My next job was to customize the board icons. I googled a mod for this purpose. It is cbi v0.5 (Custom Board Icons). I downloaded the latest version of the mod which is cbi172.zip. I tried to follow the installation process for the mod but got no result. Then I tried for the manual installation instruction for SMF version 2.0.1. But it was my bad luck as I found the modification wasn’t compatible with version 2.0.1. So I had to spent some time with the code to make it work. This is what I had done.

First file is BoardIndex.template.php which within the Themes/default folder. Snipet-1 is the original & Snipet-2 is the modified code.

Snippet-1

Snippet-2

Second file is MessageIndex.template.php which is also within the Themes/default folder. Snipet-1 is the original & Snipet-2 is the modified code.

Snippet-1

Snippet-2

Some of my friends asked me to release as mod, but I don’t have such intension. The reason behind doing such is that I have respect for Bigguy’s (creator of the mod) effort for creating and maintaining the mod. So this is a temporary solution till he releases compatiable version of this mod for SMF 2.0.1. If you like utilize the code choice is yours.

Tales from Lonely Highway is the forum I had worked for.

First check this working example here – CurrencyToWords, then the code is here:-

You can use it like

Hope this helps

In PHP a new value of this type of field can be accessed after inserting a record in the table, using the function mysql_insert_id(). But you can many such cases where you need to access this value before inserting the record. Earlier I used a technique to get that value. Execute a simple sql query to get that value. The sql is:

Where prodId is the field name with auto increment and is the ProductTable table name. Now add 1 with returned value and you will get the new value for that field. However this process may produce incorrect result if you do delete operation upon that table. Let me explain a little more.

Say currently the ProductTable contains 100 records. So the possible next record Id will be 101. Now if you delete record no. 21 or 49 or 65 or 78 you will still have the next record Id as 101. But say if you delete record 100. Logically you should get the next record Id as 100. Your sql query will give the value as 99 and adding 1 with it will produce 100. Seem no problem, right? Wrong, just insert a record and you will find the prodId for the record is 101. How this happened? MySql database stores 1 as starting value when you create the table. Now every time you insert a record the auto increment value get incremented by 1.This way it produces a unique number every time you insert a record in the table. Generally table in MySql database don’t reuse the deleted Id. As a result the above said process will not work in case deletion of record.

Well here is a solution to overcome this problem. I searched a lot to find out some method to find out the auto increment value. I found out a sql statement produces information related to the table. Within those information I found out the auto increment value. The sql statement is:

So I wrote down a function in PHP to get the auto increment value of a table without inserting a record.

However I hadn’t found out any method in PEAR::DB classes to get the auto increment value for a table. It don’t have any method like mysql_insert_id(). So I had created another function to use with DB classes.

I will be very happy have your opinion or suggestion regarding this. Till next post

For myself I mostly use PEAR::Pager to display paginated data. If you are familiar with this package then you know that you can use 2 types of pagination display, as – sliding and jumping. In case of sliding display with a common practice is to use it with constructor option append:true and urlVar:<variablename>.

Let me show an example of this kind of usage -

Now if you print/echo the $PaginationLinks, then you will get pagination like 1 2 3 4 etc.

Now let me describe you the problem:
Say your page url is mydata.php. So mydata.php page will show the first page of paginated data. while using the pagination links you will get a page with url mydata.php?page=1. This page shows the first page of paginated data. Now you are having a page with 2 different url like mydata.php and mydata.php?page=1. In SEO this is known as duplicate content. This is not good if you are seriously deal with SEO.

Here is the correction for this. This is simple but effective.

Use this code section just after generating $PaginationLinks. Hope this will help you. As always comments/suggestions are welcome. But spammers please don’t waste your time.

I am having an issue of compatibility with this code and I am writting this post for it. If you look at the code you will find that it uses the ADODB Library for database operations. In my case I am happy with PEAR::DB. Now for me to use this code I need to use 2 different database component as PEAR::DB and ADODB Library. It seems useless to me. So I decided to make the code compatiable with PEAR::DB. While working upon the compatibility modification I also made 3 changes as

1. I have written a function as show_debug_text() which is a replacement of debug_text().
2. I have removed the silly_list() function from my code as it was declared as deprecated.
3. I have renamed the main class file from freetag.class.php to freetag.db.class.php

Here is the sample code for use this

Here is the code modified by me.
If you use this code please let me know if you have any problem.

