Looking for a cool Web 2.0 Javascript resource. Filled with great examples and downloadable example code, a great javascript resource thats clean as well as useful.

Without any long description here is the link. http://www.scriptdeck.co.uk/

Script Deck’s interface is blog like with top image scroller highlighting the hot tutorials and tips.

You can use any desktop tool to clean-up and beautify that poorly formated JavaScript you got from a blog or web resource.

I my case I am working on a JavaScript based event calendar that displays a calendar and highlights the current date with the dates which have events associated with them.

I got this great event calendar thats totally based on JavaScript from this link and it was not formatted correctly.  As I had to make a few adjustments to the code as for my needs, I needed it to be correctly formatted so I could work on it.

So here is how I cleaned that minimized code. Its probably the best and fastest way of doing it.  I opened up this website http://jsbeautifier.org/ and pasted my javascript code that needed to be cleaned up for editing and just a click on Beautify  and Voila, my code is clean and beautiful.

Don’t firget visiting back for another JavaScript tip tomorrow. Also if you found this tip useful, you may also find the follwing Tip useful too.

Adding an pure JavaScript event calendar to your site.

You may find this tutorial very useful if you are looking for a way to do a simple event calendar on your site with no dependency on server side scripting.

Please check this simple and elegant way of adding an event calendar on your site.

OK here is the thing. Mohammed, my Boss asked me to work on an application 3 days ago. He wanted to use expression engine and got me a personal license for it. Its a good CMS and has a certain level of customization but something was  missing in the 1.6.9 version we got; yes the wow factor.

So he emailed me yesterday and wanted to hear my ideas about expression engine yesterday. I was not sure as I had already started working on expression engine 1.6.9 and had been working on a custom membership management solution and customize it to the level our client needs. We need membership management with custom fields which thankfully comes integrated with the licensed version of expression engine.

Member Management

Build a community with ExpressionEngine’s robust and flexible membership capability.

Multi-User System

ExpressionEngine is a true multi-user system. Each user can be granted a wide range of privileges, letting you define with precise control what each user is permitted to do.

Member Groups

You can define an unlimited number of Member Groups, each with over 40 individual user privileges. Each member of your community is assigned to a Member Group, determining what they are allowed to do.
Custom Member Fields

The member profile system permits you to add your own fields. Build your own data model and collect the information you need from your users.

Member Activation

Members can “self-activate” via email or you can validate accounts manually.

Profile Management

Each member has their own profile management page, in which they can set preferences and update their personal information.

Subscription Management

The member console allows your users to manage their comment and gallery subscriptions.

Member Localization

Each member can have their own localization settings, allowing them to view your site in their local time.
Member Communication

An Email Console permits members to email each other from your system. Each user can choose whether or not to receive email.

Email Console Logs

For security, all email sent by your members is logged.

Member Quick Links

Each member that has Control Panel access can view their own custom links in the Control Panel navigation.

Note Pad

Each member has their own notepad.

Member Management

Build a community with ExpressionEngine’s robust and flexible membership capability.

Multi-User System

ExpressionEngine is a true multi-user system. Each user can be granted a wide range of privileges, letting you define with precise control what each user is permitted to do.

Member Groups

You can define an unlimited number of Member Groups, each with over 40 individual user privileges. Each member of your community is assigned to a Member Group, determining what they are allowed to do.Custom Member FieldsThe member profile system permits you to add your own fields. Build your own data model and collect the information you need from your users.Member ActivationMembers can “self-activate” via email or you can validate accounts manually.Profile ManagementEach member has their own profile management page, in which they can set preferences and update their personal information.

Subscription Management

The member console allows your users to manage their comment and gallery subscriptions.Member LocalizationEach member can have their own localization settings, allowing them to view your site in their local time.

Member Communication

An Email Console permits members to email each other from your system. Each user can choose whether or not to receive email.Email Console LogsFor security, all email sent by your members is logged.

Member Quick Links

Each member that has Control Panel access can view their own custom links in the Control Panel navigation.

Note Pad

Each member has their own notepad.

