30 Dec, 2009
I wanted to use the PHPExcel package on my Debian system running 5.2.0, however PHPExcel 1.7.1 requires the sys_get_temp_dir() function which doesn’t exist prior to PHP 5.2.1. Of course aside from updating PHP, we would need to replicate the functionality of sys_get_temp_dir(). This gem in the php.net comments on the function provides a workaround.
if ( !function_exists('sys_get_temp_dir'))
{
function sys_get_temp_dir()
{
if( $temp=getenv('TMP') ) return $temp;
if( $temp=getenv('TEMP') ) return $temp;
if( $temp=getenv('TMPDIR') ) return $temp;
$temp=tempnam(__FILE__,'');
if (file_exists($temp))
{
unlink($temp);
return dirname($temp);
}
return null;
}
}
22 Dec, 2009
In combination with my previous post on adding multiple sidebars to a WordPress theme, I had the need to display one of them only when looking at the blog part of wordpress. This is pretty straightforward, but basically we just need to check if we are not on a page and display the sidebar.
//If we are viewing posts, not a page, print the posts sidebar
if(!is_page())
{
if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('Posts Sidebar') ):
endif;
}
21 Dec, 2009
I recently needed a little more control over the sidebar on a theme and had never added a sidebar to a theme before. I wanted certain widgets to show up only on posts and the rest to show up on posts and pages. The below is how to add the sidebar:
In the functions.php page, we need to modify the code which looks like this:
if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') )
register_sidebar();To make it look like this:
if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') )
{
register_sidebar(array('name'=>'Top Sidebar',));
register_sidebar(array('name'=>'Posts Sidebar',));
register_sidebar(array('name'=>'Bottom Sidebar',));
}Now, when calling a sidebar, we just need to call it by name as in the following:
//Top Sidebar
if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('Top Sidebar') ):
endif;
//Posts Sidebar
if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('Posts Sidebar') ):
endif;
//Bottom Sidebar
if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('Bottom Sidebar') ):
endif;Obviously we have freedom to name our sidebars as we please. Look for more info on making a sidebar only show up on posts in an upcoming post.
18 Dec, 2009
I recently ran across a silly WordPress situation where I needed to pass an array in the querystring. Here’s what I came up with:
$array = array('a' => 1, 'b' => 2, 'c' => 3);
$array = rawurlencode(serialize($array));
echo '<a href="./getarray.php?a=' . $array . '">Pass array</a>';Then on the receiving getarray.php:
$array = unserialize(stripslashes($_GET['error_array']));
18 Dec, 2009
It was recently asked in a newsgroup how to make the WordPress author function like the wordpress category page. The format of the category page is category-x.php. Replace the x with the category ID you would like a custom page for (e.g. category-14.php) and when browsing category x the custom page category-x.php is processed instead of category.php.
In my research, I didn’t see a previously implemented way to do this with author.php, so I came up with these modifications to the author.php page:
global $wp_query;
$curauth = $wp_query->get_queried_object();
if(file_exists('author-'.$curauth->ID.'.php'))
{
include('author-'.$curauth->ID.'.php');
}
else
{
//Default author page
}The idea here is to have author.php check to see if author-x.php exists. If it does, include that file. If not, process the default author.php in the else condition.
8 Dec, 2009
I am interested in building a google voice / highrise mashup that tags people by how long overall I’ve talked to them. I ran across this bit of PHP code by Aaronpk that attempts to use the main voice functionality as an API. And it works really well.
The below is adapted from that code to get all calls and get the duration of the calls. Of course, duration is approximate, but that’s as good as it is going to get for me.
$login = 'username';
$pass = 'password';
$cookieFile = '/tmp/gvCookies.txt';
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, $cookieFile);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, TRUE);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)");
// fetch the login page
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?passive=true&service=grandcentral');
$html = curl_exec($ch);
if(preg_match('/name="GALX"\s*value="([^"]+)"/', $html, $match))
$GALX = $match[1];
else
throw new Exception('Could not parse for GALX token');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLoginAuth?service=grandcentral');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, TRUE);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, array(
'Email' => $login,
'Passwd' => $pass,
'continue' => 'https://www.google.com/voice/account/signin',
'service' => 'grandcentral',
'GALX' => $GALX
));
// Process login
$html = curl_exec($ch);
if( preg_match('/name="_rnr_se".*?value="(.*?)"/', $html, $match) )
{
$rnr_se = $match[1];
}
else
{
exit("Could not log in to Google Voice with username: " . $login);
}
// Get results for all recent calls, paginated of course
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://www.google.com/voice/inbox/recent/all/');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, FALSE);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE);
$xml = curl_exec($ch);
$dom = new DOMDocument();
// load the "wrapper" xml (contains two elements, json and html)
$dom->loadXML($xml);
$json = $dom->documentElement->getElementsByTagName("json")->item(0)->nodeValue;
$json = json_decode($json);
// now make a dom parser which can parse the contents of the HTML tag
$html = $dom->documentElement->getElementsByTagName("html")->item(0)->nodeValue;
// replace all "&" with "&" so it can be parsed
$html = str_replace("&", "&", $html);
$dom->loadHTML($html);
$xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);
$calls = array();
// Call duration isn't included, so foreach $json->messages, getting gc-message-call-details for each element
foreach( $json->messages as $mid=>$convo )
{
//find this conversation by message id
$elements = $xpath->query("//div[@id='$mid']");
if(!is_null($elements))
{
$element = $elements->item(0);
//find the gc-message-call-details contents
$XMsg = $xpath->query("//span[@class='gc-message-call-details']", $element);
//add details to the convo
$convo->details = $XMsg->item(0)->nodeValue;
}
//add $convo to results
$calls[] = $convo;
}
foreach($calls as $mid => $convo)
{
echo "Call $mid lasted $convo->details\n";
}
7 Dec, 2009
Thanks to the help of Daniel Watrous, an improved version of our $_Get Getter WordPress plugin is now available. It is now able to pull multiple variables from the query string.
You can get the new version here.
3 Dec, 2009
I just ran across a WordPress search and replace plugin. I don’t have an immediate use for it, but with how much search and replace I do, I know it will come in handy.
The plugin allows you to enter a search query, select places to search and enter a replacement query. There are all kinds of useful applications for this.
