jgchristopher blog

Subversion with Apache on Leopard - Extremely simple

2007-10-29T15:46:00.000-07:00

Leopard has subversion (client/server) already installed!!

I had a subversion server running on Tiger and I wanted to do a clean install of Leopard so, I used the hotbackup.py file to backup things.

After installing Leopard, my subversion server was my first priority. To my surprise, it was extremely simple.

1. Subversion is included.

2. Move my svn backup back onto the local disk.

3. chmod -R www:www the directory.

4. edit /etc/apache2/httpd.conf adding a line withLoadModule dav_svn_module libexec/apache2/mod_dav_svn.so

5. add a svnlocation.conf file under /etc/apache2/other dir. something like ...

 <Location>
      DAV svn
      SVNPath /usr/local/svn
 </Location>

6. System Preferences/Sharing/Web Sharing - checked

7. Safari -> http://localhost/svn

8. Smile :)

Moved

2006-05-10T22:54:00.000-07:00

For any one who cares, this blog has moved to... http://www.jgchristopher.com/blog/

Symfony - Testing made easy

2005-12-18T15:24:00.000-08:00

While working on a new project using symfony, I began to setup my test environment. Symfony makes this extremely easy as it has a built in mechanism to run tests that will validate your routing among other things. The one thing that the built in symfony testing currently doesn't do , is allow for testing of form submissions.

No worries though, the symfony test suite allows you to build tests extending SimpleTest's WebTestCase which, has support for form submissions. I needed this functionality and while I could have easily used Selenium, I like being able to run all of my tests using one simple command `symfony test This was extremely useful in testing my authentication routines to make sure that a valid user could login and logout.

Key to any test is test data. Symfony also provides an great way to define test data with data fixtures (note: this can also be used to initialize a new install with necessary default data). You can then specify a batch script in the `batch/` directory and simply run it from the command line.

I wanted to make sure that I used controlled data for my tests, so I set up a separate test database and configured symfony to use this database for my tests. I didn't want to have to create a new load script to load this data for my different databases so, I simply added the ability to specify a command line argument to set what database to populate. Now the environment can be specified like so `php load_data.php test`.

<?php

$env ='dev';

if( isset($argv[1]))
{
$env= $argv[1];
}

echo "Loading data into $env data base \n";

define('SF_ROOT_DIR', realpath(dirname(__FILE__).'/..'));
define('SF_APP', 'blogs');
define('SF_ENVIRONMENT', $env);
define('SF_DEBUG', true);

require_once(SF_ROOT_DIR.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.SF_APP.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'config'.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'config.php');

$data = new sfPropelData();
$data->loadData(SF_DATA_DIR.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'fixtures');

?>

Now, thanks to symfony and simpletest, I can run my Unit and Functional tests from a single command which I think is extremely convenient.

technorati tags: php, symfony

Symfony's tutorial begins

2005-12-01T10:53:00.000-08:00

symfony PHP5 framework symfony advent calendar day one: starting up a project

Day one is out!

technorati tags: symfony, php

Symfony's answer...

2005-11-30T21:39:00.000-08:00

What does your framework say about you?

I believe a quote from someone else best answers this question...

"Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something."
Robert Heinlein

technorati tags: symfony, php

Developer for Symfony

2005-11-30T21:17:00.000-08:00

I was very happy to learn today that I have been included as a developer for the symfony framework. I was originally just doing some documentation but I began to get invested in the framework and started sending in some patches.

Tomorrow is the big day for the Month long tutorial at Askeet.com. I think it is a great idea and it will be a great way to bring new users up to speed quickly.

I have spent the last few months in Java land and symfony has rejuvenated my interest in Php.

technorati tags: php, web2.0, symfony

Symfony - Month long tutorial

2005-11-28T19:55:00.000-08:00

The Symfony project will be releasing a tutorial that will build a real world application to be released with an open source license upon completion.

While the details of what the application will be have not been released, it will include AJAX functionality, along with social aspects including tagging. http://www.askeet.com

Each day between Dec 1st and Christmas, a daily tutorial will be released describing the development process of the application. This is to help fast track developers with the symfony framework while producing an application that can be used as a proof of concept for server load and scalability.

