I was asked to provide an introduction to PhoneGap, PhoneGap Build and generally the whole idea of developing mobile application for many mobile platforms from single source code, using HTML, Javascript and PhoneGap mobile framework. This article is a summary of this introduction. Read More “A quick introduction to PhoneGap”
There are certain drawing and graphic libraries in Javascript that can be considered for:
(gauges can be used in limited manner on the website as well).
This article deals with most interesting ones that you may consider for above purposes.
Read More “A library for gauges, charts or data visualisation”
Reverse geolocation is a process of obtaining certain geographical information (like street name, city, country etc.) based on geographical coordinates only.
OpenStreet Maps offers a cool looking (at least at first sight) reverse geocoder that can feed your application or website with a valuable geolocation data. However, as you go deeper in to the details, more cons over pros can appear.
Read More “Reverse geolocation with OpenStreet Maps reverse geocoder. Pros and cons”
The correct URL should be like that:
http://[HOST_AND_PATH]/index.php?db=[DB_NAME]#PMAURL-1:db_structure.php?db=[DB_NAME]I found this path to work in any conditions. After logging-in with this path, user should see phpMyAdmin open with pre-selected database ([DB_NAME]) and should see that database’s tables list, not pMA‘s home screen.
And, as I just verified this, it works even on as old phpMyAdmin as version 2.11.3.
You must be a member of Google APIs Console and obtain a valid API to embed Google Maps into your website or web application. That’s a well known fact.
Not everyone knows that this is required only, if you want to embed a fully-featured Google Maps, i.e. with ability to scroll, zoom, use markers, calculate routes etc. For embedding a static image of Google Maps showing requested location you don’t need API and required Javascript code is nearly a one-liner.
Read More “Static map from Google with no API key required [updated]”This is the ultimate (at least for me! :]) solution to configuring mail sending in your XAMPP. Verified and confirmed that this is working. If you go through these steps and still have no results, I’m 95% sure, that problem is outside XAMPP or sendmail (i.e. something is wrong with your configuration). I hope, I don’t have to remind you, that every wise guy uses XAMPP only for development purposes and never, ever as stand-alone, production, webserver!
Do not get confused! This article is about fake sendmail, a solution designed for development environments, like XAMPP, to mimic mail delivery subsystem for developers, that is found on production servers. This text has nothing to do with original sendmail, world famous MTA, started 1979 (25 years before fake sendmail!) and still widely used on production servers and anywhere else in hosting area.
I needed a brief memo-like article, gathering most important information about Yii logging system. Here it is.
Message logging mechanism in Yii 1.x is available out of the box, but needs proper configuration to become enabled in your application. For details, read appropriate article in Yii 1.x guide.
When you round any float number to integer, rounding function (for example floor) still returns float type variable! What?
Well… on second thought, this is reasonable (and explained). PHP does it, because “the value range of float is usually bigger than that of integer“.
So, for example, if you would try to round a number bigger, that integer type can handle (> 2 147 483 647), PHP wouldn’t be able to do anything with the result of such rounding, if it would return it as integer.
If you use CLinkColumn to render links in any column then you loose an ability to sort entire CGridView by that link-containing column.
To work-around this problem render link in your cells using your own function and do not use CLinkColumn.
I really like some simple extensions and changes to command line in Linux. An ability to enable command auto-complete, commands history navigation and changing prompts look in particular.
However, not every console is suited with these changes, so I wrote this simple article to keep all my how-tos around Linux command line in one place.
Read More “Change prompt and enable command auto-completion [updated]”
Connection to LDAP in PHP isn’t that easy task by itself. Things get even more complicated, if you’re working in XAMPP environment under Windows. It hope this article will help you in getting un-stuck, if you’re stuck on the similar things, as I did.
Notice: solution provided in this article may not work for you! It worked on my office computer and failed completely on my home computer, though both are quite similar (same version of Windows and XAMPP etc.).
Since, we’re talking about very stupid system (Windows) and about even more stupid situation (claiming, that file is not found, though it exists in folder listed in PATH variable), I have no bloody idea, why it doesn’t work (or why it does work on certain computers) and how to solve this problem.
Read More “Enable LDAP support in PHP served under XAMPP and Windows”
I found two quite interesting examples at Stack Overflow about two-way encrytion / hashing in PHP. While two-way encryption is never as secure as one-way version (some claim, that two-way encryption methods are not secure at all), it is still a good alternative to not using encryption at all. For certain simple tasks, you may find it quite useful.
I have received a PM message at Yii forum asking about possibility of transferring (via HTTP upload) files with non-English characters in filename. In this particular example, a Greek and Chinese (and English), but with option to support all the languages, that exists.
