Firehed's Blog

• Quick CSS3 properties in TextMate

  A TextMate/e-texteditor snippet for quickly adding browser-specific CSS properties.

• Strong Typing in PHP - A Simple Guide

  A relatively simple explanation of how to use PHP5's type hinting abilities to validate your data. Lots of sample code provided.

• Amazon Link Applescript Update

  Just found out that there's one more kind of annoyingly long Amazon link, and my previously-posted Applescript to create short affiliate links needed an update.  Here's the excerpt - if you're using Applescript, you should be able to figure out where it goes.

  	else if link contains "/detail/-/" then
  		-- http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00009R6UA/ref=pd_luc_mri?_encoding=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&v=glance
  		set startLength to the offset of "/detail/-/" in link
  		set startLength to startLength + 10
  		set endCutoff to startLength + 9
  		set asin to the text startLength thru endCutoff of link as text

• Textmate snippet: automatic get/set method pairs

  I won't go into the details about why get/set methods are handy when doing object-oriented programming in general, but here's another TextMate snippet that should speed things up when using them in PHP5.  Handles the tabbing and camelCasing of method names automatically: See note below - this has formatting errors

  public function set${1/./\u$0/}(\$$1) {
      \$this->$1 = \$$1;
      return true;
  } // function set${1/./\u$0/}
  
  ${2:public function get${1/./\u$0/}() {
      return \$this->$1;
  \} // function get${1/./\u$0/}}

  I have my snippet bound to "getset" (tab trigger) in textmate, so getset?body will yield the following:

  	public function setBody($body) {
  		$this->body = $body;
  		return true;
  	} // function setBody
  
  	public function getBody() {
  		return $this->body;
  	} // function getBody

  I also have it configured so that tabbing a second time will highlight the entire getter method, in case you don't want it available for whatever reason (the code I'm writing has a big getAll-type method and individual getters would be highly redundant).  Enjoy :) Edit - sorry, something's screwing up the formatting here - I think it's being a little too aggressive with stripslashes() or something on display, as I see it properly in the editor window.  See the attached screenshot of the snippet - keep an eye out for some extra backslashes escaping a few characters.  Should be coming in a sec.  Wordpress attachments hate me these days.  Someday I'll do a proper reinstall and deal with all of the cruft.

• DRM is dead to me - Goodbye, EA

  I'm beyond fed up with DRM everywhere.  I bought Spore not even realizing how invasive it was - I didn't think to read the 1-star reviews plaguing Amazon first (three years in the hype chamber will do that to a game).  While it hasn't manifested itself too painfully within Spore, I've been bitten by DRM more than enough times that I'm simply staying away from all "activation required"-type products from now on.  Yes, I'll be voting with my wallet, as I'm so often advised to do. I'm sick of fighting my software, instead of using it.  Maybe someone out there finds enjoyment in software activation, but it's the last thing I want to do when I'm in the gaming mood.  I understand and respect the fact that companies want to protect their products, but I'm no longer going to tolerate anything more invasive than a serial key.  I don't care whether they're doing it in a flawed attempt to kill piracy, trying to kill off the completely legal second-hand market (after having read a few forum posts, this would seem a likely candidate), or just have a contract with SecuROM.  I'm done.  If they want me to be a customer, then damnit, they'll treat me like one.

  EA, I'm writing to inform you that you have permanently lost me as a customer.  This is due entirely to the DRM in Spore and your intent to put it in future products.  By using this technology you belittle and disrespect me as a customer, and as such have lost all future business with me.  I purchased a copy of Spore, which aside from being disappointingly shallow prevents me from using the product as I purchased it.  There was no indication of this on the packaging whatsoever, and I would have returned the product as defective had I discovered this prior to opening the game (be thankful for Best Buy's abusive software return policies - they made you $50). Your decision to use DRM - especially a system so invasive as SecuROM - has provoked me to make this move.  Not only have you lost all of my future business, but I will be telling everyone I know to avoid all of your products until DRM is no longer used on ANY of your products.  My money will be going to developers that are willing to treat me like a customer, not a criminal. I don't expect you to rectify this in any way; the damage has already been done.  I just wanted to reiterate what countless others have already said. Sincerely, A former customer.

  Goodbye, EA.  You and your done-to-death rehashing franchises will not be missed.

