Recently on Kerala News by Asianet, though the wp-simple-tags was there, the posts were not being tagged automatically. And on a detailed check I found it was due to a misconfiguration, and once the same was done properly the tagging started smoothly. But already a set of 8K posts were there with no or unrelated tags mistakes and un awareness of the operators who were posting to the site. Now I wanted these to be tagged properly.
I had already used the word-twit plugin and done some mods to the same, so it was more eaiser for me. Just went through the original code of word-twit and salvaged a small script which is attached here with as download.
require_once( dirname(__FILE__) . '/wp-load.php' );
The code above loads the wordpress system and initializes the wp variables and connects to the database.
global $wpdb;
Makesure we have the database abstraction object from wordpress, to select the posts, and do all the required manipulations on the same.
require_once( ABSPATH . 'wp-includes/class-snoopy.php' );
Include the inbuilt snoopy class, to mimic a web browser with the most simplicity.
Continue reading “Using TagTheNet to generate tags on WordPress”
Category: php
PHP is a general-purpose programming language originally designed for web development. It was originally created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994
function array_flatten
This is not much to brag about, still we had a very large dataset as variable dimensional and variable depth, which we wanted to be sent to a custom function using prototype.js. For the data exchange we use JSON, but the varying depth and related tags, made us to do like hell in the javascript templating that we had to find a method to flatten the array in such a way that each of the associative keys would not be mangled.
The final out come is function array_flatten
function array_flatten($p, $ki = ''){
if($ki !== '') $ki .= '-';
$rv = array();
foreach($p as $k => $v){
if(is_array($v))
$rv = array_merge($rv, array_flatten($v, $ki.$k));
else
$rv[$ki . $k] = $v;
}
return $rv;
}
The flattened dataset, helped us to do rendering in less than half the iterations, and the application response was more better after using this.
Invoke shell from MySQL trigger
No I am not insane, and after a long days search over the wide Internet, even google admitted defeat, there seemed to be no way to do this. Finally I had already dropped the idea or even let off the thing altogether. But recently for another project I needed to check in for an entirely different requirement and stumbled on the fact. And yes I checked it, voila the shell invoke from mysql trigger is possible.
Continue reading “Invoke shell from MySQL trigger”
FLV Streaming with PHP
For pseudostreaming I did see some of the projects and suggestions which used a serverside scripting language, to achieve the same as the plugins or modules for the web server software does. Ports in perl, php and python as well as shell was also found, but all were bloated, that they were not transparent. So I thought I would give a try.
Pseudostreaming is a protocol that can be installed on regular HTTP servers such as Apache, Tomcat, IIS or lighthttpd. It uses a server side script for Flash-to-server communication. The player sends a HTTP request to the server with a start time parameter in the request URL’s query string and the server script responds with the video stream so that its start position corresponds to the requested parameter. This start time parameter is usually named simply start. This same technique is used by the ultra-popular YouTube service which uses lighthttpd servers.
Continue reading “FLV Streaming with PHP”
Scott’s Blog: Stupid Bug Reports
When you make a bug report or feature request to any sort of project please check you have all of the relevant information and if you can get someone else to check it through. Try searching Google first or ask in a mailing list.
For a performance issue check against an older version of PHP to see if you can work out when it was introduced, if you’re not currently testing the CVS version then check that as well. It may have been fixed already. Reports that language X is faster than PHP will also most likely be ignored, these really aren’t constructive and unless you can identify the issue within PHP it’s pointless to create a report.
Scott in his blog continues to write “Finally, don’t get aggressive or be an asshole when your bug reports get closed. PHP is an open source project and most contributors are volunteers. If you don’t like something then you are more than welcome to submit a patch.”
gzip nusoap requests
Recently for a project involving travelport xml api integration, we badly needed the soap requests to be gzipped, since the technical support people suggested. Also we were aware of the benefits of using gzEncoded data when transmitting through the Internet. For the same we checked the wid internet searching with all sort of combinations of gzip nusoap request. Speaking from the inner view, we already had developed a handful of classes to abstract the SubmitXML api provided by Galelio Travelport. And frankly were reluctant to trash all the code already written.