Conclusion: No f*ing way! But, if you wish to read something more about this, follow with this article.
Read More “Never allow users to transfer files with non-Latin characters in name”
Here comes comparison in version control systems and project management tools. I’m going to compare cloud-hosted BitBucket with self-hosted Redmine. As some of you may already expect, the result can be only one.
For me, personally, BitBucket is an absolute, undoubted winner in this field.
Read More “BitBucket vs. Redmine — VCS and repo management tools compare”
Just wanted to keep for personal reasons my best scores achieved in my beloved Android game — Puzzle Forge by Tuesday Quest.
The game is so fabulous that it took me one and a half year of playing and caused me loosing a lot of dollars. Fortunately, this went (in most part) for supporting developers of this great game.
And, yes… I also found a nasty bug! :>
Read More “Puzzle Forge”On certain systems and LDAP configurations you are required to use two-step login approach. It goes like this:
$bind = @ldap_bind($connection);.ldap_search for a given username. Search will return you a valid user’s DN (or NULL, if user does not exist).ldap_bind, this time attempting to actually login user.Thus, in this approach you are not constructing your own DN, but relying on returned one instead.
Many PHP developers believes, that PHP is purely request-response language, that can generate exactly one respone to each request. In other words, that it is impossible to write timed PHP scripts. The ones, that does something in portions and return many results to one request. Well, that is not quite true.
Here is the list of 197 countries in the world, split by five continents, put as simple, not formatted list (for future use as data for some form or selection) and as HTML code.
Note, that this list contains only “full featured” countries, without any dependent territories, special municipalities, incorporated territories etc. So, you won’t find here many of the Oceania’s or Antarctic islands. Also very small, Caribbean-based dependent territories are not listed here.
Note also, that this list contains both North America’s and South’s America’s contries put together.
Read More “List of all countries in the world, split by continent”
First define, what do you mean, by “large” and “huge”? In this post I present the quickest solution of using file chunking. It works fine (tested!) for files of size up to 2 GB. If this is enough for you, fine — go ahead. If you need to download something bigger, consider using mod-xsendfile (only on Apache — more here and here).
Chunking files is the fastest / simplest method in PHP, if you can’t or don’t want to make use of something a bit more professional like cURL, mod-xsendfile on Apache or some dedicated script.
I decided to migrate from GitHub to BitBucket purely for economic reasons.
On GitHub I can’t have any private repository in my free account. I have to pay for every non-open source project that I host there. On BitBucket I can have unlimited number of private repos and I’m only paying for users, that has access to each of my repository (first five users are free).
Read More “BitBucket vs. GitHub — VCS and repo management tools compare”
There’s an convinient and quite easy way to get yourself back to work, once you stucked with something really stupid (most likely — changes’ dependencies, a Gerrit’s Prime Hell) and everything else fails. It is a brute-force mode, that actually don’t mess too much and may help in amy hopeless situations.
Read More “Gerrit’s brute-force mode, if everything else fails”
This text is a summary of my “Should I commit .gitignore file” question, and a few others (not mine), asked at Stack Overflow. It gathers all the useful answers, comments and facts about ignoring files and folders in Git. This is presented as quick-review checklist.
Read More “Should I commit .gitignore files and other Git-ignoring issues”
You’ve passed all the way of flames, blood and pain, through Gerrit, you done reviewing a change and you’re ready to click Review and Publish button. You hit it and Gerrit hits you with: Project policy requires all submissions to be a fast-forward. Please rebase the change locally and upload again for review. How, the hell this happend and how to handle this?
Read More “Please rebase the change locally and upload again for review”
If you ever need to setup a FTP server on your Windows machine, with minimum effort, settings, switches and work, consider using Baby FTP Server. It is really the quickest solution, that I found, for setting up local, one-time use, FTP server.
The only scratch is, that it does not support user accounts and operates on anonymous access only. But, hey! You were asking about quickest solution, right?
Read More “Setup local FTP server on Windows as quickly as possible”
Google AdWords ads uses two URLs: the one, to which ad points to, and the one displayed in ad. These two URLs must follow very strict rules (discussed below) or your ad will be rejected from displaying. Currently Indiegogo uses indiegogo.com domain as main campaigns’ URL and igg.me site to make long URLs short.
For the reasons discussed below, if any Indiegogo campaign’s name is longer than twelve characters, then it’s URL in invalid for Google AdWords and such campaign can’t be marketed using world’s biggest ad network!
Read More “Google AdWords ads and Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign”