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For operations that take a long time, you’ll want to notifiy users that something is happening, and perhaps prevent them from interacting with the application during that time. One method is to make a semi-opaque rectangle covering the whole control, with a loading message of some kind. But I wanted to just disable the controls and change the cursor to the Wait cursor. I tried setting IsEnabled=false and Cursor=”Wait” on my User Control, to no avail. It looks like you cannot change the cursor on disabled controls; it will just remain the Arrow cursor. And you can only set IsEnabled on controls, not containers such as Grids, which contain numerous controls. My solution was to wrap the grid in a Content Control and set IsEnabled=false there. Then set the cursor property to the parent User Control (the opposite wouldn’t work, since the Disabled would propagate down). This way you’ll need to set two different properties, but you won’t have an extra rectangle or canvas in your page.
After reading the post on Johan Mares site about the PHP command line interface, I thought I would indulge in the details how I’ve been using the PHP cli for some of my web based applications.
First, some of my web apps have multiple configuration files which are determined by the $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] value. If (stricmp( $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'],’compiledweekly’) ) { // then I load compiledweekly config file }. So with that in mind, I had to add to the top of my cli scripts the following line:
$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] = ‘compiledweekly.com’;
This required me to have to edit the command line script every time i used it with another site. Here’s the trick: pass arguments to your command line so your script can parse them. Here’s how I did it to also include a verbose mode.
if( count($argv) > 1 )
{
for( $x = 1; $x < count($argv); $x++ )
{
switch($argv[$x])
{
case '--verbose': { // Print results to std out
$Verbose = true;
}; break;
case '--host': { // Print results to std out
$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] = trim($argv[$x+1]);
}; break;
}
}
}
if( $Verbose ) echo "Starting script...\n\n";
// Continue with your script below
So with the following example I can run my script for my compiledweekly.com site with verbose information. Example:
/path/to/script.php --verbose --host compiledweekly.com
Now if you use your php script in a cron task, don't include the --verbose and make sure you check the $Verbose flag before printing any results. Don't forget to add to the end of the command line " > /dev/null 2>&1" minus the quotes, this sends any std out and std error messages to a black hole.
If your command line script is saved in a web accessible folder, here's a line you should add to the top so no web browser can execute your script:
if( php_sapi_name() != 'cli' ) die('Access denied.');
This will take your command line apps to a new level while giving you the ability to use existing web code.
I wanted to quickly take a URL (e.g. http://www.compiledweekly.com/somefolder/somefile.ext) and translate it to the local path (e.g. /home/user/public_html/somefolder/somefile.ext) while inserting multiple records into a new table. My first thought was to select all the records, use PHP to trim off the path, then insert the new record in the new table. There’s a better answer, use SUBSTRING_INDEX() and CONCAT() with a INSERT INTO table SELECT statement.
INSERT INTO new_table
SELECT CONCAT(‘/home/user/public_html/somefolder/’, SUBSTRING_INDEX(s.url, ‘/’, -1)) AS local_path
FROM source_table AS s
WHERE …
It does the job with out having to write a single line of PHP code!
If you are familiar with WebDAV or even Subversion and use Windows XP/Vista, you will appreciate this tidbit of information.
You can browse a WebDAV server in Windows XP and Vista using Windows Explorer. There is a problem though, Windows XP and Vista will try to use NTLM authentication (Active Directory) to authenticate with the server. If you configure your Apache WebDAV server with either no, basic or digest authentication, then you will hit a roadblock. Luckily Microsoft created the KB907306 patch. Unlucky for myself, other websites refer to the patch number missing the last digit ‘6′. This will drive you crazy when you know you should be able to copy/paste the KB number in Google and quickly find the download page on microsoft.com. Other documents will say to search for KB90730. You should be searching for KB907306. You can search for “Software Update for Web Folders“, but you will also get a lot of other search results that are not nearly as helpful. Hopefully this blog post will save some folks the aggravation.