At this point, we swam through the whole code of nusoap.php; should say thanks to easyeclipse, and made some minor tweaks here and there. The following was all that was required, though I doubt if this would be a generic solution, this definitely serves our purpose and the versions we used are 0.7.3/Revision: 1.114.
in class soap_transport_http added property gzipRequests (line 2148)
var $gzipRequests = true; // gzip any requests..
in function buildPayload at the top (line 2799)
if($this->gzipRequests){
$data = gzencode($data);
$this->setHeader("Content-Encoding",'gzip');
}
in function sendRequest (about line 2874), just in case the request is using curl
if($this->gzipRequests){
$data = gzencode($data);
}
PHP; Towards a 5.3 release
Straight from the php internals discussion:
Items on the list as the key features of this release
1) namespaces
Here we need to make sure that the current state is now in a coherent state. I think Derick still has some issues with the recent change by Greg, but even his criticism did not sound all to loud. So I think we are in a good state here?
2) late static binding
Etienne had some questions recently, which were met by criticism by Stas. However all others agreed with the change. So I guess we are solid here too?
3) re2c
Rui recently came to the list with notes on the ZE MB feature.
4) windows support
Ever since Edin disappeared it has become clear that we have a bus factor issue with windows support. The windows team is working to rectify this situation. We need to make sure that the infrastructure to deliver windows binaries for PHP 5.3 as well as PECL extension is in place before we can release 5.3.
5) BC issues
Well this is a bit of an “anti-feature” in the sense its not a task anyone is dedicated to. The point is that we need to make sure that we understand any BC issues we currently have, so that we can either correct them or document them.
These are the 5 areas we the RMs would hope that people focus on.
Thats actually 3 focus areas too many for my taste, but goes to show that we might want to release more often (given that the list for 5.4 is already cramming up).
On top of this we also have a few other changes that are of quite some importance, but that to me will not stop a release if they do not make it (for the extensions we feel that they will be available via PECL for those who really need them now in the worst case). But these are big features non the less that could warrant a new minor release on their own alone if it would be for even bigger stuff:
1) intl extension
Last discussion ended without a decision on the class naming. I specifically remember Derick taking issue with intl ext “invading” the date ext namespace. Stas however arguing that the intl ext is supposed to bring some forwards compatibility to PHP 6 and therefore naturally will need to span the namespaces of other extensions, that are planned to be expanded for PHP 6.
2) phar extension
I guess we are pretty solid here?
3) E_DEPRECATED
Here we just need to make sure that we actually mark only the things as deprecated that we actually want to deprecate. This ties in a bit with the BC issues point above.
4) __callStatic
5) Garbage Collection
So is anything missing? Please everybody take time to review the todo list, make sure that all items are on the list, make sure that the information is as up to date as possible. Finally anyone who’s name is on this list (or who will add himself) should get in contact with Johannes and myself within 1 week (thats July 9th) to explain the state of the todo item and when he can finish the item and what the general impact the feature has on the release. Also please bring up any issues, especially for the above 6 points, to the list and try to focus on solving the issues in a timely manner. We RMs will try to moderate as much as possible, but understand that at some point we will have to have to go with one approach (or in the worst case we might have to push a feature to 5.4).
After July 9th, we will then publish a tentative release plan within 3 days afterwards. The tentative schedule will probably try to move us quickly towards a feature freeze together with a first alpha. Depending on our discoveries we will schedule beta and RC releases (obviously subject to continued review).
protoype.js: Deep Category Select; Ajax
I was experimenting with the prototype.js library, thanks to all who have contributed towards this, and the wonderful documentations avaliable as download, as well as online references.
For a multilevel hierarchical selector of category, where the top levels should not be selectable, the existing ui elements were not enough to show off, with out incurring ambiguity. This led me to do the basic tests, and finalized the said widget. It does not support much now, though I may be working on a extension which will support multi-select.
See the Deep Category Select, in action where it is embedded into an example.
PHP 5.3 upto 30% performance boost
As Johannes Schluter mentions, the results of some benchmarking have been posted concerning the performance of PHP 5.3 versus the current 5.2 series:
Dmitry posted results of performance test comparing PHP 5.2 and 5.3 to internals which are impressive numbers.
The improvements were measured based on several popular pieces of software like Drupal, typo3 and WordPress. The overall performance gian was around thirty percent across the board.
Building File Uploaders :: Object Method
On DevShed there’s a new tutorial showing how to build file upload functionality into your scripts.
If you’re a PHP developer who has built a certain number of web applications, then it’s quite probable that you’ve already worked with HTTP file uploads. […] First I’m going to teach you how to handle file uploads using a procedural approach, and then, with the topic well underway, by way of the object-oriented paradigm.
The introduce the beginners out there to the $_FILES array (a superglobal) that contains the details about the file(s) that have been submitted. Next comes the construction of a simple form and how to handle the submission on the PHP side.