So how easy is it? Just download the package, unzip it, and run the OpenBlueDragonDesktop.sh. Thats all!. It will launch a gui to start, stop, and point the server anywhere (pictured above). I also must add the administration interface is MUCH more pleasing than their Adobe counterpart.

I still use ColdFusion on a daily basis, along with php. But the question remains. Does ColdFusion still play a major roll in web development? Or has it been written off is a slow, out of date, has been?

Related posts:

1. ColdFusion Snippets for Gedit
2. Format Names in ColdFusion
3. ColdFusion Style Dumps in PHP

# install php-pear
sudo apt-get install php-pear

# install PEAR OLE
sudo pear install OLE-1.0.0RC2

# install Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer
sudo pear install Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer-0.9.2

Not much to it, but just getting around the prereq of OLE. Now you should be able to create and edit Excel spreadsheets on linux. Of course if you have complete flexibility in requirements for your app, you would generate ODS, but I’ll leave that for a future topic ;) Unfortunately the corporate world is quite attached to .xls and xlsx files. Anyway.. Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. Installing Memcached on Ubuntu for PHP
2. Install Safari on Ubuntu
3. Localhost Subdomains on Ubuntu

PostgreSQL has the ability to return multiple cursors to result sets. Using this we can achieve the same effect with php with a little magic. Lets take a look at a simple function which returns three queries by way of refcursor type. Also note that I said “function”, not “procedure”, but never fear, 6 of one, half dozen of the other as far as this topic goes:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION test_get_users(userID integer) RETURNS SETOF refcursor AS $$

	DECLARE
		ref1 refcursor;
		ref2 refcursor;
		ref3 refcursor;
	BEGIN

	OPEN ref1 FOR
		SELECT id, name, email FROM users;
	RETURN NEXT ref1;

	OPEN ref2 FOR
		SELECT id FROM users WHERE is_active=1;
	RETURN next ref2;

	OPEN ref3 FOR
		SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = userID;
	RETURN next ref3;

	RETURN;

END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

So that is pretty simple, we run 3 select queries, and return the refcursor for those. Now the tricky part will be how to read each of these queries on the php end. The values returned from calling this function will resemble the image presented here. These merely represent references to the cursors to each query run, so we will have to use some pg magic to pull those result sets in. It boils down to we need to make one call to the function, then a separate call per result set to bring in those results (note the query has run at this point, its basically reading in the data, which should be quick). Lets look at the SQL which would achieve this:

BEGIN;
SELECT test_get_users(2);
FETCH ALL IN "<unnamed portal 1>";
FETCH ALL IN "<unnamed portal 2>";
FETCH ALL IN "<unnamed portal 3>";
END;

Now it should make a little more sense what has to happen. We call a fetch for each result set to return. So now we just need to process this with PHP:

$conn = new PDO("pgsql:host=localhost;port=5432;dbname=testing", "username", "password");

$userID = 2;

// begin transaction, this is all one process
$conn->beginTransaction();

	// call the function
	$stmt = $conn->prepare("select test_get_users(:userID)");
	$stmt->bindParam('userID', $userID, PDO::PARAM_INT);
	$stmt->execute();
	$cursors = $stmt->fetchAll();
	$stmt->closeCursor();

	// get each result set
	$results = array();
	foreach($cursors as $k=>$v){
		$stmt = $conn->query('FETCH ALL IN "'. $v[0] .'";');
		$results[$k] = $stmt->fetchAll();
		$stmt->closeCursor();
	}
$conn->commit();
unset($stmt);

echo '<pre>';
print_r($results);echo "\n"; // all record sets
echo '</pre>';

Now first off, we call the select test_get_users(), which returns a list of refcursor names. So with this we know how many queries were returned. Just loop through this list and fetch each result set. It is essentially the same process used from the Sql Server example, except the nextRowset() is not yet implemented for the pdo pgsql extension, so we just manually call the fetch. No Biggie. You would then receive something similar to the following:

Array
(
	[0] => Array
		(
			[0] => Array
				(
					[id] => 2
					[0] => 2
					[name] => John Doe
					[1] => John Doe
					[email] => test2@test.com
					[2] => test2@test.com
				)

			[1] => Array
				(
					[id] => 3
					[0] => 3
					[name] => Jane Doe
					[1] => Jane Doe
					[email] => test3@test.com
					[2] => test3@test.com
				)

			......