Now that you’re here, there is no need to search! The patch is available from the following link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=17c36612-632e-4c04-9382-987622ed1d64&DisplayLang=en
I’ve been working with the php CURL library and found that it would not return an error if the server returned a 500 error. After looking up 3 different status codes that I wasn’t very familiar with, I created the following function. It is very complete and includes additional WebDAV, Apache and Microsoft codes.
function http_status_code_string($code, $include_code=false)
{
// Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes
switch( $code )
{
// 1xx Informational
case 100: $string = 'Continue'; break;
case 101: $string = 'Switching Protocols'; break;
case 102: $string = 'Processing'; break; // WebDAV
case 122: $string = 'Request-URI too long'; break; // Microsoft
// 2xx Success
case 200: $string = 'OK'; break;
case 201: $string = 'Created'; break;
case 202: $string = 'Accepted'; break;
case 203: $string = 'Non-Authoritative Information'; break; // HTTP/1.1
case 204: $string = 'No Content'; break;
case 205: $string = 'Reset Content'; break;
case 206: $string = 'Partial Content'; break;
case 207: $string = 'Multi-Status'; break; // WebDAV
// 3xx Redirection
case 300: $string = 'Multiple Choices'; break;
case 301: $string = 'Moved Permanently'; break;
case 302: $string = 'Found'; break;
case 303: $string = 'See Other'; break; //HTTP/1.1
case 304: $string = 'Not Modified'; break;
case 305: $string = 'Use Proxy'; break; // HTTP/1.1
case 306: $string = 'Switch Proxy'; break; // Depreciated
case 307: $string = 'Temporary Redirect'; break; // HTTP/1.1
// 4xx Client Error
case 400: $string = 'Bad Request'; break;
case 401: $string = 'Unauthorized'; break;
case 402: $string = 'Payment Required'; break;
case 403: $string = 'Forbidden'; break;
case 404: $string = 'Not Found'; break;
case 405: $string = 'Method Not Allowed'; break;
case 406: $string = 'Not Acceptable'; break;
case 407: $string = 'Proxy Authentication Required'; break;
case 408: $string = 'Request Timeout'; break;
case 409: $string = 'Conflict'; break;
case 410: $string = 'Gone'; break;
case 411: $string = 'Length Required'; break;
case 412: $string = 'Precondition Failed'; break;
case 413: $string = 'Request Entity Too Large'; break;
case 414: $string = 'Request-URI Too Long'; break;
case 415: $string = 'Unsupported Media Type'; break;
case 416: $string = 'Requested Range Not Satisfiable'; break;
case 417: $string = 'Expectation Failed'; break;
case 422: $string = 'Unprocessable Entity'; break; // WebDAV
case 423: $string = 'Locked'; break; // WebDAV
case 424: $string = 'Failed Dependency'; break; // WebDAV
case 425: $string = 'Unordered Collection'; break; // WebDAV
case 426: $string = 'Upgrade Required'; break;
case 449: $string = 'Retry With'; break; // Microsoft
case 450: $string = 'Blocked'; break; // Microsoft
// 5xx Server Error
case 500: $string = 'Internal Server Error'; break;
case 501: $string = 'Not Implemented'; break;
case 502: $string = 'Bad Gateway'; break;
case 503: $string = 'Service Unavailable'; break;
case 504: $string = 'Gateway Timeout'; break;
case 505: $string = 'HTTP Version Not Supported'; break;
case 506: $string = 'Variant Also Negotiates'; break;
case 507: $string = 'Insufficient Storage'; break; // WebDAV
case 509: $string = 'Bandwidth Limit Exceeded'; break; // Apache
case 510: $string = 'Not Extended'; break;
// Unknown code:
default: $string = 'Unknown'; break;
}
if( $include_code )
return $code . ' '.$string;
return $string;
}
HTTP Code values are taken from the Wikipedia entry found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes
This is a recording of Compiled Weekly from the recorder app in the
Google G1 Android phone. It came out pretty well. What do you think? I
may start podcasting this way all the time!
Attempt 2!
The first attempt I did not save the mp3 in stereo mode, which meant flash and quicktime among other players would not be able to play the file correctly. Problem fixed in this version.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
This is a recording of Compiled Weekly from the recorder app in the Google G1 Android phone. It came out pretty well. What do you think? I may start podcasting this way all the time!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Angelo discusses the Zend PHP 5 Certification Study Guide 2nd edition and explains how to implement Open Flash Charts into your PHP project.
Don’t forget to E-mail comments and suggestions to compiledweekly AT gmail.com.
Links:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
