PHP

I’ve been looking for a while for a way to integrate PHP and AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). Up until now I haven’t found a way to do it besides the stuff Here. Fortunately, I got a little distracted in my studies and found what looks like a Dynamite OO Library Here.

Look in the future for some examples of how to use this.

Jon

This is a little something that I made up this afternoon at school.

It’s an implementation of a search app with out a celing. In other words , there’s no submit button. With each keystoke that you type, the query get’s more accurate.

If you just want to check it out (with source, and an example) then Click Here
The code is commented pretty well.

If you want a little explanation read on.

It’s important to do form validation for obvious reasons. This is an implementation of an email checker that uses php regular expressions, and a little bet if pizzaz with asynchronous javascript and xml, or AJAX.

Here’s the example.

A quick rundown of how this works is:

1. You type in a string
2. You hit submit
3. The data is transfered asynchronously (without refreshing the page) to the server
4. The server checks to see if the email is valid or invalid
5. If it’s valid it tells you so, as well as if it’s not

The guts of the script are here:
if (eregi("^[a-zA-Z0-9_-.+]+@[a-zA-Z0-9-]+.[a-zA-Z0-9-_.]+$",$email)) { //return confirmation that it worked } else { //return that it didn't work }

Since I’ve already been on the topic of doing small beginner PHP tutorials, here’s another one. This one is pretty self explanitory.

You can see it here.

Basically what this does is let you enter a domain or page or whatever and it redirects you to the page. On top of just redirecting you, it logs all of the redirections along with the request date, and requester ip address.

If you have a need for this, you’ll most likely know how to implement it. If not, feel free, as always, to email me (howe -dot- jon -at- gmail -dot- com), and I’d be happy to help you out to the best of my abilities.

I’ve been wanting to make a script in PHP that handles downloads for a while. Last night I was bored, so I made one.

DISCLAIMER:
This is a very basic example, but if you have any use for this, I’m sure that you can figure out how to use it. If not, I’ll probably work more with it in the future anyways.

This system works with two PHP files.

If you just want to see the script work, go Here.

I found a few cool things this morning.

The first being a way to install a rpm file in Debian. You do this using the alien command (apt-get install alien).

To convert a package from an rpm to a deb run the following command:
alias --to-deb

To just install a rpm use the following command:
alias -i

It's that easy.

Also, I was looking at some stories on the front page of Digg, and found a Great New Library for use with Google Maps. It has the features of the one that I was messing around with earlier (I forgot the name of it). It even includes the features that I had to add inot the other library.

In this project that I’ve been messing with, I’ve come across the need to convert dynamic PHP output to a PDF.

Suprisingly, this is a pretty easy process thanks to DomPDF.

Boy is this ever hard.

Check it out below!
(Reminder – you’re going to need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader for this to work, seeing as how thi s is a PDf generator. You probably already have it, but in case you don’t, here it is.

I decided after reading all of chapter 2 and part of chapter 3 in my AJAX book that I need to learn Javascript better before I go further with AJAX, because It’s based on Javascript. Fortunately I have a really good Javascript book that I’m about 1/8’th of the way done with.

As for news…

I’m working on a ton of features daily on this site that I’m making (which I could still use some testers (Email me) for. One feature that’s been annoying me, as I’ve been trying to implement it is the functionality to have the site remember someone after they log out.

So over the past few months I’ve been working on a website for someone. The website’s going to be used sort of as a utility website for employees at car dealerships around Michigan.

I haven’t mentioned a lot about it, because it’s not quite ready yet, and it’s a bit secretive at this point.

However, it is coming along pretty well at this point. The user interface is done (for the most part), and a new site design is being made by someone that is very good at making site designs. All that has to happen is a calculation has to be transferred from one language into the language that the site is in.