I have recently been working on PHP RSS reader script that was supposed to do three different things with RSS description text. To make a teaser RSS text, I was asked to develop the functionality in a such a way that text can be cropped in these three ways.

• with defining the number of words.
• with defining the numbers of characters.
• with defining the number of sentences.

Here is a set of functions that helps you crop a text in three different ways. The usage of the function is also mentioned at the end f the script.
<?php

/**
* cropsentence()
*
* @param mixed $str
* @param mixed $noof
* @param integer $mode
// 0 means crop by no of characters // 1 means crop by no of sentences // 2 means crop by number of words
* @param string $appendwith
* @return
*/
function cropsentence($str, $noof, $mode = 0, $appendwith = “…”)
{
if (strlen($str) > $chars) {
if ($mode == 0) { // 0 means crop by no of characters
$str = substr($str, 0, $noof);
} elseif ($mode == 1) { // 1 means crop by no of sentences
$str = getLeadingSentences($str, $noof);
} elseif ($mode == 2) { // 2 means crop by number of words
$str = wordTrim($str, $noof);

} elseif ($mode < 0 || $mode > 2) { // others means do nothing
echo “The current mode is not correct.”;
}
$str = $str . $appendwith;
return $str;
} else {
return $str;
}
}

//getLeadingSentences
//Copyright (c) 2000 Jason R. Pitoniak.  All rights reserved.
//jason@interbrite.com http://www.interbrite.com

//If you find this code useful, find a bug, or have a suggestion,
//please email me.  Feel free to use this code for any purpose.

/**
* getLeadingSentences()
*
* @param mixed $data
* @param mixed $max
* @return
*/
function getLeadingSentences($data, $max)
{
//given string $data, will return the first $max sentences in that string

//in: $data = the string to parse, $max = maximum # of sentences to return
//returns: string containing the first $max sentences
//(If the # of sentences in the string is less than $max,
//then entire string will be returned.)

//a sentence is any charactors except ., !, and ?
//any number of times,  plus one or more .s, ?s, or !s
//and any leading or trailing whitespace:
$re = “^s*[^.?!]+[.?!]+s*”;
$out = “”;
for ($i = 0; $i < $max; $i++) {
if (ereg($re, $data, $match)) {
//if a sentence is found, take it out of $data and add it to $out
$out .= $match[0];
$data = ereg_replace($re, “”, $data);
} else {
$i = $max;
}
}
return $out;
}

/**
* getLeadingWords()
*
* @param mixed $data
* @param mixed $max
* @return
*/
function getLeadingWords($data, $max)
{
//given string $data, will return the first $max sentences in that string

//in: $data = the string to parse, $max = maximum # of sentences to return
//returns: string containing the first $max sentences
//(If the # of sentences in the string is less than $max,
//then entire string will be returned.)

//a sentence is any charactors except ., !, and ?
//any number of times,  plus one or more .s, ?s, or !s
//and any leading or trailing whitespace:
$re = “^s*[^.?!]+[.?!]+s*”;
$out = “”;
for ($i = 0; $i < $max; $i++) {
if (ereg($re, $data, $match)) {
//if a sentence is found, take it out of $data and add it to $out
$out .= $match[0];
$data = ereg_replace($re, “”, $data);
} else {
$i = $max;
}
}
return $out;
}

/**
* wordTrim()
*
* @param mixed $str
* @param mixed $len
* @return
*/
function wordTrim($str, $len)
{
$wordCount = 0;
$charCount = 0;

$length = strlen(strip_tags($str));
for ($i = 0; $i < $length; $i++) {
if ($str[$i] == ‘ ’) {
$wordCount++;
$charCount++;
if ($wordCount == $len)
break;
} else {
$charCount++;
} # end if
} # end for loop

$newstr = substr($str, 0, $charCount);
return $newstr;
} # end function

# Example used for testing purpose

$str2 = “Hello there I work for you. I have been working for other guys, but you are the coolest guy among them.
Also I really like the way you guide me with new technologies and the latest trends. You always tell me to keep working hard!”;
echo cropsentence($str2, 22, 2);

?>

Usage

cropsentence($str, $noof, $mode, $appendwith );

$str: This is the string / text to be cropped

$noof: Number of characters/words/sentences based on the $mode parameter

$mode: Three values of $mode can be defined

1. 0 means crop by no of characters.
2. 1 means crop by no of sentences .
3. 2 means crop by number of words.