Think of a situation where you are working with some array. Now there may be some situations where you need to store the array and retrieve it back. If you are familiar with OOPS concept then objects are another type which you may need to store and retrieve.

Serialization is the process by which you can convert an object or data structure into a sequence of bits which can stored and retrieve back. Serialization is also known as deflating or marshalling. The opposite process (converting the serialized sequence of bits to object or data structure) is known as Deserialization or inflating or unmarshalling. Most of the important languages have their own implementation of these processes. In Java provides automatic serialization by implementing the java.io.Serializable interface. In perl there are modules like Storable or FreezeThaw. Python implements serialization through the standard library module pickle. In PHP there are two built-in functions as serialize() and unserialize() for this purpose. However as I will continue the discussion with PHP then you should be aware of the fact that – there is a difference in the implementation of serialization in PHP 4.x and PHP 5.x.

In last couple of months I need to work with JSON (JavaScript Object Notation). JSON is an ideal data interchange format which is language independent. I had used the JSON to design some Ajax driven functionality in one of my projects. Over there I had encoded into JSON some normal and associative PHP array and passed them to access by JavaScript.

After successful completion of the project I started working upon the possibilities of storing data structure or object in PHP using JSON. IN case of PHP there are two function as json_encode() and json_decode(). Interesting thing with json_decode() is that it takes a boolean argument as second parameter[$assoc] which is by default false. But when TRUE json_decode() returns objects converted in associative array. After doing a lot R&D I find out certain facts which favors JSON rather than using serialize() /unserialize(). In general if you consider the size of the stream produced by serialize() with json_encode(), later produces small sized stream. While working with data structure like arrays JSON produces the same structure after encode and decode. So in my opinion usage of JSON is better than PHP serialize()/unserialize().

Now while working with objects, JSON produces the same result as PHP serialization functions. However if the object is complex or if you like to take the benefit of magic methods object oriented PHP5 then its better to use serialize()/unserialize(). As serialize() will attempt to call _sleep() [if exists] which can be used to do some last minute clean up of the object prior to serialization. Same way unserialize() will call _wakeup()[if exists] which can be used to do some reconstruction in the object just after unserialization. So if your objects are simple then use JSON otherwise go for serialize()/unserialize().

In the conclusion I will prefer to use JSON rather than PHP serialization methods. I won’t be surprised if I get good nos of comments for/against my preference.

The reasons why I selected Beau’s code is :
The code is simple to use but robust and has good documentation.
It uses standard JS library like prototype and scriptaculous.

Now having previous knowledge of integration of QuickForm and Jscalender I created the code for autosuggest class. This autosuggest class file contains constructor function, toHtml function which generates the HTML code for the field, getFrozenHtml function to return the autosuggest content in HTML and finally the registering process of the autosuggest type with HTML QuickForm. I put this autosuggest class name as autosuggestwce. View this wceautosuggest.php file.

To use this autosuggest field in HTML Quickform you need to have 3 javascript files as prototype.js, scriptaculous.js and autocomplete.js. Prototype Javascript is used for javascript framework, Scriptaculous for show and hide effect and AutoComplete is the main javascript functionality file. Among them scriptaculous.js can be removed if you don’t like to show effects, but you need to modify certain section in the wceautosuggest.php file. You also need to declare $GLOBALS['_HTML_QUICKFORM_AUTOSUGGEST_BASEPATH'] the global path defining variable for the javascript files path in the page where you will generate the form.

This autosuggest uses php script to populate values. The name of the php script has to be mentioned in the $attribute array for the key ‘fileref’.

If you are using DB_Table here is snippet of code

If you are using QuickForm directly then here is the code snippet

Here is the code segment of php script

Here is the screenshot

However if you require the files for your reference please let me about that.

I was planning to do this post almost a month ago but I was busy with learning another Javascript framework jQuery. I am started loving it. Hope I will be able to post something about jQuery in near future.

Modified HTACCESS file used for hacking

Experienced developer can understand why this is so dangerous. Let me explain a little for the newbies. In case of apache web server configuration directives are described in httpd.conf file. Many cases this file can’t be accessed or modified due to security reasons. So to change some configuration directives for a specific website or its sub directory best solution is to use .htaccess file. To know further about .htaccess file and its functionality you can read .htaccess files. However URL rewriting, URL redirection, authentication are the important functionality .htaccess file are used for.

