Edward Tanguay's Web Developer Site - Most Recent Items

PHP CODE: File that shows how all PHP 5.2 input_filters work.

18 Nov 2008 21:18:21 GMT

This file runs through the input filters codes and shows how e.g. filter_var($value, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING) and filter_input($value, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING) will alter strings. You can see an example this here.. (visit site to comment, no login required)

PHP CODE: How to create a PHP Webservice with nusoap and consume it with nusoap and PHP5's SoapClient()

18 Nov 2008 02:50:04 GMT

Nusoap is convenient because you don't have to make any changes on the server, just download and copy the library files to a sub-directory. Nusoap also creates a WSDL file automatically for you. These examples show how to return an array of values so that you could, e.g. return 20 fields of information about a user, for instance. Not that on the nusoap examples I turn the cache off since when you have it on while you are developing and add a method to your soap server, your client doesn't recognize the changes. First download nusoap, then copy the files to a sub-directory on your web called "nusoap". (visit site to comment, no login required)

PHP CODE: Use define() for tedious-to-type constants

13 Nov 2008 00:35:44 GMT

Stumbled across this use of define() today, nice for HTML tag and newline shortcuts etc. (visit site to comment, no login required)

FLEX CODE: Develop Flash Applications without Flash with free Flex SDK and free FlashDevelop editor

07 Nov 2008 23:39:26 GMT

The following instructions show you the exact steps to set up a free development environment on windows which allows you to develop Flex applications with ActionScript 3. You won't have the nice step-through debugging or the design view of Adobe's FlexBuilder but this code shows you how to create a two-line MXML file which allows you to do all your programming back in ActionScript 3 classes anyway so you just kind of use the MXML file as a tunnel to be able use the rich Flex libraries. FlashDevelop has very nice code-completion and other features, and with traces you can do decent debugging. The code helps you get up to speed with event handlers which are a bit different than web scripting if that is all you have been doing so far. You can view a running example of this appliction here. (visit site to comment, no login required)

ACTIONSCRIPT 3.0 CODE: How to set up a Flex application in FlashDevelop (with code completion)

23 Oct 2008 10:24:32 GMT

This works much better than my previous example since it enables FlashDevelop to do its nice code-completion on Flex objects such as "button". In FlashDevelop, new project, Flex, Flex 3 Project, then replace MXML code, then create a class and put in the ActionScript3 code. (visit site to comment, no login required)

ACTIONSCRIPT 3.0 CODE: How to set up a Flex application in FlashDevelop

23 Oct 2008 10:09:03 GMT

In FlashDevelop, new project, Flex, Flex 3 Project, then replace MXML code, then create a class and put in the ActionScript3 code. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to have the nice code complete completion for e.g. the button object. (visit site to comment, no login required)

ACTIONSCRIPT 3.0 CODE: Text-Follow-Cursor example using simple sprite

22 Oct 2008 20:19:53 GMT

In FlashDevelop, New Project, AS3 Project, (check Create directory for project), (Project/Properties/Text Movie/Play in popup), then open up Main.as and replace it with this code. (visit site to comment, no login required)

WINDOWS TIP: Use Free Virtual CloneDrive to install from ISO files

13 Oct 2008 21:36:10 GMT

I wanted to install Visual C# 2008 Express but knew I wanted to try out the Visual Basic and Visual Web Developer as well, so instead of doing three downloads from the web, I downloaded the .ISO file with all four of them on it, then downloaded the free Virtual Clone Drive which after you install it looks like you added a DVD drive to your system, right-click it and select Virtual CloneDrive and Mount, then navigate to and select the .iso file and it is as if you are loading from a DVD, nice, much smoother solution then one I was using back in 2002 -- it just works. (visit site to comment, no login required)

ECLIPSE TIP: Create hotkey macros in Eclipse

09 Oct 2008 03:29:26 GMT

I've been using Eclipse for a long time and just found out that you can create a hotkey to perform all kinds of mundane tasks, e.g. if you find yourself committing a file every minute or so to check minute changes, go to Preferences | General | Keys and set up a e.g. CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-C to commit your file, explore this for awhile and save some time in the long run. (visit site to comment, no login required)

PHP TIP: Enable word-wrap in Eclipse PDT

19 Sep 2008 00:05:09 GMT

Tired of editing long lines extending out to the right in Eclipse? This plugin solves the problem, install as any plugin in Eclipse, restart, then right click and word wrap, simple as that. (visit site to comment, no login required)

PHP CODE: A quick MySQL data layer class that makes read/writes one-liners

17 Sep 2008 23:01:21 GMT

If you need to write a quick PHP script that accesses a MySQL database, just copy in or include this class and you can do all your reads and writes with one-line satements. (visit site to comment, no login required)

