Easy CakePHP in Ubuntu
I’ve always setup a new CakePHP project by extracting the current stable build into a project directory and editing the core.php and database.php files manually. I usually then change to the /cake/console directory of the project and run php cake.php bake (having already installed the php-cli) to bake my code.
I know there are other ways to make this process simpler but its always just worked for me and I am usually to lazy/busy/unmotivated to try something new.
Today, however, I stumbled across a great way to set up CakePHP in Ubuntu so that building new projects is a simple matter of running one line from the command line and you are ensured of using the same stable “shell” version of Cake each time. It is also extremely easy to upgrade your “shell” version whenever you want. (It also makes baking even easier than the way I was doing it but that’s just an added bonus !)
(This may or may not also be possible in other Ubuntu like systems that have the same CakePHP repositories eg Mint, Debian etc)
1) Download and extract the latest stable version of CakePHP to a folder on your machine.
2) Install cakephp-scripts from the Ubuntu repositories
$ sudo apt-get install cakephp-scripts
This will install the current version of CakePHP in the Ubuntu repository, as well as the php-cli (command line interface) and setup the Cake console for easy use from the command line.
3) Copy the folders from the latest stable version to your system
Currently you have installed whatever version of cake was included in your version of Ubuntu’s repositories. If you are running an older version of Ubuntu or just want to run the very latest stable version, you need to update your Cake version by copying it from the extracted folder in step 1.
The “shell” version of CakePHP you installed in step 2 is located in /usr/share/php/cake. You will notice that the directory structure is slightly different from the extracted version, but a little common sense will enable you to see what needs to be copied to where (basically, from the extracted directory, copy the app directory and everything from inside the cake directory into the /usr/share/php/cake directory).
You can also upgrade your “shell” by downloading/extracting a newer stable version of CakePHP and repeating the above step.
Now baking with Cake becomes even easier.
Change to your web root (usually /var/www/ or wherever you usually develop your PHP applications) and run
$ cake bake projectname
where projectname is the name of a new project you want to create. You will be presented with the Cake console, which will set up your project folder and copy over all the code from the CakePHP “shell”. It will also set up a random Security Salt value, add some default CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATHs and guide you through setting up your database configuration(s).
You can then change directory to your projectname directory and run
$ cake bake
to bake your Models, Views and Controllers.
Happy Baking…
UPDATE: I just noticed another nice side effect of this way of creating Cake projects, default app_controller.php, app_helper.php and app_model.php files are created in the project root folder. 
PHP Advent 2009
I had no idea something like this existed but what a great idea. 24 days of worth of PHP articles to keep the Christmas Blues away.
Today’s article is something very close to my heart and discusses the topic of Comprehensible Code.
Go, read, expand your minds….
Ambit Recruitment website goes live
Personal experience will always advise our actions. So, the objective is to ensure positive experiences are repeated as often as possible, to encourage further positive outcomes.
That’s the simple premise on which Ambit Recruitment operates the business of fitting the right people into the right positions.
The Ambit Recruitment website is a bit of a milestone for me, as it is the first site that I handcoded from scratch (HTML/CSS/PHP). I am quite proud of how it turned out.
Migrating from Drupal to Wordpress
Well, it finally happened. After months of frustration with Drupal as a blog tool, I gave up and decided it was time to move over to Wordpress.
I’m sure as a CMS system Drupal can be quite wonderful, but for running and managing a simple blog site, I have yet to come across a better platform than Wordpress.
However the migration of the database content from one system to another had it’s ups and downs. Fortunately for me, not many people read this blog, so I only had to migrate the posts data from one database to the other.
Below is the script I wrote to do so, in the hopes that this might save someone else the hassle of writing it themselves.
P.S. This was for a Drupal 6 to Wordpress 2.8.2 migration. If it doesn’t work for you because you are working with different versions of either Drupal or Wordpress, drop me a line and I will try to modify it for you.