$appendwith: This can be any characters like ‘…’ , ‘…more’ etc which will be appended with the cropped text when its returned.

Download:

You can download the script here.

I was recently working on a custom RSS feed reader where the prior most concern of the client was being able to crop the text with respect to the

1. Number of words.
2. Numbers of characters.
3. Number of sentences.

So a very important measure had to be taken. Since the cropping can end up giving us a broken link if its text  is cropped before the </a> tag, our output can end up as a disaster.

So here is a little script that can help you strip off your html tags in such situations.

<?php

$text = "This is a link to <a href='http://www.fahdmurtaza.com/myblog/'>Fahd Murtaza's </a> site!";
echo strip_tags($text, "");

?>

So strip_tags would end up removing anything from the $text. The second parameter of the strip_tags will simply declare any html tags you want to neglect while stripping the text. Off course you will need to deal with them separately in text cropping situations like I had.

Here is one more example.

Hi guys

I am feeling good right now. Have been working on oDesk from Feb 17, 2009. And its good you get paid on hourly basis. I like oDesk the most among freelancing sites I have worked on. Anyhow, I took a few screen shots to show you that I was once featured on home page on oDesk.

Fahd Murtaza

My profile overview on oDesk

My Resume Profile on oDesk

They are starting Yahoo Hack Day again. They call it, “The hack is back!. Do you want to request an invite to Open Hack 2008, September 12-13? Sign up at www.hackday.org. Hope you can join us at Yahoo! HQ in Sunnyvale. We don’t mind if you code all night. “

But the sad news is that I am in Pakistan, so I can’t go there to enjoy the event. Anyhow I know its good for the people who will be there for this great learnign opportunity.

Watch the video on full blog post.

I have a view in HWC where I am using Javascript DHTML date picker script to pick the date and insert into test field. By the way HWC is the PHP-MVC (using codeigniter) application I am working on.

Date Picker in dhtml/Javascript

So as you see, the date pickers default format is mm/dd/yyyy,  which is not acceptable by MySQL date/time field as it is, so we need a little processing to make MySQL happy enough to store it

Converting  mm/dd/yyyy to yyyy-mm-dd

$date=split("/",$_POST['date']);
// where the $_POST['date'] is a value posted by form in mm/dd/yy format
$dated=$date[2]."-".$date[0]."-".$date[1];
// The string dated is now in yyyy-mm-dd format
echo $dated;

For example, the date entered through form was 09/02/2009, after processing it will be stored in $dated as 2009-02-09. Pretty kool yeah? Just notice if you have / as I am happy if helps you. You need help with more similar stuff, post a comment.

Note: Based on its popularity, updated on 6th june 2011 to clean up code for easy copy paste.

OK readers, here is a simple method to achieve clean urls with your PHP application developed in CodeIgniter.

Please note that this method is applicable only to applications developed in CodeIgniter. Much of the content has been taken from CodeIgniter wiki but rewritten in my own way.

This article explains how to take away “index.php” from your CI application URLs. However, it does NOT remove the need for Index.php, which is the CI front controller i.e. even though Index.php will not appear in the URL, it still needs to be present at the top level of your site (above the /system/ directory). To quote the User Guide,

You can easily remove this file by using a .htaccess file with some simple rules.

