Fbloggs Geekdom

Aptana now uses the official Eclipse PDT (PHP Development Tools) plugin instead of their own PHP editor. I have Aptana 2.0.2, build date November 10 2009 on my Macbook.  I’m building a Drupal module, so I need to have PDT recognize (and correctly color-code) files with .module, .info and .install extensions.  There is a Drupal Article on configuring PDT as an Eclipse Plugin, but the steps are different for doing it in Aptana Studio.

The process is quite simple – basically 3 steps. Here they are (assuming you’ve got the PDT plugin installed already):

In Aptana Studio, click on the Aptana Studio/Preferences, expand the General link and click on Content Types:

Next, expand the Text link. This will show you a list of content types supported in the editor. Scroll down until you see the PHP entry:

Click OK. Repeat this step for *.info and *.install (assuming these extensions are not already used for some other language or tool). That’s it! Now, when you open a .module file, it will have the same color-coding and editing as a .php file.

I’ve written a few articles in recent years that have been published by MC Press Online, relating to IBM i topics. If you don’t know what the IBM i is (or an AS/400, iSeries or System i), you can stop reading! Here are two lists of links to those articles. The first list is general education. The second is product-specific, related to products marketed by my company. (Articles are ordered by most recent first)

Educational Articles

• PHP: What Can You Do with It on Your System i?
• Learn How JavaScript Can Help Create Dynamic Web Browser Interfaces
• Jazz Up Your Web Site by Customizing PHP Templates
• Build Upon the Strengths of Your Legacy Systems
• Essential Skills for System i Web Development, Part II
• Essential Skills for System i Web Development, Part I
• How to Get Out from Under an Obsolete Legacy Technology
• PHP: A Party Waiting for a Few Good Developers
• Use AJAX for Bright and Shiny Web Apps, Part 2
• Use AJAX for Bright and Shiny Web Apps

Product-Specific Articles

• Product Review: WebSmart PHP Opens the System i to PHP Development
• Partner TechTip: Transform Spool Files into Meaningful Information
• Product Review: WebSmart PHP Beta Opens the System i to PHP Development
• Product Review: BCD’s License-Free Nexus Portal
• Partner TechTip: Get Your Data Organized!
• Product Review: BCD’s WebSmart
• Partner TechTip: Empower Users to Create and Run Real-Time Queries
• Portals: Gateways to Whole New Worlds

The following PHP code parses the date portion out of a MySQL date column and lets you format it according to the formatting rules of the PHP date function.

// Parse date portion of a date field and format it according to the date() function.
// Second parm is optional.
function FmtDateTime($dt, $fmt = "F d, Y")
{
	$arr = explode("-", substr($dt, 0, 10));
	//	$fmt of "m/d/Y" prints date in mm/dd/yyyy format.
	//  $fmt of "F d, Y" prints date in Spelled out month day, YYYY format

	echo date($fmt, mktime(0,0,0, $arr[1], $arr[2], $arr[0]));
}

To use it, you can do something like this:

<?php
   FmtDateTime($scdDate, "l d F, Y" ); ?>

(This prints 2009-09-15 as “Tuesday 15 September, 2009″).

If you omit the second parameter on the function call, the date will print like this:
“September 15, 2009″

Feedback is a jQuery plugin that lets you send feedback to a user in the form of an info message or error message, associated with any page element. It uses the jQuery UI plugin to determine the default styles of the info and error messages, but you can also use your own styles. Complete details, including demo, documentation and downloads are on this page.

How to restrict access to specific content in a Drupal site so only authenticated users (those who have logged in) can view and access it. (Short answer – install the ‘content-access’ plugin.)…

• Debugger – step through, over, etc.
• Console log for monitoring AJAX interactions -shows parms sent, data returned, round-trip time.

Summary: Quirks of checkbox markup in HTML – differences between IE and FireFox…

Tables do not conform to the normal CSS box model as W3C explains .

A consequence of this is that you cannot use the margin property for cells or rows. Citing the above page: “Internal table elements generate rectangular boxes with content and borders. Cells have padding as well. Internal table elements do not have margins. (my emphasis). So, something like this:

tr.spaceme { margin-top:15px; }

does nothing.

I wanted to have a table with a ‘heading’ row followed by details, another heading row, more details, etc. So the solution is to style an empty row using the padding and/or border properties. Suppose we want to have 15 pixels of white space between the top of the next heading row. Here’s some example markup:


CSS:

<table>
<tr class="gap"><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
<tr><td>Customer: 1</td><td>Name: Acme</td></tr>
<tr><td>Order: foo1</td><td> Item: bar1 </td></tr>
<tr><td>Order: foo2</td><td> Item: bar2 </td></tr>
<tr class="gap"><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
<tr><td>Customer: 1</td><td>Name: Bolts Inc.</td></tr>
<tr><td>Order: foo3</td><td> Item: bar3 </td></tr>
<tr><td>Order: foo4</td><td> Item: bar4 </td></tr>
</table>


I don’t really like this, because it requires an unnecessary table row for each heading. My example requires a colspan, too, as I suspect in most cases tables like these will have more than one column for the headings and/or details. Anyway, I’m posting this to remind myself of this quirk in the CSS box model, as I’m bound to forget it next time I have to render tables like this.

FireFox doesn’t have a native global event handler. Here’s how to create one using FireFox’s event-capturing model.

• The debugger  – identifies exact line of script in error.
• The HTML view – lets you view contents of externally linked Javascript files, also.
• The CSS inspector – shows you all ancestor css rules for elements, not just the current CSS rule, so you can see the total effect of the cascade.
• The ability to change CSS settings on the fly. For example, hover over a color, click on it, then change the RGB value to see another color – it does this for the specific area on the page, as well as in the sheet.