Drew Walker's Web Design & Technical Blog

CakePHP CSV Export & Helper

2011-05-25T09:13:00.002+10:00

Ok, so I made a simple CakePHP helper for generating/exporting CSV files and thought I would share how I did it.

1. Create the file /app/views/helpers/csv.php with the following code:

<?php

class CsvHelper extends AppHelper {

    var $delimiter = ',';
    var $enclosure = '"';
    var $filename = 'Export.csv';
    var $raw_data;

    function headers($content_type) {
        header("Content-type:$content_type;");
        header("Content-disposition:attachment;filename=" . $this->filename);
    }
    
    function addCell($value) {
        $this->raw_data .= $this->enclosure . $value . $this->enclosure . $this->delimiter;
    }

    function endRow() {
        $this->raw_data = substr($this->raw_data, 0, strrpos($this->raw_data, $this->delimiter)) . "\n";
    }

    function addRow($row) {
        foreach($row as $cell) {
            $this->addCell($cell);
        }
        $this->endRow();
    }
    
    function setFilename($filename) { 
        $this->filename = $filename; 
        if (strtolower(substr($this->filename, -4)) != '.csv') { 
            $this->filename .= '.csv'; 
        } 
    }
    
    function serialize($data, $add_header_row = true) {
        $row_number = 1;
        foreach($data as $listing) {
            foreach($listing as $model_name => $model_data) {
                foreach ($model_data as $field_name => $field_value) {
                    if ($row_number == 1) {
                        $headerRow[] = $model_name.".".$field_name;
                        $firstRow[] = $field_value;
                    } else {
                        $this->addCell($field_value);
                    }
                }
            }
            if ($row_number == 1) {
                $this->addRow($headerRow);
                $this->addRow($firstRow);
                unset($headerRow);
                unset($firstRow);
            } else {
                $this->endRow();
            }
            $row_number++;
        }
    }

    function download($filename = null, $content_type = "application/vnd.ms-excel") {
        if ($filename) { 
            if (is_string($filename)) $this->setFilename($filename);
        }
        $this->headers($content_type);
        echo utf8_decode($this->raw_data);
    }

    function toString() {
        header("Content-type:text/plain;");
        echo utf8_decode($this->raw_data);
    }

}

?>

2. Add the following line to the controller where you'd like to use the CSV helper:

var $helpers = array('Csv');

3. Create the file /app/views/layouts/csv/default.ctp with the following code:

<?php echo $content_for_layout; ?>

This is just a blank layout template used to contain our CSV content.

4. Populate the data and set the layout file by adding the relevant function to your controller. Example:

function export() {
    $this->Posts->recursive = -1;
    $this->set('Posts', $this->Post->find('all'));
    $this->layout = 'csv/default';
}

5. Create the file /app/views/posts/export.ctp and serialize the model data to CSV:

$csv->serialize($posts);
$csv->download("Posts.csv");

There are also some other methods in the helper that might be helpful for your purpose. They are addRow($row), addCell($value), endRow() and toString(). I'd suggest starting with calling the toString() method rather than download() and make sure the output looks as expected.

Would love to hear any feedback that people.

OSX archive dialog never closes

2010-01-13T09:24:00.000+11:00

I've noticed that sometimes when you try and create a zip archive using OSX's default "Compress" option, the process starts but seems to never be able to complete (the dialog stays open). The easiest workaround for this is to open Terminal and browse to the folder you want to compress the content of, then execute the following command:

zip Archive * -r

This will create a file called Archive.zip in the same directory with the entire contents of the folder (including subdirectories).

For other usages of the zip command you can execute:

zip -h2

HOW TO: Install Ubuntu 9.04 (Linux) Desktop Edition

2009-04-24T10:40:00.009+10:00

Ubuntu 9.04 was officially released today, so I thought I'd try out an installation in VirtualBox and post my experiences. The aim was to follow the basic installation steps and share those steps with people who may find them useful. The same steps should also apply to anyone performing a fresh install on a physical machine.

Step 1: Select installation language

Step 2: Select 'Install Ubuntu' from the installation options

Step 3: Select your language (again). Why? Who knows.

Step 4: Select your timezone

Step 5: Select your keyboard layout

Step 6: Select a disk partition to install to

Step 7: Create your user account and name your computer

Step 8: Review installation options

Step 9: Wait...

Step 10: Restart the computer

Step 11: Remove the installation media

Step 12: Login!

