to the audio: http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3995.html
I just hacked together the following quick and dirty PHP-script to use the tidy-extension from the command line. Maybe somebody else needs something like this somewhere. Check the comment for details:
<?php
//
// (a) Save this as tidy.php
// (b) Call it from commandline like this: $ php tidy.php trashed.html > tidy.html
// to tidy the file trashed.html to a new file tidy.html.
//
// Installation and configuration see http://php.net/tidy
$config = array('indent'=> true, 'output-xhtml' => true, 'wrap'=> 200);
$tidy = new tidy;
$tidy->parseString(file_get_contents($_SERVER['argv'][1]), $config, 'utf8');
$tidy->cleanRepair();
echo $tidy;
Since one of my coolest (private) projects www.lsis.com somewhat lacks the expected amount of traffic, I would like to emphasize the core feature in this blobpost – just to make you aware of it or encourage you to tell your friends or have ideas to apply the concept to other areas.
In short LSIS – Life Science Information Service – on a daily basis crawls a list of essential news sources in the field of life sciences and indexes this content after applying a series of quality measures. You can traditionally serach from our search frontend OR save your searches once you are comfortable with the results. You can then give your ‘channel‘ an name and decide if you would like to get new articles matching your saved query pushed onto your email stack or subscribe to it via RSS-link and process it with all your other industry feeds in the feed reader of your choice. All this is completely for free and anonymous!
After seraching the current content you are provided a 'Save Search' button. It let's you save your individual, private and free channel.
You can also browse a series of existing channels, which are preset saved searches of current life-science buzz-topics and subscribe to as many as you like via email or RSS.
Let’s say you are interested in
and whatever else you might want to monitor just save yourself a query and start being alerted on a daily basis – make your colleagues wonder what cool up-to-date industry guru you are.
Browse existing channels, find RSS feeds or subscribe to get reports pushed via email.
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