Check out Askeet! on Dec 1st!

technorati tags: symfony, php, ajax

Now Zend wants to play

2005-11-15T06:45:00.000-08:00

Definition
Zend PHP Framework - (zênd p-h-p frãme'wûrk) * A Web application framework which standardizes the way PHP applications are built. The Zend PHP Framework accelerates and improves the development and deployment of mission-critical PHP Web applications. * Extreme Simplicity

PHP Collaboration Project

I remember at last years ApacheCon in Vegas, I spoke with a Zend
representative after he gave a talk on PHP5 features, I asked if Zend
would be developing a web framework for PHP. The response I received
was along the lines of "No. Why would we? We help to develop the
language. Frameworks, if needed, will be provided by others."

I guess they changed their mind.

Technorati Tags: php, framework

And the Symfony/Rails war begins....

2005-11-08T19:11:00.000-08:00

Nice AJAX Framework for PHPjhowe submitted by jhowe 7 hours 41 minutes ago (via http://www.symfony-project.com...)Based on the best practices of web development, thoroughly tried on several active websites, symfony aims to speed up the creation and maintenance of web applications, and to replace the repetitive coding tasks by power, control and pleasure.

Nice AJAX Framework for PHP

I didn't think it would take long before the Symfony/Ruby on Rails argument would begin.

I really don't think there should be an argument. There is a language for every time and place. If you are more comfortable working with Ruby and you have an environment that supports/allows it, then go for it. If you are a Php programmer and want to make the most of your time, check out Symfony.

If you are bi-lingual then enjoy the best of both worlds!! Be aware though, Symfony is not Rails! While inspired by Rails, it doesn't mimic every aspect of it.

I really believe that this is the Php framework if you want to continue to use the request-based paradigm. If you are an event driven person then check out Prado.

Technorati Tags: Symfony, Rails, Php, Ruby

Symfony integrates AJAX

2005-10-31T19:02:00.000-08:00

See Demo's

The Symfony project has added built AJAX support (available in the svn
repository). Having these built in options will help developers
integrate rich client functionality seamlessly and effortlessly,
following the ease of development motto of Symfony.

Technorati Tags: Symfony, php, AJAX

Symfony - Php's answer to Rails

2005-10-25T20:14:00.000-07:00

I began to get acquainted with Symfony tonight and I am liking what I see so far. I really like the concept of fast, easy development that Rails delivers but, there is one thing that has been holding me back from jumping in... I don't know Ruby. I am learning but, I am happy to see an alternative in a language that I am very comfortable in, Php5.

While following the tutorial on their website, I really like what they have done for the dev mode of working on the application. Symfony has a nice little info sidebar that gives you quick information about the configuration of the application.

As seen in the image, it has generated some CRUD scaffolding for a blog much like Rails. While this generated code will need to be modified, I don't see anything wrong with setting a nice start for some processes.

Technorati Tags: php, Symfony

AJAX - Why use XML?

2005-10-23T09:26:00.000-07:00

"1) Ajax and XML, A Match Made by Acronym - Ajax and XML actually aren't necessary for Ajax. No, not at all. Ajax actually prefers JSON! What the heck is JSON you ask? It's the JavaScript Object Notation. It's a much better way to transfer and parse data over lightweight HTTP services. Waaaay better than XML/HTTP, REST, or even, god forbid, SOAP. Don't even ask about WS-*. Don't believe me? Then read the docs on the eval() function in JavaScript. Good, huh?. Next test: Try to send lists of data in XML to your Ajax client and not get tired out writing the (inevitably buggy) DOM navigation code. You'll switch to JSON. Your HTTP service developers will thank you. And everyone will be happy. Well, except folks that want interoperability and performance over ease of programming. Those obviously picky folks should just stick with XML, particularly if they've already heard of it."

5 Earth-Shattering Things You Should Know About Ajax And Probably Don't (web2.wsj2.com)

In his blog, Dion Hinchcliffe, brings up a point that I have been fighting, and probably will continue fighting, at work. Currently, a lot of our stuff is being pulled from a DB (tabular format), marshalled into XML (Castor), returned to client via XHR, and then parsed and formated for tabular display, via JS, on the client. This seems like a total waste to me. Not only are we doing an unneccesary transfer to XML, each client is left to format the data (setting decimal places, rounding data, etc...).