Step 13: Enjoy!

The install took a total of about 15 minutes on my machine and was very easy. It will be very familiar to regular Ubuntu users and will probably even be simple for the newest users.

Configuring iPhone to sync with Exchange Server

2008-11-27T15:21:00.003+11:00

Firstly, from my experience, you can't sync contacts, email and calendar with your iPhone unless IMAP (?) is installed on the exchange server. I actually don't know if I'm correct with that statement, but in basic terms: if you can't access Outlook Web Access from outside your office, your iPhone probably won't be able to sync.

To setup the synchronisation, you just need to go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Add Account on your iPhone. From here you will be asked to fill in your account details. The only thing that is confusing here is really the "Server" setting. This should be the domain you use to access Outlook Web Access. The other settings are basically just your domain and email credentials.

Once the account has been configured it's easiest just to restart your iPhone. If you haven't already, you'll be asked to setup a pin (this seems to be required before the sync occurs) and you should now be in action.

Installing CVS Open Source Version Control on Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron)

2008-11-27T15:01:00.003+11:00

As with most software for linux/ubuntu, you have two options when installing CVS on Ubuntu 8.04:

1 - Install the package provided by the distributor of the operating system: to do this you just need to run the following command from a terminal.

sudo apt-get install cvs

This will install the CVS package provided by Ubuntu, which might not necessarily be the latest version of CVS, but will generally be a good/stable option.

OR

2 - Install the latest version of the software from the developers. The steps will obviously vary per application. For CVS, the details for installing from source can be found on the CVS version control website.

Once the package has been successfully installed, you should be able to use the "cvs" command from the command line.

No support for 3 (Three) SIM on iPhone (first generation)

2008-07-22T14:19:00.003+10:00

Last night I finally (11 days after the launch) managed to upgrade my first gen iPhone from the 1.1.4 firmware to 2.0 (I'll post the details in the next couple of days). However, I was saddened to see that the 2.0 firmware still doesn't allow me to use my '3' SIM card with my iPhone. :(

Apparently this isn't an issue in the second generation iPhones, but I'm yet to see this for my own eyes. I'll keep investigating and will post if I find a solution.

And for anyone who is wondering: you will never be able to add 3G support to your first gen iPhone with a firmware upgrade, this just isn't possible because it doesn't have the necessary hardware. However, hopefully we'll find a solution soon that allows us to roam on the other networks using a Three SIM.

Which firmware for first generation iPhone

2008-07-22T14:00:00.003+10:00

If you're wondering which firmware to use for your iPhone and where to get it when moving to 2.0, here they are:

First Generation iPhone (no 3G) - Download iPhone1,1_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw firmware
Second Generation iPhone (has 3G) - Download iPhone1,2_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw firmware

NOTE: These are the official firmware downloads from Apple. The servers are part of the Akamai Edge Suite, which is a content distribution network.

Upgrade or unlock iPhone 2.0 firmware

2008-07-21T09:05:00.002+10:00

Over the weekend the iPhone-dev Team released a new download of PwnageTool 2.0.1 (if that link doesn't work, visit the dev team blog for mirrors), which will allow you to jailbreak and unlock your first generation iPhone, or jailbreak the iPhone 3G and iPod Touch.

I'm yet to see if this works (I locked myself out of my apartment and can't get to my iPhone!), but it apparently does. All you need to do is build the custom firmware from the official ipsw and restore using iTunes 7.7.

However, I'm sure it's not actually this simple, so once I get back into my apartment I'll post my experiences and a bit of a tutorial.

Cannot update to iPhone 2.0 official firmware (yet!)

2008-07-15T14:42:00.002+10:00

For everyone who has an unlocked 1.1.4 iPhone, it might be a little while until you can move up to the 1.2.0 (aka 2.0) firmware. Currently the closest you can come is to update to the beta 2.0 firmware using PwnageTool for MAC. This version of PwnageTool supports the 1.1.4 official firmware and the 2.0 beta (2.0 5A240d) but not the 2.0 official release (5A347). iClarified have suggested that there may be a new release of PwnageTool shortly, but I have a feeling WinPwn may beat them to it. Either way, we're stuck at 1.1.4 until one of these guys brings out a new release or another player comes onto the scene. Maybe ZiPhone, iBrickr or iLiberty?

