Bytes of Developing in the Dark

CakePHP Visible URL Links Using Proper Routes

If you are every writing body content that requires you to mention a local URL then you are like to be tempted to write a very static, such as:

http://yourdomain.com/users/login

Instead it’s better to use CakePHP routes, just in case you change the URL structure of your site (ie, to use pretty urls, etc). So instead do something like this:

link(Router::url(array('controller' => 'users', 'action' => 'login'), true), array('controller' => 'users', 'action' => 'login')) ?>

Setting Timezone in CakePHP

When looking over my friend Tony Milne’s shoulder as he worked on his new blog built in CakePHP, we ran into the issue of our server being hosted in the US so comment timestamps were being given dates based on the current US date/time. To change the timezone CakePHP uses just place the following in your bootstrap.php

// place in app/config/bootstrap.php 
// Australia Daylight Saving timezone
putenv('TZ=AEDT');

See also:
List of Timezone Abbreviations
Original Solution

Install & Uninstall MySQL - Ubuntu

Ran into an issue on with a VPS on Slicehost that I cloned the other day. The MySQL server wouldn’t start as it failed to find the mysqld.sock file (which appeared to be non-existent). I uninstalled MySQL, which was fine because we didn’t need any of the cloned databases and then just reinstalled it.

Install MySQL:

sudo aptitude install mysql-server mysql-client libmysqlclient15-dev

Remove MySQL:

sudo apt-get --purge remove mysql-server mysql-common mysql-client libmysqlclient15-dev libmysql-ruby 

As a side note, this article has extended information about adding and removing users to your MySQL installation: http://articles.slicehost.com/2008/7/10/mysql-creating-and-editing-users

JQuery Dialog - Lightbox Alternative

A project currently being developed needed a popup box similar to Lightbox or Fancybox but not for the purpose of displaying photos, video, slideshows, etc but to purely be used to render a page within a floating box - without all the bells and whistles. The solution has been Joel Moss’ Codaset Dialog. Its beauty is in its simplicity and clean widgetless design.

Tip: On line 180 we found easing being set to “swing” provided a smoother animation in more browsers.

Embeded Video with “Video for Everybody”

Just wanted to point out this Video for Everybody site as a neat tool to have in your toolbelt. It basically provides a snippet of HTML that attempts to best show users video based on their system - with multiple fallback included depending on whether or not certain technologies are supported.

Worth checking out!

Terminal Tip - Remove .svn Files

A quick way to remove all the annoying little .svn files recursively from a working copy. Its a bit of a hack way of doing a svn export.

find ./ -name ".svn" | xargs rm -Rf

JavaScript “Syntactic Sugar”

I’ve just been glancing over this post about JavaScript syntax goodies (aka sugar) on StackOverflow. Two highlights were:

Defaults

I’ve been jealous of ruby having this method - php doesn’t have an equally succinct equivelant - however it appears Javascript does.

arg = arg || 'default'; // if arg evaluates to false, use 'default'

Object Membership Test

A nice, natural way to check for object members.

var props = { a: 1, b: 2 };

("a" in props) // true
("b" in props) // true
("c" in props) // false

CakePHP Sequence Behaviour

I’ve yet to use this CakePHP Sequence Behaviour but it seems like a solid solution for any model that you want to maintain an order to the records. The demo shows it being implemented with drag and drog.

JQuery Plugin - HoverIntent

My coding partner in crime Tony Milne pointed me in the direction of the HoverIntent JQuery plugin today whilst we were attempting to delay the appearance of Tipsy (previously mentioned here) tooltips.

HoverIntent attempts to improve JQuery’s “hover” event by delaying the event until it appears the user is actually actively trying to hover on an item.

Extract from the homepage:

…instead of immediately calling the onMouseOver function, it waits until the user’s mouse slows down enough before making the call.

PostBin - Easily Debug Web Hooks

If you are doing any experimenting with web hooks, there’s a neat little site - http://www.postbin.org/ - that allows you to easily see what POST data is being sent from a web hook provider (ie, HookPress for WordPress).