We’re excited to announce that OpenCal has been acquired and is now part of Groupon! This is an opportunity to bring our innovative online appointment booking platform to a broad set of merchants and consumers world-wide.

Felicitari Simon! Felicitari Arash! La 1 an de la lansare, OpenCal devine Groupon Scheduler.

Ce inseamna OpenCal pentru mine?

- cel mai huge proiect lansat (a se citi dezvoltat from scratch) so far;
- aproape 1 an de munca;
- cel mai stufos si bine pus la punct caiet de specificatii (thanks Simon & Arash);
- cea mai buna experienta de lucru (thanks Arash & Simon);
- “Count bugs if you can’t sleep.” (c) Arash;
- 300K linii de cod;
- 2193 revizii SVN;

De citit!

http://opencal.com/blog/opencal-groupon-scheduler/

http://www.groupon.com/blog/cities/announcing-groupon-scheduler/

http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/07/groupon-debuts-scheduler-to-streamline-online-bookings-for-merchants-consumers/

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20111207005838/en/Groupon-Announces-Groupon-Scheduler-Easy-Appointment-Management

FirePHP “enables you to log to your Firebug Console using a simple PHP method call. All data is sent via response headers and will not interfere with the content on your page. FirePHP is ideally suited for AJAX development where clean JSON and XML responses are required.”

Using it with Codeigniter is very simple. First download FirePHP core library. Look inside newly downloaded zip file and extract from there FirePHP.class.php (you can find it inside FirePHPCore/lib/FirePHPCore/).

Rename FirePHP.class.php to firephp.php and move it or upload it to your Codeigniter system/application/libraries/ folder.

Using it is very simple. Just load it in your controller and start using it.

	class Welcome extends Controller {

		function __construct() {
			parent::Controller();

			$this->load->library('firephp')
		}

		function index() {

			$this->firephp->log("Log");
			$this->firephp->info("Info");
			$this->firephp->error("Error");
		}

 	}

Now take a look on FireBug console and you should see something like that

This is a basic example usage. A more advanced usage is available inside MY_Controller (enable it for certain ip or group log messages together).

Download MY_Controller (250)

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/python-dev/ppa/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/python-dev/ppa/ubuntu hardy main

Import the pub key

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys D81367B9

Install python2.6

sudo apt-get install python2.6

February 28, 2010

1. Debugging with FirePHP (url)

February 05, 2010

1. Constants in MySQL Database (url)

Uptime 99.90%,  Downtime 0h 45m 01s, Response time 172 ms, Outages 8

LimeHost 01 Jan – 31 Jan 2009

Uptime 98.91%,  Downtime 8h 05m 00s, Response time 128 ms, Outages 10

First thing first .. We have to create a database table. Let’s name it app_constants

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `app_constants` (
  `name` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
  `value` text NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`name`),
  UNIQUE KEY `UNIQUE` (`name`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

This is self explanatory. name row will keep our constant name and the value row will keep the constant value. Let’s move ahead and create the functions which will get the constants from Database and initialize them.

		/**
		 * Initialize DB Constants
		 */
		function initConstant() {

			foreach ($this->_getConstant() as $data) {

				$data = get_object_vars($data);
				define($data['name'], $data['value']);
			}

			/**
			 * This is a good place for your IS_AJAX constant (if used)
			 */
			define('IS_AJAX', isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH']) && strtolower($_SERVER['HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH']) == 'xmlhttprequest');
		}

		/**
		 * Get constants from DB
		 */
		function _getConstant() {
			return $this->db->select()->from('app_constants')->get()->result();
		}

That’s it. Keep in mind that this have to be executed earlier using hooks or in your MY_Controller (One controller to rule them all)

I spent last hour working on a CodeIgniter CSV (Comma Separated Values) parser library for a project I’m working on. It use PHP built in function fgetcsv(). The result is a multi-dimensional array.

	class Csv {

		private $file_name = '';
		private $parse_header = FALSE;
		private $delimiter = ',';
		private $length = 0;

		private $header;
		private $file_pointer;

		function __construct($config = array()) {

			if(count($config > 0)) {
				$this->initialize($config);
			}

			log_message('debug', "CSV Class Initialized");
		}

		function initialize($config = array()) {

			foreach($config as $key => $val) {

				if(isset($this->$key)) {
					$this->$key = $val;
				}

			}

			if(is_file($this->file_name))
				$this->file_pointer = fopen($this->file_name, 'r');

			if($this->parse_header) {
				$this->header = fgetcsv($this->file_pointer, $this->length, $this->delimiter);
			}
		}

		function parse() {

			$data = array();

			while(($row = fgetcsv($this->file_pointer, $this->length, $this->delimiter)) !== FALSE) {
				if($this->parse_header) {

					foreach ($this->header as $i => $heading_i)
						$row_new[$heading_i] = $row[$i];

