Jason Rowe » MySql

jquery taskwidget module

Jason — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 22:40:00 +0000

I started building a simple taskwidget to try out jquery. It’s not much but a simple AJAX application using PHP and mysql on the backend. Here a some of the cool things I learned along the way.

A common gotcha with JavaScript is access to “this” inside callbacks and functions. For example, $.get has a callback but inside the callback “this” is out of scope. So if you need to use a function in the object that contains the $.get define a local variable and set the value equal to “this”. Here is a quick example of this scenario. Once you are done with the callback the local instance variable of “this” will get cleaned up by garbage collection.


var foo = this;

$.get("test.php", function(data){

//this is out of scope in this callback
alert("Data Loaded: " + data);

//but foo is now = this

foo.sendDataSomeWhereElse(data)

});

On the PHP backend I found a nice mysql wrapper class . It makes it simple to organize MySQL connection and queries. You can do things like this to connect to your database using a simple config file.


$db = new Database($config['server'], $config['user'], $config['pass'], $config['database'], $config['tablePrefix']);

Then a function would look like this:


$db->connect();

$sql = "insert into tmastertask (masterTaskDescription) VALUES ('" . $values[0] . "');";

$db->query($sql);

$jsonInsertArray[] = "success";
$jsonResultArray["InsertResult"]=$jsonInsertArray;
echo json_encode($jsonResultArray);

$db->close();

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PHP Hosts Can Be A Joke!

Jason — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 02:52:00 +0000

Update – 6/16/2009 – Since writting this review of byte host I have found their service to be horrible. They are cheap but you get what you pay for. Go Daddy has recently updated their PHP version which now makes it a great platform again.

While searching for a PHP host I found support people and marketing information completely useless. The best way to go about it is getting a free account and immediately running phpinfo to find out what they have installed because most of the time they have no idea. It got funny reading the marketing information and then finding out that the last time they complied the PHP kernal or installed it was around the windows 95 release. I won’t name names (cough “godaddy.com” cough) but anyway back to my point.. I actually use godaddy for this site as its just html and javascript and its actually very reliable but using it for a php site with JSON and XML support was not possible.

The trouble comes when you want to get into working with AJAX and web 2.0 features. Most hosts just don’t know customers needs and have no idea how to fix issues. Many times I tried calling customer support and asking why the phpinfo page did not match the marketing page but I couldn’t find a knowledgeable person to help me troubleshoot the issue.

Luckily, I found an amazing PHP host. Here are some reasons why they fit my needs as of 10/27/2007:

cPanel X – fully featured web hosting control panel system. With good documentation sprinkled in.
PHP version 5.2.4 – As for specifically PHP 5.2.x – many changes were introduced from ver 5.1.0 to 5.2.0 – there’s even a migration documentation from 5.1.0 to 5.2.0 ! One of the major additions are the JSON and ZIP (using zlib). The JSON extension bridges a big gap – you can now create javascript JSON variables directly from php arrays !
MySQL version 5.0.27-standard
Apache version 2.2.6 (Unix) – has a whole lot more to offer than Apache 1.3. But the only thing I’m interested in is the RegExp part of mod_rewrite which offers more pattern syntax characters like ? (extends the meaning of) character.

The PHP 5 was configured to work with JSON, XML, and MySql. I didn’t have one question and all the latest php modules worked without a problem. One thing to note is the free account does not support mysql remote connections. Once you sign up for the payed plan starting at $2.99 the mysql and remote connections all come to life with all the admin page goodies! I get no refer bonus or anything. I just like to give credit where credit is due. Good job byethost. http://byethost.com/freeplans.php.

Good Luck and Happy Coding,
Jason

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my latest yui php mysql project

Jason — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 19:07:00 +0000

I setup a quick demo page showing how to use a combination of many things I have wrote about on my blog. Take a look if you want to see how easily you can do some cool things with YUI (update – and jquery).
http://jasonrowe.com/search

update 5/08/09 - I change some of the javascript from yui to jquery. I converted the old YUI carousel to Jcarousel.(http://sorgalla.com/projects/jcarousel/)

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PHP MySql Setup

Jason — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 04:28:00 +0000

Here is my idiots guid to working with PHP 5, MySql, and Apache on a windows server.

This assumes you have downloaded all of the above mentioned apps and have them installed. If not you can get them here: (PHP , MySQL)

Configure PHP 5 to start talking to MySql.

UPDATE with php 5.2.6 and Apache 2.2 I had to use these instructions – http://www.php.ph/2008/07/16/windows-installing-php-526-on-apache-229-manually/

open your php.ini file because you have to add a few entries. (example C:\php\php.ini)
Once open search for Windows Extensions
Then add this line “extension=php_mysql.dll ” after it and do not put the ignore “;” in front of it like the others that might already be in the config
While in the php.ini file search for “extension_dir” and make sure it has a correct path. (example:extension_dir = “c:\php\ext”)
Double check that mysql is running in your services.
Restart Apache and check the phpinfo() page to make sure you now have a mysql section before moving on to the next steps.
Restart apache
Now setup a test php script page with the following


< ?php // we connect to example.com and port 3306 which is the default

$link = mysql_connect('localhost:3306', 'root', 'password');

if (!$link) { die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error()); }

echo 'Connected successfully'; mysql_close($link);

Hopefully you get the following response on the page when you view it. “Connected successfully”

Troubleshooting Tips:

You can use telnet to see if the service is running. start > run > telnet localhost 3306 should give you some sort of response.
Check (C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\conf\httpd.conf) for the following entries : PHPIniDir “C:/PHP/” and LoadModule php5_module “C:/PHP/php5apache2_2.dll”

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