My point of view is to grab the data from the DB, have a common library to format the data, it is weather data, and then use a templating system, Velocity in our case since we are dealing with Java, and return Javascript objects to the be eval()'ed on the client. No more needless XML junk in the middle.

As for JSON, I haven't looked at it enough to decide its usefulness. What is different than just passing data into a templating system to build a normal JavaScript object?

Technorati Tags: ajax, javascript

Php web framework

2005-10-22T07:54:00.000-07:00

symfony is an open-source PHP5 web frameworkprofessional web tools for lazy folks

symfony - open-source PHP5 web framework

I am looking forward to playing with this Php5 framework I recently found. I haven't been doing much with Php and I want to shake off some of the rust. Before I got my current job, I was looking into writing a book on some of the Php frameworks that have started to show up. Now that things are slowing down, maybe I will start that project back up.

After looking at the documentation and the website, I am seeing some familiar words like, YAML configuration and scaffolding. Is this Php's answer to Rails?

Technorati Tags: PHP, web framework

From Flock

2005-10-19T18:08:00.000-07:00

I posted my last blog with Flock. So far, I am impressed! I really like the bookmarks integration with del.icio.us

On Demand AJAX and Templates

2005-10-19T08:09:00.000-07:00

On most of my recent Java projects, I have been consistent in using
DWR, which is a great framework that is easy to use and quick to get
started with. On my recent trials, I had to prepare some of our
portlets to work on a Pocket PC browser (Internet Explorer).
Considering that our portlets depend on AJAX, I knew I was in for a treat.

I tried to use DWR but, it was throwing some object errors. Given I
was on a very, very tight schedule, I couldn't try and debug the
situation at that time. I reverted to rolling my own XHR solution which
turned out to be rather flexible.

I decided that I didn't want to deal with marshalling, passing, and
parsing XML, that is why I wanted to use DWR in the first place,
passing and parsing plain text would be just as bad. So what are my
options left. I decided to pass a JavaScript object, built by a servlet
on the back end, back to the client. The client simply passes the
responseText to eval() and "Wala" the data is now a convenient Javascript bean
that contains the needed data.

To get around the ugly part, creating the JavaScript object on the
back end, I decided to create templates of my JavaScript objects using
Velocity. This was great!

- Receive request

- Do some business logic

- Initialize Velocity and fill the context

- merge the template and pass it back in the response

Very clean and easy to do. I am going to look into replacing my XHR
js code and replace it with a dojo install that only has the IO
functionality in it. I have been playing with it and it rocks. I like
that you can choose to eval the return.

This can also be accomplished in other languages as well. I started doing the same thing with PHP, Dojo, and Smarty templates!

remembermilk - signup

2005-10-13T19:16:00.000-07:00

remembermilk
Originally uploaded by wimsycal.

The signup page for "remember the milk" is great! I really like the fact that it checks if the username you are requesting is available as you type. It also marks the password fields as matching while you type. I have been thinking that this would work well as it saves some headaches when trying to signup for a site only to find out that the username is taken or the passwords don't match.

The top 10 things that aren't Web 2.0 - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)

2005-10-03T08:45:00.000-07:00

Web 2.0 is about collaboration.

Manage your life with Subversion

2005-10-02T16:29:00.000-07:00

I actually did something similar to this for my wife a few weeks ago. She was constantly loosing data so I thought Subversion would be a great way to back her stuff up. Now she can simply do a commit on her backed up directories to make sure her data is safe.

read more | digg story

Cheap Dependency Injection with Struts Chain

2005-09-17T20:52:00.000-07:00

I recently found a situation where I wanted to change some inheritance into delegation for a Struts Action class. I needed to create a base delegate class to hold the common information that my struts actions needed. Struts chains was already being used so, I simply added an interface defining a setter for the base delegate object. In an object that was monitoring via the struts chain, I check to see if the action being called implements the Delegate Interface and if it does, I call its setter with a new Delegate Object. I have to say that even though I really don't care for struts, the Struts Chain is pretty cool.