In the example htaccess file there are 3 sections. First line is for instructing the apache web server to put the rewrite engine on. This is first section. Second section goes from line no. 2 to line no. 8. This section is basically for condition checking on URL. Its checking if the visitors are coming from a website or page with URL containing the following words like google, aol, msn, yahoo, yandex, rambler or ya. NC means pattern checking will be case insensitive. OR means combines with other rule. Third section is in line no. 9. It says if any of the above pattern checking become true then it will redirect to the specified URL. Here R means redirection. Normally this generates HTTP response code 302 means moved temporarily. L means this is the last rule.

So the result is that if some visitor coming to the site from above specified search engine, they will be simply redirected to the malware site without understanding whats happening. So be careful if you come to know your site gotta hacked and youre unable to find out why then take a look at your .htaccess file.

Iframe Injected

Next Morning after arriving in the office I started checking the website and I found it was again infected by the hidden iframe. Site url was different as earler it was .cn and next day it was .ru I was upset about how to fix the things. Believe me or not in the last one month this site got infected 27 times. Our team had experienced the same attack for 5 more site. It was a horrible experience for us.

We had done lot of googleing to find out the preventive measurement. We found out lots of information regarding this. Some of them are good and some of them are misleading too. So here I like to point out some effective ones only.

1. You should have good antivirus installed in your system from where you access web. I am using avast free edition and it works fine for me.
2. Please check your websites on a regular basis. If you see if any web page with a blank section in the top them be almost sure that it is infected. Your antivirus should give you warning.
3. If you find any of your website get infected then start following the next steps.
4. First of all scan your machine with the antivirus. A boot time scan is more preferable.
5. Replace all the pages in the website using a local copy from your system. If the web site is too big to repalce then try to repalce all the pages with name index. Then check the site again.
6. Once the site is cleaned change the ftp details for the site and if possible do the same for the other sites whose details are kept in your ftp application.
7. Keep checking the site in a short span of interval.

You should also check your site in google too. If google find out some problem with your site they may have shown a warning message like “This site may harm your computer”. Another way to check your site is

http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http://www.yourdomain.tld

If you find that google is showing the warning message for your site you can request Google for a recheck via Google Webmaster Tool. But you should check the site twice after cleaning and then request for review.

However I have designed a code in php for checking mainly the index pages in the website. Here is the code.

you can put this code in the root level of your website (in www or public_html or httpdocs). Browsing this page will show all the index pages with status of it.

Current I am working upon extending the code so that it can clean the infected pages automatically. Hopefully I will post it within few days.

I was looking for some application which will fetch/store all the images for an album in picasa and create a slideshow with more control on the images. I found nothing thats suites my requirement. So I started to design an application of such kind. On the basis of functionality I sub devided it into two major part. First is fetch the image related information for an album and store it if required. Second is display the slideshow using those image information.

In picasa you can view the pictures as set or individual but you won’t get actual picture name or its location. So I found now simple way to get the pictures name and their location. While searching more for such option I found there is a RSS feed for each album. The RSS feed provides image names and its location details. It makes my job easier. Now objective became to process the RSS feed to get the image related information. For this purpose I used XML-RSS package from PEAR. Here is snapshot of the code I wrote to process the feed:

Now this $PicasaDataArray can be stored in files/database or can be directly used for the slideshow. While processing the feed by this I found the feed contain other information like title, description, link of the album, its last build date etc. So I modified the code a little more to store these information too. So the first part of my application is complete.

Now the second part – slideshow using $PicasaDataArray. For this section I didn’t tried to put my head to develop slide show application as I had already seen some very nice attractive slideshow application. They are also easy to use and configure. One of my favourite is Lightbox JS. Another good slideshow script is Highslide. Both of them are very nice and easy to configure. So I used one of them for my purpose. Here is another snapshot of code

I made this code simple and easy to use. Though I have used xml-rss class from pear but it can be repalced by and standard xml-rss parser class. Experienced developer can modify this code or enhance its feature much more as per their requirement. If like to use this code or if you have any suggestion let me know about it via your comment.