A bit off the wall but who cares

This post won't appeal the the majority of people who follow my blogs, but here goes just the same.

If you type organic culture into the Google search bar, you get results which include fabrics from bamboo, pro-biotic foods, crops and gardening etc. Or to put it another way, semi-structures derived and evolved from existing natural materials.

I was having a conversation with a colleague this morning. We were talking about a system which requires someone to produce something (new) and then receive approval and feedback. The people who submit the products are also the people who will be approving/disapproving other people's products.

Let's just image for a moment that it's you who have been working long and hard on a product with all the best intentions. You are hoping to gain some credibility for your efforts. You send it out for approval. The feedback is negative, in places, missing the point that you have taken time and care to convey.

How likely are you to provide positive feedback to the next product you review?
How likely are you to provide positive feedback to the next product from the person who gave your work negative feedback?

Most organisations have a culture. An organisation I once worked for have a very positive, mutually supportive culture. As time went by, this culture was organically shifted to one which treated new ideas and efforts as an opportunity to pour scorn and score short term points.

Once this type of culture takes hold, it's a bit like fabrics from bamboo, pro-biotic foods, crops and gardening etc. Very difficult to untangle or remove, but for us who wish better for our working lives and for our organisations, we must. And we must replace it with a culture which gets behind something good, works with the originator and builds upon it to create excellence. Only then do we deserve and pat on the back.

Multiple inheritance through PHP using traits

I actually took this code from http://php.net. Multiple inheritance has always been a bit dodgy for me in PHP. This is an excellent example of how to use traits to achieve it.

<?php
trait Hello {
    public function sayHello() {
        echo 'Hello ';
    }
}

trait World {
    public function sayWorld() {
        echo ' World';
    }
}

class MyHelloWorld {
    use Hello, World;
    public function sayExclamationMark() {
        echo '!';
    }
}

$o = new MyHelloWorld();
$o->sayHello();
$o->sayWorld();
$o->sayExclamationMark();>
?>

Removing cache manifest in Chrome

In an earlier post, I explained how to use cache-manifest for localstorage. Once you've achieved this, you'll find that in order to continue editing the site that the cache manifest will need to be removed. Otherwise, you won't see your changes. To do this in Chrome, you need to put this command in the address bar:
chrome://appcache-internals/
This will list all the sites in your application cache with a 'remove' link.
A full list of such commands, enter chrome://chrome-urls/

Invalid field count in csv input on line 1

I came across this annoying phpmyadmin 'feature' when trying to import some data to a newly created MySQL table. I had a CSV file full of data. The columns matched the number of fields but I kept getting the error 'Invalid field count in csv input on line 1'.

The problem was, that the 'Fields terminated by' field in the import screen was set to ';' instead of a ','. By resetting this field, everything worked.

Reset the Index of a MySQL table

Sometimes, I will be playing about with a MySQL database, often at the start of an application. I'll fire a load of dummy data in and test. When I've finally done with this phase I'm ready to start from the beginning. I might have an ID field which I'd like to auto increment but this time starting from 0. To reset this field, first empty all the records in the table, then you can apply a line like this:
ALTER TABLE `mytable` AUTO_INCREMENT=0

Getting single row results MySQL using PHP

I'm always using this code. Sometimes I know there should be/is only one record returned from my MySQL query. Especially if I have specified 1 result as in the query below. As long as I know the resulting column names, this is a very useful technique.

<?php

$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM `users` WHERE `username` = '{$username}' LIMIT 1;");
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($query);
echo 'Hello '.$row['firstname'];
?>

How to use PHP __autoload over multiple directories

Funny this. One of those things where you do a bit of surfing to find the easy answer. The resulting pages of your search contain the name of the solution you are looking for in the title, but the containing code solves a different problem.
So, here is the problem.
I am creating a PHP application which has multiple directories containing classes will need throughout it's build.
I want to use the PHP __autoload function.

I will need 2 PHP files to support this activity, but below this I will show how they are called.
First file, config.php. This will contain a class containing all the support data needed throughout my application.

<?php
class supportdata
{
public $supportArray = array('lib', 'helper');
}
?>
There. Not too difficult was it.
Next, my autoload.php.

<?php
require_once 'config.php';
function __autoload($class_name) 
{
$sd = new supportdata;
$classString = '';
foreach($sd->supportArray as $value)
{
$classString = $DOCUMENT_ROOT.$value.'/'.$class_name.'.php';
if(file_exists($classString))
{
require_once $classString;
}
}
}
?>
As you can see it calls config.php and makes use of the supportArray to iterate through the directories, checking to see if the class exists. If it does we do a require_once on it.

Now, here is how my autoloading is called.

<?php
include_once 'autoload.php';
class index
{
function __construct()
{


}
}
new index;
?>

In my index class I can now call any of the classes contained in the directories named in config.php. In fact, I can call any of the those classes, anywhere in my application.