KUbuntu configuration tidbits

2005-09-10T20:09:00.000-07:00

KUbuntu configurations:

KDM theme - Place the theme data where ever you like, then edit /etc/kde3/kdm/kdmrc and change the Theme line to point to your new theme

First Day of School

2005-09-07T09:12:00.000-07:00

My oldest son had his first day of Kindergarten yesterday. He was extremely excited and had a good time. He already has a girl friend which only solidifies my assumptions that he was going to be a ladies man. :)

I feel useful

2005-09-03T19:19:00.000-07:00

I feel really useful today. I actually changed the faucet in my kids bathroom. The old one was leaking and was old so, I decided to change it out for a new one. I know it isn't much but, I am usually pretty useless when it comes to stuff like that. :)

Missing my family

2005-09-02T20:33:00.000-07:00

My beautiful wife and kids have taken a trip to sunny (hot) California to enroll my oldest son into school so he can then return and go to school here in Nebraska. Sound odd? It is and its a long story.

Anyways, tonight when I was talking to my family on the phone, my youngest son did nothing but repeat "I luv u daddy".

Boy do I miss them!

Ruby on Rails - Editing multiple rows of data on one form

2005-09-02T20:20:00.000-07:00

I think I may have poorly chosen my first application to learn Rails or maybe not...

I am trying to set up some simple profit-loss reports for our store Natures Paws.

Working with a legacy schema with Rails has been challenging but, I still have found Rails pleasing to use. Tonight, I ran into a situation where, I wanted to be able to update multiple line items in an order and update the model with this data. Rails was able to handle this so easily once I figured out what to do. (Thanks to the params hash dump shown on a Ruby exception page, I was able to figure out what I was doing wrong).

So, if a view has some code, iterating through some line items (each a row in a database table), like so


  <% for @line in @profit_report.report_lines %>
    
      <%= h @line.product_name %>
      <%= text_field("line[]", 'wholesale_price', :size => 4, :maxsize => 4, :onchange => 'updateWholeSaleTotal(this.value);') %>
      <%= text_field("line[]", 'ourshipping_price', :size => 4, :maxsize => 4) %>
      <%= h @line.customer_price %>
      <%= h @line.customer_shipping_price %>
      <%= text_field("line[]", 'usps_price', :size => 4, :maxsize => 4) %>
      <%= h @line.commission_paid %>
       
    
  <% end %>

Then the Controller code can then update each lines in the model like so...


      @params[:line].each do |idx, line|
        report_line = ReportLine.find(idx)
        report_line.update_attributes(line)
      end

I have to say that is pretty sweet.

My only gripes with KUbuntu Linux

2005-08-31T08:32:00.000-07:00

I recently changed my GNU/Linux distribution from Mandriva to KUbuntu. I am a KDE fan and was growing increasingly annoyed with how slowly Mandriva(Mandrake) has been updating its versions.

I have been completely over joyed with KUbuntu since installation. It works flawlessly, and it even picks up on my thumb drive, something Mandrake has had a problem of doing in the last couple of releases.

Just this last week, I have found my first couple of complaints about KUbuntu. These are minor points and were some what easily rectified on my end.

I began to play with Ruby on Rails and, with the latest version of Rails they require the final release of Ruby 1.8.2 or higher. KUbuntu ships with the a version that was released just before the final so, (the latest version of) Rails didn't work out of the box. After rebuilding Ruby, and gems from scratch, I was on my way. The upcoming Breezy release will take care of this little problem.

The more annoying problem, and I say annoying because I wasted a lot of time on a new project that I have become a part of, is that the MySql version 4.0.23 with KUbuntu is configured to skip-innodb by default. I didn't catch this and spent some time going over unit tests that were changing values in a database, testing the values, and then rolling back all changes in the tearDown() method. Of course, since my MySQL configuration wasn't allowing innoDB tables, the rollbacks were not occurring and subsequent tests would fail.

I finally wised up and looked at the test db creation script and noticed that data was persisting when it shouldn't have. After commenting out the offending
skip-innodb line in my.cnf file. The unit tests magically began to work again.