Downgrading iPhone from 1.2.0 (aka 2.0) to 1.1.4 firmware

2008-07-11T16:18:00.003+10:00

After many (MANY!) hours of trying to get my iPhone back to the 1.1.4 firmware unsuccessfully, I finally found out how!

How I got here: I upgraded my iPhone to the 1.2.0 firmware without hacking the 1.1.4 firmware first. As such, the phone was now useless, so I needed to find out how to get back to 1.1.4. Given that the 1.2.0 firmware was only released today, there were no articles instructing me how to do so, and there were no applications to perform the task for me.

So, what was the problem: well, after much investigation it seems like the problem lay with iTunes 7.7 and the Apple Mobile Device Support. Any time I tried to restore the 1.1.4 ipsw, there were errors (mainly 1601/1602). After completely rolling back iTunes, Apple Mobile Device Support, Apple Software Update and QuickTime, rebooting and reinstalling iTunes 7.6, I was now able to put the phone into DFU mode and use the Restore (Shift+Restore in fact) function to restore the 1.1.4 firmware ipsw successfully.

Hope this saves someone hours of searching and trial and error!

How to check installed components - Windows Server 2008 Core

2008-05-20T10:41:00.002+10:00

I've started delving into Windows Server 2008 Web Core and have been having a bit of trouble finding information. However, one of the useful commands I came across was "oclist". This command will list the available components and indicate "Installed" or "Not Installed".

ASP.NET 3.5 Dynamic Data Website Wizard Bug

2008-05-06T11:46:00.003+10:00

I just came across a bug with the latest ASP.NET Dynamic Data Preview, and thought I should blog about it.

The bug occurs when you have a field name in a table that matches the name of the table. For example, I create a table called "Domain" that was going to be used to maintain a list of domains that I manage, and my field name for the domain name was "Domain". This caused a .NET exception. The workaround was to change the field name. :)

Maximum width and height on ActionScript 3.0 'Bitmap' class is 8191

2008-01-31T08:53:00.002+11:00

I came across something worth keeping in mind when working with Bitmaps in ActionScript 3.0 yesterday. I was working with a large jpeg (10000 pixels wide) that I wanted to load into a Bitmap programatically. I was able to load the image and could confirm the load had completed by firing an event on complete. However, the image wouldn't render on the stage. I tried exactly the same code with on a jpeg with smaller dimensions (500 pixels wide) and found that everything worked as expected. It was at this point I realised it was quite obviously related to the size of the image and so I decided to do some trial and error. The result I found was that the 'width' and 'height' property of the 'Bitmap' class only supports an integer up to 8191. Apparently Adobe thought 12 bits would be more appropriate than 16 (which would've allowed dimensions up to 65535). I imagine the class could be extended quite easily to allow for larger dimensions, but I didn't go down this path just yet.

Also, before anyone asks why you'd want to work with such large jpegs... the project I'm working on required the creation of a storyboard of 360 movie frames (each one 500x332 pixels). This storyboard took approximately 4 minutes to load when requesting each frame individually (through 360 HTTP request), but by compiling the frames server-side into a single storyboard and sending the jpeg in a single HTTP request, this time was reduced to around 15 seconds.

Heath Ledger Dead

2008-01-23T08:57:00.001+11:00

If the news reports are true ("Actor Heath Ledger Is Found Dead"), then it's a very sad day indeed.

I wouldn't usually make this sort of post, but Heath was a great actor and an even better Aussie. You will be sorely missed mate. My sincere condolences go out to Michelle Williams and Matilda Rose.

Can't open Visual Studio 2003 Web Application?

2007-11-14T21:18:00.001+11:00

I was trying for quite a long time to work out why I couldn't open a Visual Studio 2003 website and kept receiving an error along the lines of:

Web Access Failed - The default Web Access mode for this project is set to file share, but the project folder at 'http://localhost' cannot be opened with the path '\\localhost\wwwroot$\'.

The error returned was:

Unable to create Web project 'WebApplication1'. The file path
'D:\Projects\WebProject1' does not correspond to the URL 'http://localhost/'.
The two need to map to the same server location. HTTP Error 404 : Not Found

After some searching online I realised I needed to create a UNC share to the root directory of my website and specify that share when the project opens. 'Administrators' and 'VS Developers' need full control of the share.