					$data[] = $row_new;
				} else
					$data[] = $row;
			}

			return $data;
		}

		function __destruct() {

			if($this->file_pointer) {
				fclose($this->file_pointer);
			}
		}
	}

For usage, save this library in system/libraries/ or system/application/libraries/ and load it into your controller.

$this->load->library('csv', $params);

Usage example:

Let’s suppose we have a CSV file contains data like this.

Id,Name,Category,Price
1,iPhone,Mobile,300
2,iMac,Desktop,529
3,MacBook,Mobile,2000
4,iTouch,Gadgets,157
5,Wii,Gaming,1250

Load the library

	$params = array(
		'file_name' => '/path/to/csv/file.csv',
		'delimiter' => ',',
		'parse_header' => false,
	);

	$this->load->library('csv', $params);

	var_dump($this->csv->parse());

This is the result with parse_header FALSE

    array
      0 =>
        array
          0 => string 'Id' (length=2)
          1 => string 'Name' (length=4)
          2 => string 'Category' (length=8)
          3 => string 'Price' (length=5)
      1 =>
        array
          0 => string '1' (length=1)
          1 => string 'iPhone' (length=6)
          2 => string 'Mobile' (length=6)
          3 => string '300' (length=3)
      2 =>
        array
          0 => string '2' (length=1)
          1 => string 'iMac' (length=4)
          2 => string 'Desktop' (length=7)
          3 => string '529' (length=3)
      3 =>
        array
          0 => string '3' (length=1)
          1 => string 'MacBook' (length=7)
          2 => string 'Mobile' (length=6)
          3 => string '2000' (length=4)
      4 =>
        array
          0 => string '4' (length=1)
          1 => string 'iTouch' (length=6)
          2 => string 'Gadgets' (length=7)
          3 => string '157' (length=3)
      5 =>
        array
          0 => string '5' (length=1)
          1 => string 'Wii' (length=3)
          2 => string 'Gaming' (length=6)
          3 => string '1250' (length=4)

and the result with parse_header TRUE

    array
      0 =>
        array
          'Id' => string '1' (length=1)
          'Name' => string 'iPhone' (length=6)
          'Category' => string 'Mobile' (length=6)
          'Price' => string '300' (length=3)
      1 =>
        array
          'Id' => string '2' (length=1)
          'Name' => string 'iMac' (length=4)
          'Category' => string 'Desktop' (length=7)
          'Price' => string '529' (length=3)
      2 =>
        array
          'Id' => string '3' (length=1)
          'Name' => string 'MacBook' (length=7)
          'Category' => string 'Mobile' (length=6)
          'Price' => string '2000' (length=4)
      3 =>
        array
          'Id' => string '4' (length=1)
          'Name' => string 'iTouch' (length=6)
          'Category' => string 'Gadgets' (length=7)
          'Price' => string '157' (length=3)
      4 =>
        array
          'Id' => string '5' (length=1)
          'Name' => string 'Wii' (length=3)
          'Category' => string 'Gaming' (length=6)
          'Price' => string '1250' (length=4)

Download CodeIgniter CSV file parser Library (185).

Joomla! is not offering natively anything for such thing and i had to find quickly a solution to fix this.

First solution, was to add these lines

$session =& JFactory::getSession();

$uri->setVar($session->getName(), $session->getId());

in includes/router.php, function build, before

return $uri;

Second solution, was fixing this with a plugin

	// no direct access
	defined( '_JEXEC' ) or die( 'Restricted access' );

	jimport( 'joomla.plugin.plugin' );

	class plgSystemSid extends JPlugin {

		function onAfterInitialise() {

			// Get application
			$application =& JFactory::getApplication();

			// Get router
			$router =& $application->getRouter();

			// Add the SID rule
			$router->attachBuildRule(array(&$this, 'addSidToUri'));
		}

		function addSidToUri(&$router, &$uri) {

			// Add SID to query
			$session =& JFactory::getSession();
			$uri->setVar($session->getName(), $session->getId());
		}

	}

Download Joomla! SID to URI (142) plugin.