Not sure why Ubuntu/KUbuntu ship with innodb support turned off?

*Update, the mysql 4.1 packages for Ubuntu/KUbuntu have innodb on by default.

Playing with Ruby on Rails

2005-08-28T22:12:00.000-07:00

I have begun playing with Ruby on Rails. I am having a hard time mostly because I don't really know the syntax for Ruby in general so, I believe I may be trying to run before I can walk.

To add to the complexity, I am working with a legacy schema (OsCommerce) so, it is slow going trying to get my model mapped out. I did start out by creating some scaffolding for a single table and working from there. So far, it seems okay but time will tell. I will voice an opinion once I have had enough time to really work with it.

AJAXified Natures Paws Representative Pages

2005-08-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

My wife and I run an online pet business Natures Paws.
I just finished updating the Independent Representative pages (example) to use some AJAX functionality. I have used AJAX techniques in my projects at work using DWR. Our store is based upon the OsCommerce engine and Php so, I decided to go with SAJAX being that it closely resembled how DWR works.

I think in the near future, I am going to refactor the site to use Dojo Toolkit and widgets. Plus, it would be nice to have an all-in-one solution, from XHR to html effects in one framework.

PDF forms, the web, and Struts...

2005-08-25T11:50:00.000-07:00

Have written in a while. I am going to make myself write more if not only to remind myself of things I will forget.

Just finishing up some refactoring of an application that was trying to duplicate a very involved PDF form into html. The final product was then written into a PowerPoint template. It was rather nasty. I decided to keep the PDF form and just push that as the UI. Now the user will be more comfortable with editing the data considering it looks and feels more natural. Also helped to clean up the back-end data now that Fdf data is being saved rather than a rather stringy object graph.

I used iText to handle the opening of, pre/re-population of form data, and streaming of PDFs to the browser. It was also the only library that would open and save our PDF templates. I tried some commercial libraries and they just wouldn't save or stream the final product. iText being open source software also makes the price more attractive.

Things to note and remember about this project...
1. You can't manipulate an iText PdfReader and then reuse it. It throws an exception complaining that the reader is being reused. You have to change, save, and reopen - even if you are just doing all of this in memory.
2. If you are using Struts and want to send something like a PDF as the response, return a null ActionMapping.

Browsers and playing sound

2005-04-29T06:24:00.000-07:00

I just finished a project that required choosen sound(.wav) files to be played when a certain event occured. This became a challenge considering I needed it to work in IE and Firefox. It seemed everytime I found a viable solution in one browser, it either wouldn't work at all, or it would destroy the look-n-feel of the application. Below are what I needed to accomplish and what code works the best across both browsers.

I needed to play a sound when an event occured. In this case, the event was the arrival of a certain alert. To accomplish this, I decided to dynically add the html sound code needed using javascript and DOM manipulation. Note: if you only need to do this for internet explorer, the best solution, in my opinion, is to use the <img dynsrc="something.wav" />. That worked flawlessly in IE.

First thing to note about Firefox, you will need to have quicktime to play the .wav file. That is fine but, it will break the above mentioned code because IE will try to use quicktime to play the .wav file as well and it just simply fails. There is probably a way around this problem but, I don't have the time nor patience to deal with windows :)

In the end, the best solution was to use the <embed > tag. Now trying to put this anywhere within a table in Firefox, causes a lot of space to be used, no matter what you set the width and height to. If it is outside a table, it will not use up a ton of space. Since my application is a portlet and dependent upon what ever the Portal(Jetspeed, in this case) does to layout the portlets(it uses tables:( ), I needed to add my <embed> tag outside of this. I decided to use the following trick (see code below). Is it the most elegant solution?, NO. but it works for now :)

var embed = document.createElement("embed");
embed.setAttribute("src", "somewavefile.wav");

embed.setAttribute("width", "1%");
embed.setAttribute("height", "1%");
document.lastChild.appendChild(embed);
setTimeout( function() { document.lastChild.removeChild(embed); } , 30000 );

DWR and JST

2005-04-26T14:46:00.000-07:00

Although I haven't had a chance to try out JST I think it will complement DWR perfectly. I have spent most of my time trying to build my UI, appending strings for innerHTML junk. Using a template approach to manage this will speed up development and promote richer UI's.

