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03
Feb

Using Smarty’s count_words and count_characters in design

This product page inspired me to write this post. It was launched around February last year (uh oh time flies!) and the first successful order was made around that time too. By then, there were only about 20 products or less, and really short attributes i.e. volumes in 8, 12 or 16 oz. strength like mild, regular, etc. Last monday, new products came in for addition to the site and they have quite longer attributes. It could have had a liquid width on the attribute and cart buttons but they had a really good design advisers and wanted to follow the design to the pixel.

Initially, this html code composes the product attribute and cart button, notice that <span class="c">Cherry</span> is a one word attribute for scent

<div class="cartbutton" style="background-image: url(images/button-long-add-to-bag.gif);">
  <span class="c">Cherry</span>
  <span class="c">8 oz.</span>
  <span class="c">$5.99</span>
  <span class="d">
    <a class="e" href="cart.php?product=5|33404&amp;as=5">Add to bag</a>
  </span>
  <span class="e">» ITEM: 33404</span>
</div>

And the new ones came with the colors “Casino Red”, “Golden Chestnut” and “Orchid Black” – long attributes, and two others “Copper” and “Spice” – short and manageable, as the column width will fit the entire word.

I was really planning to rewrite the whole attribute and cart button section, but I didn’t had much time. I figured I can make the font smaller and paddings or margins can go smaller than the regular so that two lines would fit in the box if the attribute value is a word longer. But I cannot be in PHP, its not really the way to go. So, if I can add another class that would override existing font-size and parent margin/padding, that would work. Here, I thought, word count doesn’t really need be in the PHP side and since I’m using Smarty, I found in it a variable modifier that can print the number of words in a variable, and that’s it. I can add another class in the column span like words-10 or countwords-3 in my template by the number of words that is present in the variable. Below is the generated code

<div class="cartbutton" style="background-image: url('images/button-long-add-to-bag.gif');">
  <span class="c col-color words-2">Casino Red</span>  	  	  	  	  	  	
  <span class="c col-volume">8 oz.</span>  	  	
  <span class="c">$11.39</span>
  <span class="d">
    <a href="cart.php?product=28|33825&amp;as=14" class="e">Add to bag</a>
  </span>
  <span class="e">&raquo; ITEM: 33825</span>
</div>

CSS rules

/* default rules */
.cartbutton { height: 23px; background: url('/images/button-add-to-bag.gif') no-repeat left center; color: #333; }
.cartbutton span { display: block; text-align: center; float: left; font-weight: bold; font-size: 10px; padding-top: 5px; }
.cartbutton span.c { width: 45px;  }
.cartbutton span.d { width: 80px;}
.cartbutton span.d a { color: #fff; text-decoration: none; }
.cartbutton span.e { margin-left: 10px; width: 100px; }
/* special rule for two word attribute */
span.words-2 { padding-top: 3px; line-height: 98%; font-size: 9px; }

And this is how it is setup in the template.

<div class="cartbutton" style="background-image: url('images/button-long-add-to-bag.gif');">
{if $attr[at].color}
  <span class="c col-color words-{$attr[at].color|count_words}">{$attr[at].color}</span>
{/if}
{if $attr[at].strength}
  <span class="c col-strength words-{$attr[at].strength|count_words}">{$attr[at].strength}</span>
{/if}
{if $attr[at].scent}
  <span class="c col-scent">{$attr[at].scent}</span>
{/if}
{if $attr[at].volume}
  <span class="c col-volume">{$attr[at].volume}</span>
{/if}
<span class="c">
  $ {if !$attr[at].amount} {$results[r].amount} {else} {math equation="x" x=$attr[at].amount format="%.2f"} {/if}
</span>
<span class="d">
  <a href="cart.php?product={$results[r].id}|{if $results[r].sku && !$attr[at].sku}{$results[r].sku}{elseif $attr[at].sku}{$attr[at].sku}{/if}&amp;as={$attr[at].pas_id}" class="e">Add to bag</a>
</span>
<span class="e">&raquo; ITEM: {if $results[r].sku && !$attr[at].sku}{$results[r].sku}{elseif $attr[at].sku}{$attr[at].sku}{/if}</span>
</div>

Those extra class names like col-volume, col-scent and col-strength are only for future use, who knows what other formatting and adjustments on the data and theme will happen. Its really fun working with MVC model. Hope it helps

Happy coding!

Posted in job, me stuff, work related | 1 Comment »

27
Oct

Quickie Visitors Country WP Plugin

This plugin is dependent on WP/GeoTrack by Johannes Lietz, this is NOT a stand-alone plugin, it won’t work if WP/GeoTrack is not installed anyway, so it’s safe.

And don’t look for it in WP Plugins repo, you won’t find it there

/*
Plugin Name: Top Visitors Flag
Plugin URI: http://www.marvinmarcelo.com/
Description: This plugin displays visitors on sidebar as widget dependent on <a href="http://dadabase.de/weblog/archives/2006/05/23/wordpress-geotrack-plugin">WP/GEO-Track plugin</a>.
Author: Marvin Marcelo
Author URI: http://www.marvinmarcelo.com/
Version: 1.0.0
*/
function tvf_get_topvisits()
{
  global $wpdb, $table_prefix;
  $sql = "select count(*) as `rows` , `country` , `flagname` from `".$table_prefix."geotrack` group by `country` order by `rows` desc limit 0 , 12";
  $flagstats = $wpdb->get_results($sql);
 
