Consequently, I decided to make a little PHP script that takes all of the threads and posts posted by a guest and pushes/merges them into a registered account of your choosing. This isn’t a MyBB plugin or anything, just a standalone script that connects to your MyBB database. You can access its functionality via the web/HTTP or the command line (if you kept that enabled that in the config).

The code itself is fairly self-explanatory and well-commented. Enjoy. And lemme know what you think!

Download: Guest2Account (20)

PS: I’m not sure what I’ll do with this blog. I’ll probably get a new domain, and a new name and keep these old posts around for archival purposes.

It really is that simple. Perfect for your *-Roll sites.

Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm that uses “objects” – data structures consisting of datafields and methods – and their interactions to design applications and computer programs. Programming techniques may include features such as information hiding, data abstraction, encapsulation, modularity, polymorphism, and inheritance. It was not commonly used in mainstream software application development until the early 1990s. Many modern programming languages now support OOP.
(Source)

Today I’m going to show you the very basic of programming OOP style in PHP5.

Let’s create two files. One named “index.php”, and the other named “class.php”, which is where our php class will go.

Object Oriented Programming’s world orbits around PHP classes. These define and help layout it’s child objects.

Go ahead and open up your favorite code editor and put the following code into your class.php file. Copy & Paste will do, but you might get a better feel for the code if you type it by hand.

<?php
class Text {
   var $savedText;
   function setText($someText) {
      $this->savedText = $someText;
   }
   function getText() {
      return $this->savedText;
   }
}
?>

Let’s walk through what just happened there. On line 2 we opened a new class definition named Text. Line 3 made a new internal variable. These variables can be accessed from anywhere inside the class. Lines 4-6 creates a new method called setText. This method gives the $savedText variable the value of $someText. Lines 7-9 create a new method called getText and it returns back whatever the value of $savedText is.

You may be wondering what the $this-> thing is. When used within a class it let’s you access variables and methods from within itself.

Go ahead and open up index.php and paste this into it.

<?php
include('class.php');
$TextClass = new Text();
$TextClass->setText('Hello there!');
echo $TextClass->getText();
?>

Go ahead and run that. You should get “Hello there!” printed to the screen. On line 2 we included the class file so we can use it. On line 3 we created a new instance of the class and assigned it to a variable called $TextClass. On line 4 we set the internal $savedText variable to ‘Hello there!’ via the setText method. On line 5 we printed the result of getText to the screen.

Hopefully you’ve learned the very basics of OOP in PHP. I might write another one of these if I have the time.

CakePHP, unfortunatly, just doesn’t wanna get along with the new PHP release. Right now there are two solutions. The first is to revert back to PHP 5.2.9-2. The second is to change error_reporting(E_ALL); on line 295 of cake/libs/configure.php to error_reporting(E_ALL ^ E_DEPRECATED); After that, then add error_reporting(E_ALL ^ E_DEPRECATED); to the beginning of app/webroot/index.php. As far as I know, these are the only two solutions for CakePHP users, at the moment. If you know of either a better solution or more information, please comment!

Hopefully I covered some of the basics of the fairly new PHP 5.3.0 with CakePHP.

PS: Thanks to danielryan on Flickr for the screenshot.

First off, I’ll talk a little about the pros and cons of Sessions.

• Sessions are stored on the server
• Clients won’t have any direct access to Session data
• Accessing Session data is faster than retrieving a Cookie
• Sessions can be  (theoretically) of unlimited size
• Easier to use

Now on to Cookies.

• Cookies can be set to last for a very long time
• Cookie data is stored on the client computer
• File size can be limited, but this depends on the client’s browser
• Cookies are NOT dangerous. They really can’t do much of anything (harmful) without the help of some other malicious program.

Now that you know the basics of both Sessions and Cookies, you can now make an educated decision on which will work best in your project. To help, I’ll provide a few examples on what kind of projects you might use Sessions or Cookies on.

Sessions

• Shopping carts/baskets
• Anything that needs to hold sensitive information (passwords, etc.)
• Where you don’t want the user to be able to directly see or edit the contents

Cookies

• Login scripts that include a “Remember Me” function
• Running on a cluster server environment. (If you have multiple servers that need to access the data)
• If you need to have the data accessible for long periods of time

Happy developing!

The Vlexo server almost went down. Permanently. Luckily, everything went O.K. and the server continued its service to us.

Now, about Wildflower. It’s a CMS (Content Management System) using the CakePHP Framework. It’s great for smaller, simple sites. Some PHP, OOP, and CakePHP experience is required though.

Next, my current Windows XP powered home printer server, messed itself up again. I decided to try Ubuntu as a replacement. After installation, one command did the trick to give File/Printer sharing functionality. “sudo apt-get install samba” After that it worked. Perfectly. I still have yet to see if it’ll continue to work correctly as the days pass. However, Linux has a pretty good reputation for that.

I’ve also just been fooling around with Linux Distros. on my VM. Such as Ubuntu Christian Edition and DreamLinux.

Shall I tell you about my new found interest in Microsoft Visual C# .NET? Why not? I’ve developed quite a few little applications from a book on this. It’s been really helpful. And guess what? My first app didn’t say “Hello, World!”

Finally, I’ve started to delve into developing web applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. And maybe try to do something with the Play Station Portable, too.

Hope this got you guys up to date!

I also recieved some great feedback on both, “Hooked” on XP and Infinite Blue Thanks for all your comments and suggestions. I’m happy that in, the XP post that I was able to show a few of you that we need to stop blaming everybody else on our problems. The release of my Infinite Blue theme was a complete success and was the first custom theme for my blog. I’ll probably push a new theme out sometime in May 2009. Yay!

I’ve just recently found a new PHP IDE for a replacement to Aptana. I wasn’t exactly looking for one, but I just sort of “found it”. ‘Ya know? For one, it doesn’t looks cluttered. Everything is pretty well balanced.

With my new found inspiration in a new PHP editor, although it does support other web programming languages such as Ruby on Rails, or Java, I started back on my “CakePHP Adventure”.

PS: Look forward to an awesome new theme, probably coming tomorrow!

I’m trying to make some basic “Hello World” type scripts. So far, it looks pretty decent. Whoa it’s 3:38 AM here! Better get some kind of sleep.

http://cakephp.org/

PS: Another thanks to my iPod to make this post possible!

@Dalton: Be jellus