• Automatically create and shorten Amazon affiliate links with Applescript

  After a little finagling, I managed to update my old Applescripts that take any arbitrary Amazon URL and add in an affiliate link to one that is then automatically shortened with the is.gd service.  And here it is, for the (Mac-using) world to use as you feel fit.

  set link to the clipboard
  if link contains "amazon.com/" then
  	if link contains "/o/" then
  		set startLength to the offset of "/o/" in link
  		set startLength to startLength + 8
  		set endCutoff to startLength + 9
  		set asin to text startLength thru endCutoff of link as text
  
  	else if link contains "/dp/" then
  		set startLength to the offset of "/dp/" in link
  		set startLength to startLength + 4
  		set endCutoff to startLength + 9
  		set asin to the text startLength thru endCutoff of link as text
  
  	else if link contains "/gp/product/?ASIN=" then
  		set startLength to the offset of "/gp/product/?ASIN=" in link
  		set startLength to startLength + 18
  		set endCutoff to startLength + 9
  		set asin to the text startLength thru endCutoff of link as text
  
  	else if link contains "/gp/product/" and link does not contain "?ASIN=" then
  		set startLength to the offset of "/gp/product/" in link
  		set startLength to startLength + 12
  		set endCutoff to startLength + 9
  		set asin to the text startLength thru endCutoff of link as text
  	end if
  	--asin is now set
  
  -- CHANGE YOUR AFFILIATE LINK(S) HERE BEFORE SAVING!
  --
  -- This can be easily modified to add in additional codes, or remove
  -- the whole dialog thing and just set the variable directly if you have
  -- only one link (which is probably the case)
  
  -- If you've only got one code, remove from here down to...
  	display dialog "Which affiliate link should be used?" buttons {"Blog - firsblo0a-20", "OTHERSITE - SOMELINK-20"} default button 1
  	set the button_pressed to the button returned of the result
  	if the button_pressed is "Blog - firsblo0a-20" then
  		set affiliateCode to "firsblo0a-20"
  	else
  		set affiliateCode to "OTHERSITE-20"
  	end if
  -- here - stop removing stuff! and just use: set affiliateCode to "yourcode-20"	
  
  	set amazonLink to "http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/" & asin & "?tag=" & affiliateCode
  
  	set shortLink to (do shell script "curl http://is.gd/api.php?longurl=" & amazonLink)
  	set the clipboard to shortLink
  
  	display dialog "Your shortened URL is " & shortLink & " and has been copied to the clipboard." buttons {"Woot!"} default button 1
  end if

  Of course, you'll want to make sure you change your affiliate link(s) appropriately.  Or don't, and let me reap the benefits :)  Read the script comments on what to change and where.  I know the approach to grabbing the ASIN is kind of gross, but it works. Made available under an MIT License.  Questions?  Hit the comments section and I'll answer as best I can. And yes, you could swap it out easily enough to any of the other myriad url shortening tools.  is.gd is probably the shortest out there, and since the API returns nothing other than the link itself (no XML markup, etc), it's also as simple to work with as computationally possible.  If you don't care about affiliate links and just want to be able to send out tweets 1% faster, then just take the first line, and the fourth- and third-to-last, and tweak accordingly (it should be obviously enough).  You know, for when a bookmarklet is too much work. Just browse to any Amazon item, copy the URL to the clipboard, and run the script.  Goes awesome with Quicksilver. Now go sell stuff.

• Handy TextMate snippet for div comments

  I like having lots of comments in my HTML for readability, specifically when dealing with divs.  So I'll have

  <div id="someid" class="class1 class2">
      content
  </div><!-- #someid.class1.class2 -->

  I'm not exactly the great RegEx expert that's required to figure out how to make that kind of thing come automagically from the standard TextMate snippet for HTML divs, but quite by accident I found that the h1 snippet does something along those lines, in that it converts any spaces to underscores.  Net result?

  <div${1: id="${2:someID}"}${3: class="${4:someClass}"}>
      ${0:$TM_SELECTED_TEXT}
  </div> <!-- #${2/[[:alpha:]]+|( )/(?1:#:\L$0)/g}.${4/[[:alpha:]]+|( )/(?1:.:\L$0)/g} -->

  Yeah, gross.  Just replace the snippet for div with that load of insanity in TextMate's bundle editor and you should be good to go.  It's a tiny bit quirky in that it has to lead with the initial # and . for the id and class respectively, so if you don't have a class set on the div you'll still have a comment looking like <!-- #someid. --> instead of <!-- #someid --> (note the extra period), or vice-versa.  Close enough for government work. Obviously you could extend that same horrible regex out to other things where you want automatic comments - most block-level elements would be a decent choice.  Note that there's two of them in there - grab the ${someNumber/} bit, and make sure that the number matches the right part of the snippet. Have fun.