/**
* Setup database constants
*/
define('DRUPAL', 'phpdevec_drpl1');
define('WORDPRESS', 'phpdevec_wordpress');
define('URL', 'http://www.php-developer.co.za/');
/**
* Setup server constants
*/
define("SERVER", "localhost");
define('USER', 'phpdevec_drpl1');
define('PASSWORD', 'L8xb3OuZdQV0');
/**
* debug function outputs data
*/
function debug($data){
echo '<pre>';
print_r($data);
echo '</pre>';
}
/**
* Connect to server and database
*/
function connect($db) {
// database connection
$conn = mysql_connect(SERVER, USER, PASSWORD);
if (!$conn) {
//connection to server failed
die("Cannot connect to server");
return false;
}
$dbSelected = mysql_select_db($db, $conn);
if(!$dbSelected) {
// database connection failed
die("Cannot connect to database");
return false;
}
return $conn;
}
/**
* Close database connection
*/
function disconnect($conn){
if ($conn){
// connection exists to close
if (!mysql_close($conn)){
// database connection failed
die("Cannot close database connection");
return false;
}
return true;
}
// default return in case the original connection failed
return true;
}
/**
* Generic SQL SELECT, checks type
* (SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE [DELETE])
*
* @param string $sql query
* @param string $type object or assoc
* @return mixed $return array of rows if select or true/false if insert/update/delete
*/
function sql($sql, $database, $type = 'assoc'){
$return = '';
// check database connection
$connection = connect($database);
if (!$connection){
$return = false;
}
$sql = ltrim($sql);
$query_type = substr($sql, 0, 6);
// run query
$rst = mysql_query($sql);
if (!$rst){
// query failed for some reason
die("Error in MySQL query: " . $sql);
$return = false;
}else {
if (strtoupper($query_type) == "SELECT"){
// query was SELECT
$return = array();
$rows = mysql_num_rows($rst);
switch($type) {
case 'assoc' : // return as assoc array
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($rst)) {
// gather rows
$return[] = $row;
}
break;
default : //return as object
while($row = mysql_fetch_object($rst)) {
// gather rows
$return[] = $row;
}
}
}else {
// query was INSERT, UPDATE OR DELETE
$queryType = 'UPDATE';
if (mysql_insert_id()){
// query was INSERT
$id = mysql_insert_id();
$queryType = 'INSERT';
$return = $id;
}else {
$rows = mysql_affected_rows();
$return = $rows;
}
}
}
// disconnect from database
disconnect($connection);
//return rows / whether insert/update/delete successful
return $return;
}
$sql = "SELECT n.*, nv.body as content FROM node as n LEFT JOIN node_revisions as nv on n.nid = nv.nid WHERE n.type = 'blog'";
$nodes = sql($sql, DRUPAL);
//debug($nodes);
$Nodes = array();
foreach ($nodes as $node){
$nId = $node['nid'];
$sql = "SELECT * FROM comments WHERE nid = '$nId'";
$comments = sql($sql, DRUPAL);
$node['comments'] = $comments;
$Nodes[] = $node;
}
//debug($Nodes);
foreach ($Nodes as $node){
//publish draft
$two_hours = 2*3600;
$date = $node['created'];
$gmt_date = $date - $two_hours;
$modified = $node['changed'];
$gmt_modified = $modified - $two_hours;
$post_date = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $date);
$post_date_gmt = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $gmt_date);
$post_modified = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $modified);
$post_modified_gmt = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $gmt_modified);
$post_title = mysql_escape_string($node['title']);
$post_content = mysql_escape_string($node['content']);
$post_name = strtolower(str_replace(array(' ', '.'), array('-', ''), $post_title));
$status = $node['status'] == '1' ? 'publish' : 'draft';
$sql = "INSERT INTO phpdevec_posts SET
post_author = 1,
post_date = '$post_date',
post_date_gmt = '$post_date_gmt',
post_content = '$post_content',
post_title = '$post_title',
post_status = '$status',
comment_status = 'open',
ping_status = 'open',
post_name = '$post_name',
post_modified = '$post_modified',
post_modified_gmt = '$post_modified_gmt',
post_parent = '0',
menu_order = '0',
post_type = 'post',
comment_count = 0";