  $html = "<li id='top-country-flags'><h2>Top Visiting Countries</h2><div>\n"; /*  id string */
  foreach ($flagstats as $cf)
  {
    $cf->rows = number_format($cf->rows, 0, "", ",");
    $html .= "<img src=\"". GEOTRACK_URL . "flags/" . $cf-/>flagname . ".png\" alt=\"Flag of $cf->country with $cf->rows visits\" title=\"$cf->country with $cf->rows visits\" />\n";
  }
  $html .= "</div></li>";
  echo $html;
}
 
function init_tvf_init(){
	register_sidebar_widget("Top Visitors Flags", "tvf_get_topvisits");
}
 
if (defined('GT_NOT_INSTALLED'))
{
  echo "<!-- You need \"http://dadabase.de/weblog/archives/2006/05/23/wordpress-geotrack-plugin\" installed first-->";
}
else
{
  add_action("plugins_loaded", "init_tvf_init");
}

Also, you have to forgive the function, constants, and variables names, we all struggle for a better and sensible one Happy coding!

Tags: php, snippet, wordpress
Posted in job, me stuff, productivity, work related | No Comments »

12
Oct

SSH Login without password

This is actually a repost from the tutorial I often ran onto when working with servers. Lately, the sys-ad I was working with changed users home directory and also changed their passwords, but gave me the root pass. However, I don’t want to bother him for new passwords, and I guess he setup new ones from password generator apps/scripts, which are of course, really really recommended nowadays. Since I have the root pass, and I don’t want to go back to chmod-chown each and every files/folders I created via root, I thought I can automate logging in with each account I need to work ‘as’ their respective users. Or I can use cat /etc/passwd to know their home directories.

First log in on A as user a and generate a pair of authentication keys. Do not enter a passphrase:

a@A:~> ssh-keygen -t rsa
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/a/.ssh/id_rsa):
Created directory '/home/a/.ssh'.
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in /home/a/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /home/a/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
3e:4f:05:79:3a:9f:96:7c:3b:ad:e9:58:37:bc:37:e4 a@A

Now use ssh to create a directory ~/.ssh as user b on B. (The directory may already exist, which is fine):

a@A:~> ssh b@B mkdir -p .ssh
b@B's password:

Finally append a’s new public key to b@B:.ssh/authorized_keys and enter b’s password one last time:

a@A:~> cat .ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh b@B 'cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys'
b@B's password:

Now I can work as ‘owner’ and ‘user’ within each user home directory.

a@A:~> ssh b@B hostname
B

Some notes, depending on your version of SSH you might also have to do the following changes:

Put the public key in .ssh/authorized_keys2
Change the permissions of .ssh to 700
Change the permissions of .ssh/authorized_keys2 to 640

Source: http://linuxproblem.org/art_9.html

Posted in job, work related | 1 Comment »

25
Sep

PHP code block – bringing order to chaos

I had to come up with this post because I’ve been working on an old CMS about 3 years old (or even more) and I had been wondering why the calendar links cuts off from 2001 to 2003.

Task: List a year/month links from the present to the oldest published image sets.

Sounds easy, and I believe it is.

But when I checked on the existing script, this is what I got.

 $month_array = array("1"=>'January',"2"=>'February',"3"=>'March',"4"=>'April',"5"=>'May',"6"=>'June',"7"=>'July',"8"=>'August',"9"=>'September',"10"=>'October',"11"=>'November',"12"=>'December');
	$smarty->assign('y2day',$y2day); $y=0;
	for ($q=12; $q >= 1; $q--){
			$month = $month_array[$q];
			if( ($_GET[year] < '2000') && ($m2day ==$q ) ) $w_string = $week_string; else  $w_string ='';
			if( ($_GET[year] == '2007') && ($_GET[month] == $q) ) $w_string = $week_string;
 
		  if($m2day >= $q){
			$tmp_cal_month_now_array = array(
					'month' => $month,
					'string' => $w_string,
					'link' => $q
					); $date_month_now_array[$y++] =  $tmp_cal_month_now_array;	 }
		} //for
 
	 $smarty->assign('calendar_now_month',$date_month_now_array);
 
	$y=0;	$c_yeartoday = date("Y") -1; //echo $c_yeartoday;
	for($q=0; $q < = 5; $q++){
			$tmp =$c_yeartoday - $q; //echo $tmp;
 
		 $tmp_cal_date_array = array(
					  'year' => $tmp
 
				 );  $date_year_array[$y++] =  $tmp_cal_date_array;
	 } //for
 
	$smarty->assign('calendar_year',$date_year_array);
 
	    $y=0;
		for($q=12; $q >= 1; $q--)
		{
			$month = $month_array[$q];
			if( $_GET[month] == $q ) $w_string = $week_string; else $w_string='';
			$tmp_cal_month_array = array(
					'month' => $month,
					'string' => $w_string,
					'link' => $q
					); $date_month_array[$y++] =  $tmp_cal_month_array;
 
		}//for
	 $smarty->assign('calendar_month',$date_month_array);
 
	 $y=0;
		for($q=12; $q >= 10; $q--)
		{
			$month = $month_array[$q];
			if( ($_GET[year] == '2000') && ($_GET[month] == $q) ) $w_string = $week_string; else $w_string='';
			$tmp_cal_month_old_array = array(
					'month' => $month,
					'string' => $w_string,
					'link' => $q
					); $date_month_old_array[$y++] =  $tmp_cal_month_old_array;
 
		}//for
	 $smarty->assign('calendar_month_old',$date_month_old_array);