I was recently working on another Codeigniter project that I needed to grab some phone, address, & map information for plotting on a map. After doing a little searching I found Whitepages.com has provided an API interface for retrieving data via REST. The methods seemed simple enough, and provided an easy way to create a CodeIgniter library to due the dirty work. Read More
CodeIgniter + Whitepages.com API Library
Posted in Code Igniter Tagged Code Igniter, codeigniter, php library, whitepages.com Comments closed
Codeigniter + Geshi
Geshi is a PHP class to do the heavy lifting for syntax highlighting output to your browswer. Geshi started originally to help users highlight code posted on bulletin board sites. I converted the standard Geshi class into a Codeigniter library. Just a simple as renaming the class and created a few methods to conform to some of the options you’ll find in codeigniter.
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Posted in Code Igniter, PHP Tagged Code Igniter, codeigniter, geshi, php class, php library Comments closed
Zencart + Price Breaks + Easy Populate
Zen-Cart
Here is another update to the popular add-on for Zencart called Easy Populate. For those unfamiliar with Easy Populate, it’s a fantastic add-on for Zencart. Easy Populate allows user to create comma separated values (.csv) files to editing the list of products in their Zencart installation. A user recently emailed me requesting an additional feature of price break imports to be included in Easy Populate. Read More
Zencart Custom Session Length
Zen-Cart
Lately, I have been developing a few modifications for Zencart. One of things I have noticed during the development process, is my shopping cart being lost while typing code and then refreshing the page a little while later. This was no big deal. Just go in add another product, and test again. Then, I got to talking to a few other users who seem to experience the same problem of losing their session. As an end user or a customer this can be frustrating that you have added items to your cart, and then something come ups. They come back to their cart, go to another page, and they have lost their shopping cart. Zencart checks your php.ini for session length. On some hosting accounts, you don’t have access to change this value, or you just want a more user friendly way to adjust this. This contribution / modification for Zen-cart will fix this problem. No core files are touched with this mod. You can extend the session length / timeout / expiration from the admin page.
Zencart reCAPTCHA Contribution Mod
Zen-Cart
One of the few options to try and combat SPAM on your zencart install, is to try and implement a CAPTCHA text/image on your contact us page. I recently updated a contribution I created several months ago. This reCAPTCHA contribution will add configuration fields to the database for your api key and password, color theme selection, and enable/disable feature on contact us form. The original contribution had used native mysql queries, so I have updated the contribution to support zencart’s $db:Factory object. Read More
Zencart + UPS XML Dimensional Support
Zen-Cart
One task I have put off from switching from osCommerce to ZenCart shopping cart platform, was updating the UPS XML contribution. For those familiar with the shopping cart system, you know by default they only support standard UPS shipping. The cart figures shipping all the items together in one box. However, some products can’t be shipped together, and distorts shipping quotes for UPS. The solution that evolved in osCommerce was using UPS shipping API to get detailed freight quotes.
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Setup WAMP and SVN Subversion on Windows
Say you work on a desktop and a laptop computer, and you synchronize your laptop. Edit some files, save, and upload. Everything is fine. Now you get home or back in the office, sit down at the desktop, and forget to synchronize. You edit the files some more, upload, and save. Uh-oh, now you lost the changes you made on your laptop. You’ll have to get a copy off the laptop, and find all the changes you made. Ever done this? Version Control makes this scenario so much easier to resolve.
Update (2010-09-29): I’ve recently moved onto using mercurial for any new projects. Please let me know if you have any issues with the newer SVN server installers. I haven’t had a chance to update mine to the latest version. However, this tutorial should still work.
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Zencart Related Products
Zen-Cart
One of the features I enjoyed using with osCommerce, was a plugin for creating a related products box below a displayed. The plugin was easily implemented, and used an extra field add to the database. That was a great asset, that I felt missed using. Zen-cart offers something very similar in its port of XSell (Cross Sell). This feature would work fine if you are adding a few products at time, and do not have many related products. However, in my case, I have about 4,000 items in my catalog. The products are mostly lighting fixtures, which for must companies have coordinating fixtures for each room. This would be a bit cumbersome to create all of the related items. This is why I decided to write a quick plugin to get this simple functionality back. Read More
Thunderbird 3 Search Not Working
Mozilla recently had Thunderbird 3 Release Candidate 2 available for download. I was 
interested in trying out the new version. I upgraded my XP machine from version 2 to the Release Candidate version. Upgrade completed successfully. I opened up Thunderbird, and all of my emails were imported fine after the upgrade, and the program proceeded to index all of my emails.
I thought I would test out some the new features being touted in the new release. To my frustration, the new search feature would never complete. I would start typing in a search phrase, and then click on one of the terms suggested to me by sqlite. Thundbird opened a new tabbed, and the interface just showed my search criteria at the top with a dialog in the middle reading “Searching…”. The first couple of tries, I thought there was no matching criteria because Thunderbird’s search seemed to never complete. Read More
jQuery Uploadify 2 + CodeIgniter
Creating useful upload forms having become very popular on the web these days. Many people have found that flash based options create a more rich user experience. I was working on a project recently to allow a user to upload images to a CodeIgniter application. I enjoy using jQuery, and found an excellent flash based uploader in Uploadify. Read More
Writing and testing small code snippets for various platforms is a hobby I do in my free time. Please feel free to contact me for more information about how I may assist you in completing your online presence.