$id = sql($sql, WORDPRESS);
if (!$id){
die('An error occured adding the data to the database');
}
/*
if (!empty($comments)){
foreach ($comments as $comment){
}
}
*/
$guid = URL . "?p=$id";
$sql = "UPDATE phpdevec_posts SET guid = '$guid' WHERE ID = '$id'";
$updated_rows = sql($sql, WORDPRESS);
if (!$updated_rows){
die('An error occured updating record no '. $id);
}
}
Create an array containing the days of the week
You could simply code:
$days_of_week = array(’Monday’, ‘Tuesday’, ‘Wednesday’, ‘Thursday’, ‘Friday’, ‘Saturday’, ‘Sunday’);
but thats the “noob” way, a real coder creates a function…
function days_of_week(){
// declare days_of_week array
$days_of_week = array();// get current date integer value (0 – 6)
$day = date(”w”);// get current date values
$today = date(”j”);
$month = date(”n”);
$year = date(”Y”);// get start day and end day of the week
$start_day = $today – $day;
$end_day = $start_day + 6;// build days of the week array
for ($i = $start_day; $i <= $end_day; $i++) {
$days_of_week[] = date(”l”, mktime(0,0,1,$month,$i,$year));
}// return array
return $days_of_week;
}
PHP.js
This is something I came across a while ago, but it has really come in handy.
It is a project that attempts to make many php functions available in javascript. As most php developers will at some point have to write some javascript, it is a very handy library.
You can find it over at http://www.ohloh.net/p/php-js.
Life of a developer
It has been a while since I have posted here, mainly due to the time consuming period that is the festive season and also because I am discovering that I am getting fairly annoyed by Drupal as a blog tool and am trying out the new Wordpress as an alternative.
For now I have a small post on something that many people aren’t aware of but is VERY handy, the ternary operator.
Basically it is a shortcut to do a simple if-then-else statement in one line when you are performing fairly simple checks for a single value. I tend to use it a lot when checking for GET or POST variables.
So:
$getContents = (isset($_GET) ? $_GET : array());
would check if the $_GET variable array is set, if it is return its contents to $getContents and if not return and empty array to $getContents.
Much easier that coding:
$getContents = array();
if (isset($_GET)){
$getContents = $_GET;
}
P.S. Just on a side note, if you are new to PHP and want to use this code to check for and receive your $_GET contents, dont forget to sanatize your data as well (hmm I think I see a new post topic)
Last day of the month
Here’s one line of code to get the last day of a month:
$last_day = date(’t', mktime(0, 0, 1, $month_variable, 1, $year_variable));
How much more difficult do you want it to be ???
Delving deeper into the PHP lake…testing if a variable exists in a list
As a PHP developer of almost four years now, I often still come across little problems in coding that make me do the good ol Google search to find the answer. (someday I will have memorised the entire PHP manual, but today is not that day .
Anyway today I was asked about how to do a IN LIST type comparison in PHP. (similar to the mysql IN statement).
A few google searches later revealed that there exists no such PHP command, however the in_array function can be used to perform the task:
$myArray = array(1, 2, 3, 4, 5);
if (in_array($var, $myArray)){
// do some code.
}
I guess one could also combine the two as follows:
if (in_array($var, array(1, 2, 3, 4, 5))){
// do some code.
}
I’ll have to test that one, but you get the idea…
Simple PHP increment function
Whenever I have to output a numbered list of data I usually run the following code to achieve the required result.
$counter = 0;
// for loop that does all the required code
$counter++;
// end for
but I have discovered a lovely little function that does all this for me.
function increment(&$counter){
$counter++;
return $counter
}
now I simply call
increment($whichever_counter)
and it automatically outputs the next numeric.
Great! Simple and easy to use…..that’s the way to code.