This got around the 'Web Access Failed' error. However, this is when the pain started. I was then confronted with:

Unable to Retrieve Folder Information from the Server

So, my project was still unavailable. I went through numerous steps to try and fix this issue, but nothing worked. Finally, I found an obscure post mentioning that you should avoid folders prefixed with '.' with Visual Studio as it can cause problems. This was right on the mark! Because I use Subversion and TortoiseSVN for my source control, my tree was littered with hidden '.svn' folders. It turns out that the creation of Subversion also came across this issue, as there is an option in the settings to use '_svn' instead of '.svn'. Once I changed this setting, deleted the folder and re-got the files from source control everything worked perfectly. In short, what out for folders with a period as a prefix when using Visual Studio!

MVC Framework from Microsoft

2007-11-07T15:02:00.001+11:00

A great presentation from ScottGu on an upcoming Microsoft MVC framework. Well worth a look! I will certainly be trying it out as soon as an initial release is available.

First Impressions of Windows Home Server

2007-08-21T13:35:00.001+10:00

I've been meaning to post my first impressions since it was announced that Windows Home Server has been released to manufacturing, and I finally managed to get a spare 15 minutes.

I ran the "new" operating system in a virtual machine on a run of the mill Dell laptop with 512mb RAM allocated to the guest OS and was surprised to find that the performance was adequate to play around with. The first thing that I noticed was that it's simple. Actually, REALLY simple! It's clear that the main focus of this OS was to allow users to have access to some of the nice features of commercial servers without needing an IT degree.

The main areas I ended up playing around with were:

Automated backups of network PCs
Network security
File/media sharing, and
Remote access to your home network

I was very pleased to find out that all these features were very simple to set up. The only one that required a little digging around was to enable the remote access to the network. I imagine this would not be used by most people, but it is by far my favourite feature of Home Server. Once I set it up correctly I was able to remote desktop into any PC on my network through a browser from any location. The setup also included the creation of a free subdomain that I could use to browse to.

Once I got everything up and running Home Server ran very smoothly and worked brilliantly with the Vista machines I have running. Overall, I think this is a great product for home users looking to setup a simple home network and for the more advanced user who wants to extend the reach of their home network without having to learn the more difficult server products that Microsoft offers.

IIS7 returns a 404 error

2006-12-11T13:22:00.001+11:00

Summary/Quick Fix:
Make sure that the feature of IIS you require (e.g - ASP.NET for .aspx, ASP for .asp) is installed. You can check this under add/remove windows features.

More Information:
The development team at work has recently started using Vista and a common problem that has come up is that IIS7 returns "HTTP Error 404.3 - Not Found" when trying to access .aspx (ASP.NET) files on the local machine.

In most cases, the reason for receiving this error will be that IIS is missing a piece of functionality that is required to serve the page. By default, IIS comes with a very limited set of features (the is deliberate, and highlights the extensibility of the new architecture). However, this means that ASP.NET and ASP are not installed by default. You can fix this by highlighting the features you require under add/remove windows features. For .aspx files you will need to make sure ASP.NET is installed. For .asp files, it's just plain old ASP. If this doesn't fix your problem, then I suggest you start reading the lengthy causes and resolutions provided by the built-in .NET error page. :)

Adding custom handlers to the web.config

2006-11-12T20:34:00.001+11:00

Okay, some background information: I was sick of cutting hundreds of images out of photoshop files for headings, so I created a handler (.ashx) that generated the headings on-the-fly (with caching of course). That was working nicely, but what I was starting to get frustrated about was the need to include the file in the structure of the website (it just didn't seem right). So, I came up with an alternate solution. Here's what needed to be done:

Step 1
Create a new class that inherits from IHttpHandler. In my example, I named the class DynamicImageHandler and placed it in the namespace DrewWalker.Web.Handlers. The logic behind the naming was to follow Microsoft's conventions for System.Web.Handlers.TraceHandler, as I was aiming to echo the functionality of Trace.axd (you'll see what I mean).

Step 2
Move the code from the .ashx to the new class (straightforward).

Step 3
Register the handler in the httpHandlers configuration section of the web.config. Here is an example:

<configuration>
<system.web>
<httphandlers>
<add type="DrewWalker.Web.Handlers.DynamicImageHandler" path="DynamicImage.axd" verb="*">
</httphandlers>
</system.web>
</configuration>

Voila! Once you compile you will be able to reference your handler as though it were a file sitting in the structure of your website. So in my case I can now browse to http://localhost/DynamicImage.axd?Text=Hello%20World and see a nice jpeg with Hello World.