I Hate Internet Explorer

2005-04-20T20:04:00.000-07:00

Okay, I spent(wasted) an afternoon and about an hour of the night trying to pin down why my
appendChild() stuff wasn't working as expected. Would have helped if I would of known that was the problem sooner. Try this code out in IE and Firefox and look at the difference. Be sure to fix the script tag, blogger didn't like it :)

Not only do all of the entries work in Firefox, it accepts the css styles as well. IE accepts the tbody append but will not style the rows.

<html>
<head>
<style type="text/css">

.system { color: #FF0000; }

</style>
</head>
<body>

function drawTableInner(tbodyID)
{
var frag = document.createDocumentFragment();

var tr = document.createElement("tr");
tr.setAttribute("class", "system");

var td = document.createElement("td");
var td1 = document.createElement("td");

var span = document.createElement("span");

span.appendChild(document.createTextNode("Data Entered Again"));

span.setAttribute("style", "color: #00FF00");

td.appendChild(document.createTextNode("Data Entered") );
td1.appendChild(span);

tr.appendChild(td);
tr.appendChild(td1);

frag.appendChild(tr);

var tbody = document.getElementById(tbodyID);
tbody.appendChild(frag);
}

function drawTableIn(tbodyID)
{
var frag = document.createDocumentFragment();

var table = document.createElement("table");
var tr = document.createElement("tr");
tr.setAttribute("class", "system");

var td = document.createElement("td");
var td1 = document.createElement("td");

var span = document.createElement("span");

span.appendChild(document.createTextNode("Data Entered Again"));

span.setAttribute("style", "color: #00FF00");

td.appendChild(document.createTextNode("Data Entered") );
td1.appendChild(span);

tr.appendChild(td);
tr.appendChild(td1);

table.appendChild(tr);
frag.appendChild(table);

var tbody;

if (document.all)
{
tbodyID.innerHTML = "";
tbodyID.appendChild(frag);
}
else
{
tbody = document.getElementById(tbodyID);
}
tbody.appendChild(frag);
}

function drawHTMLTable(tbodyID)
{
document.getElementById(tbodyID).innerHTML="<table><tr class='system'><td>This is some new data</td></tr></table>";
}

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<td>data</td>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody id="tabledata" >
</tbody>
</table>

<div id="divdata">

</div>

<div id="div2data">

</div>

<script type='text/javascript'>
drawTableInner("tabledata");
drawHTMLTable("div2data"); 
drawTableIn("divdata");

</script>

</body>
</html>

DWR, Weblogic, and jetspeed

2005-04-18T14:21:00.000-07:00

I am working on getting DWR setup and working for use with some portlet applications that will be running in a Jetspeed1-based portal. I have to say that I am impressed with what DWR keeps me from having to implement. I spent a little time learning what would need to be done to implement some AJAX style functionality and dwr is a time saver. It also keeps the view code a lot cleaner in my opinion.

One problem I found was a simple fix in the DWR servlet class. BEA weblogic was complaining about the ContentType being set after getWriter has already been called on the response.

After fixing that, I was on my way. Hopefully, using the portlet namespace to keep the javascript and div id's unique will allow for multiple portlets on the same page.

Struts and the Portal Bridge

2005-04-14T10:45:00.000-07:00

With my new job, I have been working on creating some struts portlets. Really just struts applications that can play well in the bridge environment. I just did my first Edit view and got stuck on returning to the normal view. My view was showing up just fine but, the portlet state in Jetspeed (1) was not being restored. After adding the following, everything was returned to the proper state.

   
ActionResponse actionResponse = (ActionResponse)  httpServletRequest.getAttribute("javax.portlet.response);

actionResponse.setPortletMode(PortletMode.VIEW);

New House Pictures [2]

2005-04-12T17:18:00.000-07:00

View from the left.

New House Pictures [1]

2005-04-12T17:17:00.000-07:00

New House. View from the street.