You need to perform the following steps to get this working:

1. Create a .htaccess file to configure the rewrite engine
2. Set $config['index_page'] to an empty string
3. Make sure your apache uses the mod_rewrite module
4. Make sure apache is configured to accept needed .htaccess directives
5. Restart apache and test

1. Create your .htaccess file

Create a new file named .htaccess and put it in your web directory

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
#Removes access to the system folder by users.
#Additionally this will allow you to create a System.php controller,
#previously this would not have been possible.
#'system' can be replaced if you have renamed your system folder.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^system.*
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]

#Checks to see if the user is attempting to access a valid file,
#such as an image or css document, if this isn't true it sends the
#request to index.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L]

# If we don't have mod_rewrite installed, all 404's
# can be sent to index.php, and everything works as normal.
# Submitted by: ElliotHaughin

ErrorDocument 404 /index.php

Notes for Windows users:
To create this file you must open Command Prompt and type:

copy con .htaccess [Enter]
[Press CTRL + Z]

A blank .htaccess file will be created. Now you can edit it using Notepad or your favorite text editor and copy the script above.

Note: Most Windows editors will assume that you are attempting to save an .htaccess file as a file with an extension and no filename. The Crimson Editor can be used to create and save .htaccess files and other files that have no filename.

Note: If your site is placed in subfolder specify the path in the “RewriteBase /subfolder/” line.

2. Set $config['index_page'] to an empty string

Open your

system/application/config/config.php

and find the line that assigns $config['index_page'] a value, usually:

$config['index_page'] = "index.php";

and change it to:

$config['index_page'] = '';

Save the file.

3. Make sure your apache has mod_rewrite activated

This means that the apache must be configured to load the mod_rewrite module (or it might have it compiled-in). For module inclusion, usually you have to look for a line like this in httpd.conf or a file loaded by it (hint: use some quick file search utility to grep files with lines containing ‘rewrite’ string):

LoadModule rewrite_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_rewrite.so

If you’re running Apache2 type

a2enmod

in the console and when prompted

rewrite

to enable mod_rewrite.

On a Windows machine this line might look this way:

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

If it is commented out (# in front), make sure to uncomment it and save the file. Checking if the corresponding module exists may be a good idea as well (but it usually does).

Make sure apache accepts needed .htaccess directives

This means that apache is explicitly configured to allow .htaccess files to override those directives that you use in your .htaccess file from step 1. above.

It seems to be sufficient if you add these two lines to your section where you configure the document root for your CI application:

#...
Options FollowSymLinks

AllowOverride FileInfo
#...

There might be other Options listed, just make sure you have FollowSymLinks as well.

Should you get a 500 Internal Server Error, try the following syntax:

Options Indexes Includes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride AuthConfig FileInfo
Order allow,deny
Allow from all

5. Restart apache and test your application

Works? Congratulations!

Doesn’t work? Ehrrr… well, do not give up; equip yourself with patience, double check all steps above and if it still does not work, post on the forum giving all details of your setup.

How does URL rewriting work?

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
...
</IfModule>

Do what is inside only if Apache has the mod_rewrite feature (by in place compilation, or loaded module).

RewriteEngine On

Activate the URL rewriting engine, if not already done (in main Apache configuration file.

RewriteBase /

Define the part of the URL that won’t change nor be used for rewriting. In fact, this part will be removed before processing, and prepended after processing. This’s a good way to use subfolder-independent rewrite rules. For example, if your CodeIgniter index.php is placed in a virtual host directory, like /tests/, set RewriteBase to /tests/.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

Condition to meet for RewriteRule activation. Here, we test if the requested filename does not exist.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

Same as above, but we test for directory existence.

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L]

If RewriteCond conditions are met, this rule will be applied. It inserts index.php before the requested URI. The $1 represents the part of string enclosed by parentheses in left expression. The [L] means that this rule is the last one if rule is applied (thus stopping rewriting).

Configuring mod_rewrite in the httpd.conf file

The Apache mod_rewrite docs say

While URL manipulations in per-server context are really fast and efficient, per-directory rewrites are slow and inefficient. If you have access to your httpd.conf file, you’ll have better performance if you configure the rewrite rules in there.

You can add something like this to your httpd.conf:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^(/index\.php|/img|/js|/css|/robots\.txt|/favicon\.ico)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]

Configuring mod_rewrite and virtual hosting with Apache 2.2

ServerName www.mydomain.com
DocumentRoot /path/to/ci/directory

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L]

Credits: http://codeigniter.com/wiki/mod_rewrite/