• Up and running on a new host

  Moved the site over from PowWeb to NearlyFreeSpeech.net.  I doubt you'll notice any difference (the continued lack of posting probably won't change much...); it may be a bit snappier as NFS doesn't overload their databases too badly.  If any content went missing or links are broken... shoot an email to firehed {at} gmail <dot> com.  The tags/categories might be a bit flaky since I also went from WP2.2x to 2.6 in the process, and post tagging was introduced in 2.5.

• Applying XSLT to XML in PHP using SimpleXML

  Since I'm now going crazy with the use of XML all over the place, I figured it's better to work with XSLT rather than bizarre loops within PHP - because of both portability and manageability (I don't expect to change platforms but having a relatively simple way to do so is a plus, and storing everything in an external file should also simplify things). So another simple function here, as I've found XSLT to be rather convoluted in PHP5 and would quite like to simplify its use.  As usual, my tabbing will probably go straight to hell.

  function apply_xslt($simplexml, $path_to_xslt) {
      $xslt_file = new DOMDocument;
      $xslt_file->load($path_to_xslt);
  
      $xml = new DOMDocument;
      $xml->loadXML($simplexml->asXML());
  
      $transform = new XSLTProcessor();
      $transform->importStyleSheet($xslt_file);
  
      return $transform->transformToXML($xml);
  }

  Now all you have to do is pass the function a SimpleXML object (see my post on XMLifying DB results) and get on with your life.

  $db_results = new SQL_as_XML;

  echo apply_xslt($db_results->get_list_of_content_by_author_permalink('eric-stern','1'), 'some_stylesheet.xslt');

  And just for reference on the SQL_as_XML class:

  class SQL_as_XML {
  
  	function get_content_by_permalink($content_permalink, $page = 0) {
  		$content_permalink = clean($content_permalink);//sanitize input
  
  		if (!is_numeric($page)) {
  			$page = 1; //$page also sanitized		}
  
  		$query = "SELECT content.publish_date,
  			content.last_edit_date,
  			content.title,
  			content.number_of_pages,
  			content.permalink AS content_permalink,
  			authors.display_name,
  			authors.permalink AS author_permalink,
  			content_pages.body
  			FROM content
  			JOIN authors ON content.author_id = authors.id
  			JOIN content_pages ON content_pages.content_id = content.id
  			WHERE content.permalink = '$content_permalink'
  			AND content_pages.page_number = $page";
  
  		return mysql_to_xml(mysql_query($query), 'response', 'content');
  	}

  //other functions structured similarly

  }

  So there you go.

• MySQL Query Results to XML in PHP

  "XML is like violence - if it's not working, you're not using enough" - stupid internet meme But it's sort of true.  PHP5's SimpleXML extension makes it a whole lot easier to deal with, both for creating the stuff and for freaks like me that don't want to dabble with XSLT.  In any case, I wanted a simple way to throw XML around, both so I can create an API fairly easily in the future and not have to screw around with DB query result objects.  I didn't find any great approaches pre-built, so I went ahead and made my own. So here:

  function mysql_to_xml($mysql_result, $root_node_name, $child_node_name) {
   	$xml = new SimpleXMLElement('< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>< ' . $root_node_name . '>');

  	while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($mysql_result)) {
   		$newrow = $xml->addChild($child_node_name);
   		foreach ($row as $key => $value ) {
   			$newrow->addChild($key, $value);
   		}
   	}

  	return $xml;
   }

  Updated... Wordpress really made a mess of the first one, and I did an even worse job fixing it.

  function mysql_to_xml($mysql_result, $root_node_name = 'result', $child_node_name = 'row') {
  	$xml = new SimpleXMLElement('<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><' . $root_node_name . '></' . $root_node_name . '>');
  
  	while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($mysql_result)) {
  		$newrow = $xml->addChild($child_node_name);
  		foreach ($row as $key => $value ) {
  			$newrow->addChild($key, $value);
  		}
  	}
  	return $xml;
  }

  In my SQL functions, I'm able to return an XML object quite easily:

  return mysql_to_xml(mysql_query($query), 'response', 'content');

  And to get it in the first place:

  $sql = new SQL_as_XML;

   $xml = $sql->get_content_by_permalink($permalink, $page);

  (the SQL_as_XML class is a series of functions that build and run a query, then return the XML using the previous snippet) Finally, if you want to output the raw XML (after perhaps finagling it into an RSS feed):

  echo $xml->asXML();

  Questions? Ask. Improvements? Tell. And yes, I already know that I really should set default values for $root_node_name and $child_node_name in the original function. I'll get there. And yes, you'll have to excuse the blog making a mess of the formatting. :(

pages: 1 2 3 4 … 22