		)

	[1] => Array
		(
			[0] => Array
				(
					[id] => 3
					[0] => 3
				)

			[1] => Array
				(
					[id] => 1
					[0] => 1
				)

		)

	[2] => Array
		(
			[0] => Array
				(
					[id] => 2
					[0] => 2
					[name] => John Doe
					[1] => John Doe
					[email] => test2@test.com
					[2] => test2@test.com
					[password] => zxcvxcvczxcv
					[3] => zxcvxcvczxcv
					[is_active] => 0
					[4] => 0
				)

		)

)

If you’re still feeling frisky at this point, there are all sorts of ways to “fetch” the result sets, just take a look at the docs on cursors. The more I use PostgreSQL the more I am becoming a fan. It’s power and features go far beyond my skill set, but it feels good always knowing you have the best tool at hand for whatever task you have ahead of you. As always feel free to chime in and leave any knowledge you may have, especially on Postgres!

Related posts:

1. Making Sense of Stored Procedures with PHP, PDO, and Sqlsrv
2. Thought: Is else return really necessary?
3. CakePHP, PostgreSQL, and Regex

• Clientside Plugin for Gedit 3+
• Clientside Plugin for Gedit 2

I moved the old Gedit 2 version to a separate branch on Github, so both versions of the project are still available.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Clientside plugin you just found a real gem. The plugin bundles together functionality to minify, format, batch minify, and run a lint service on both Javascript and CSS. Hope you enjoy!

Related posts:

1. Gedit Clientside Plugin gets Batch Minify Option
2. Gedit Clientside Plugin
3. Updated Lint for Clientside

The next version of Ubuntu is nearly here. I must admit I’ve not yet made the move to Unity, as I’m still on Gnome 2, but I’m debating on making the switch this go around. I’ve got a few projects I need to update as well (Clientside and Email Dissector). The last release was the first release of Unity and I felt it was too soon to hop aboard. I’ve debated on Unity or Gnome 3. Anyone have any preferences or opinions?

Related posts:

1. Ubuntu Thoughts
2. Gedit Clientside Now with CSSLint
3. Inspect and Debug with Email Dissector

This is where Email Dissector comes in to play. Email Dissector creates a dummy smtp server right on your desktop. It will then intercept any outgoing emails on the host and port it is listening on, and present them to you in a few different formats: HTML, HTML Source, Text (for multipart emails with alternate text versions), raw headers, and attachments.

Since the email server is contained right in the application, there is zero wait time. The inbox is refreshed immediately! Also the Inbox is the only box, as this is development work only.

Before we get too carried away it needs to be noted right off the bat that the html view uses webkit. This means it is likely much more advanced than the general email client, so don’t get too far ahead of yourself with css and javascript. The good part is you can quickly see any major issues before debugging in 50 different email clients.

The html source view elegantly shows off the markup. Now you can see what is wrong with your html.

The Text tab is for alternate text versions of emails. If your email client is html capable (which it probably is) it can be difficult to find the the text versions of emails if they are supplied. Believe it or not but some people actually like text emails as they are generally short and to the point. Email Dissector presents this conviniently.

Looking for the encoding or your reply-to values? Check the Raw tab to see all the headers sent

Finally you can see what attachments were sent.

Thats all there is to this simple little program, but it should surely speed up you email development significantly! Best part is it is developed in python, so it should run most anywhere python does as long as Webkit is available. (So far tested on Ubuntu and Windows). Enjoy!