GENERAL TIP: Stackoverflow: the most useful IT Question/Answer site on the web

15 Sep 2008 21:57:43 GMT

Stackoverflow just launched publically today after being in beta for about two months. Last week I posted about 8 questions about vim and Perl and each question was answered by multiple people within 10 minutes. The site has a system of badges and reputation points you can earn for various things which turns people into hungry dogs waiting to answer your question first. You get to read the answers and mark them up and down based on their helpfulness and then select one that best answers your question. This site is truly unique, new, fresh, ajaxy in the right places, and very efficient, try it out. (visit site to comment, no login required)

PERL TIP: Always put "my" in front of variables inside functions

12 Sep 2008 20:06:03 GMT

In Perl, if you define a variable inside a function without the word "my" (e.g. @record = ...), then that variable is treated as a global variable (wow!). Hence, always define function variables thusly: "my @records = ...." inside a function so that they do not change values outside the function, e.g. if you have too recordsets and you use the same variable name "@records" to loop through them. (visit site to comment, no login required)

PERL CODE: Four Simple Perl database functions for MySQL

10 Sep 2008 06:59:22 GMT

Was on a Perl project where the code had 5 lines of database connection code for each time it needed to get data from the database, so I wrote these functions which allow you to get records, record, value or execute a command with one-liners. Records are an array of hashes and included the code to call the functions since figuring out what syntax you need to access the objects through pointers/references can be time-consuming. End result is: if you just need to use Perl quick to read and write to a MySQL database, this code will get you up to speed fast. (visit site to comment, no login required)

PERL CODE: Basic database read and text file read/write code in Perl

02 Sep 2008 22:12:27 GMT

If you need to do something quick and useful in Perl, this will get you reading and writing in databases and text files. If you are a PHP programmer getting into Perl then look up the "eq" operator first. (visit site to comment, no login required)

CSS CODE: Large button links with A elements

12 Aug 2008 03:26:23 GMT

Many times you want to have a menu with A elements as the links instead of e.g. LI elements. Here is an example with large buttons. See example here. (visit site to comment, no login required)

PHP CODE: How to check if an IP-address is within the range of two IP-addresses

17 Jul 2008 05:11:08 GMT

This function checks if an IP address is between two others, not that ip2long has a problem by itself so you need the sprintf("%u") function as well. Also it returns false if any of the IP addresses are invalid as to avoid tampering. (visit site to comment, no login required)

FIREFOX TIP: Download Firebug for Firefox 3

06 Jul 2008 19:06:23 GMT

I installed Firefox 3 today and instantly found the search-history-in-the-URL-bar to be indispensible. All the more to my horror did I realize that Firebug was no longer installed because it was not compatible with Firefox 3. Luckily there is a beta being built that IS compatible and it works just like the old one. The SQLite Manager and Web Developer bar still work in Firefox 3 and so with these three, no reason not to upgrade! Enjoy. (visit site to comment, no login required)

JAVASCRIPT CODE: Javascript photo-viewer that works in four browsers

06 Jul 2008 13:44:09 GMT

This was a little experiment to get a useful base of cross-browser code that does some interactive stuff in Javascript. It is simple but handles mouseover, button highlight, and just has a nice, basic feel. The only issue is in Opera the text is at top of the buttons, but didn't have any nerves left for that one. At first I tried using :hover and :focus which brought me to the conclusion that this really isn't standard between the browsers so used onmouseover and onmouseout to deal with it. Also worked out a number of quirks that various browsers had, e.g. I removed the ugly dotted focus line in Firefox on the buttons, they left it there in Firefox 3 as well I noticed, I replaced it with a gradient background for the focussed button. So this code looks decent in Firefox 2/3, Internet Explorer 7 (probably 6 too), Opera 9.5 (in fact only after I upgraded from 8 did it show the background on the buttons), and Safari. The bad boy of the group is Opera, but since opera gets embedded in quite a number of devices these days (e.g. Philips TVs), you don't want to leave it out completely. You can view this example online here. Of course next step when implementing this is to make it read from a database or XML file, I just wanted to get the browser-compatibility as accurate as possible first. (visit site to comment, no login required)

JAVASCRIPT TIP: Online Javascript tutorial as pre-AJAX refresher

03 Jul 2008 02:37:47 GMT

If you are getting into AJAX and need a booster course on Javascript, this site has a nice concept/example format to get you up to speed fast without the make-the-background-color-blink examples you get on other sites. Note the "AJAX for N00bs" section as well. (visit site to comment, no login required)