Python Email Dissector on Github

Related posts:

1. Ubuntu 11.10 Almost Here
2. Send Mail Locally on Ubuntu

The main topic of this post however concerns the Gedit Clientside Plugin. It appears it would be possible to easily integrate CoffeeScript and Less into Clientside, since they both work well with node.js. One user suggested before adding support for Sass, however that seems to be more geared toward Ruby. The question is would this be a valuable/used component if added to the Clientside plugin? This plugin is geared towards helping manipulate, format, and debug clientside languages, and these do fall into this category, but I don’t want to begin cluttering the plugin with useless tools, and waist time keeping up with the latest CoffeeScript and Less plugins.

On another potential change to Clientside would be to consolidate the menu. Instead of having separate JS and CSS items for minify, format, lint, and batch minify, there could be one menu item for each, and depending on the document type process it accordingly. So considering this change, we could add one more menu item called “Compile: Coffee/Less”. I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Related posts:

1. Gedit Clientside Plugin gets Batch Minify Option
2. Gedit Clientside Now with CSSLint
3. Updated Lint for Clientside

The new CSSLint functionality works the same as JS Lint, through Tools->Clientside->CSS, or through the shortcut Alt+Shift+U. If there are any errors you will see them in the bottom panel under a tab called Clientside Issues.

Now the next step is to get Clientside plugin working with Gedit 3. I know this will take a bit of reworking, but honestly I’m still using classic gnome, not Unity or Gnome3. While I would like to have a version for both, its not priority at the moment. I plan to start using either Unity or Gnome 3 with Ubuntu’s next release. I felt it was too soon for this round, and didn’t have time for a cut in productivity trying to get things straightened out.

Related posts:

1. Updated Lint for Clientside
2. Gedit Clientside Plugin
3. Gedit Clientside Plugin gets Batch Minify Option

Enable Apache Module

Ok, so now that you know the inner workings, here’s how to enable an available module from the terminal without getting our hands too dirty:

sudo a2enmod rewrite

That wasn’t too bad! Also you can run just “a2enmod” and it will print out all available modules and ask you to type in the one you want.

Enable Apache Site/VirtualHost

Ok, now you have a site you need enabled, “mynewsite”. You’ve already added “mynewsite” to your host file (/etc/hosts). Now you would create a new site file in “/etc/apache2/sites-available” called “mynewsite” and add your virtual host config:

sudo pico /etc/apache2/sites-available/mynewsite

I’ll let you handle the details of your new site’s virtual host config and move on. Now we can call apache’s tool to enable this site (essentially tell apache to create a symbolic link in sites-enabled):

sudo a2ensite mynewsite
# running just a2ensite will print available sites and allow you to key in the site you want

And finally restart apache, and we’re done!

sudo apache2ctl restart

Now after all of this if you need to disable a module or site you can run “a2dismod” or “a2dissite” accordingly. Thats it! You’re enabling and disabling apache modules like a pro!

• Ubuntu Manual: a2enmod/a2dismod
• Ubuntu Manual: a2ensite/a2dissite

Related posts:

1. Creating Virtual Hosts in Ubuntu
2. Intrepid Ibex and Apache2 VirtualHost
3. Localhost Subdomains on Ubuntu

Ok, as you could tell the first step is to open up Synaptic (or just use apt-get) and install “gimp-resynthesizer”. This will add a few “Smart” commands under the Filter->Enhance menu. Now our tools are in place, lets get rolling.

1. First choose the Select by Color Tool, and set your threshold to about 60 (that worked great for me, you may have to tweak the threshold depending on your image)
2. Click on your timestamp to select it, if your threshold is set properly your entire timestamp should be selected with one click.
3. Under the Select menu choose Grow. Depending on the size of your image, and if your timestamp has a slight glow/shadow/feathering/fade you may need to tweak the grow by variable to make sure the selection covers it all.
4. Now under Filter->Enhance menu choose Smart Remove Selection. The variable option I used was 100px. This determines how much of the image surrounding the selection will be used to determine the pattern to replace it with.

Thats it, pretty easy? I think this approach works pretty darn well, plus you got to learn a new tool which will work for much more than a removing a timestamp. Also if you’re not an Ubuntu user the link above for the plugin provides a manual download instead of using Synaptic.

Related posts:

1. New Gimp Out!