amnuts http://blog.amnuts.com php projects, javascript, and... stuff. Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:50:22 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 en Application running really slow http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/07/15/application-running-really-slow/ http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/07/15/application-running-really-slow/#comments Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:50:22 +0000 Andy http://blog.amnuts.com/?p=70 While working on an application built on Zend Framework, I experienced a really odd slow-down of the system while running on the web cluster at work as opposed to my machine at home. I couldn’t see what the issue was myself, and it seemed to baffle people on #zftalk a bit as well as work colleagues. The speed difference was quite dramatic - going from near instant on my home computer to around 30 seconds for a page display while running on the cluster.

Naturally, this required a fair amount of investigation…

It was quickly ruled out to be any fault of ZF. After all, it is being used by companies such as IBM, Zend, Sourceforge, Fox, and more. If the framework were not suitable and produced slow results then they would obviously not use it, nor would any of you!

Next to be ruled out was custom code built on top of ZF. With the exact same code-base producing faster results on one machine and not on another it was highly unlikely to be the code.

Profiling the code proved a little helpful. I profiled the database connection for each query and ruled out any slowness with that as they were taking fractions of seconds. Code profiling was a little bit more tricky, as everything seemed proportionally slower, not any one thing in particular. However, the Zend_Loader component seemed to be taking quite some time to perform its tasks.

With a little command-line magic (using ktrace, kdump, grep, awk, etc. - not by me, but by talented colleague) it was determined that the OS itself, Mac OSX ‘Tiger’, was mainly to blame. The cause of the problem was trying to determine relative paths and the slow speed at which Tiger was doing this… As I understand it, to determine the current directory, ‘.’, the OS needs to back track all the way to the root, get the whole list of directories and work out which inode matches the one your current path is, and then work its way back down the directories until it finds a match. Once it’s done that you have your current path. If it sounds intensive, that’s because it is.

When comparing Tiger to Leopard we were seeing a 1000x improvement (4 microseconds as opposed to 4 milliseconds) to do various getdirentries() calls.

If you used the include path for a handful of files you’d never notice a significant drop in speed, but the application I’m working on, together with ZF will typically include 140+ files.

So how was the issue resolved?

For the short term there was a very simple fix; simply alter the include path so that the current path is last to be checked and the more significant paths (such as where the application or Zend library is located) are first. This simple tweak took a 30+ second load time to around two seconds - a vast improvement! Still, two seconds is not ideal so we will be having Leopard-based machine installed on the web cluster to see if that also helps to increase performance.

I’m curious; has anyone else had a similar problem?

]]> http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/07/15/application-running-really-slow/feed/ Email address being used to spam http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/06/15/email-address-being-used-to-spam/ http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/06/15/email-address-being-used-to-spam/#comments Sun, 15 Jun 2008 20:32:26 +0000 Andy http://blog.amnuts.com/?p=69 Some little *insert a whole stream of expletives* has used my email address as the sender of a lot of spam.  I know this because opening my email box today resulted in no less than 400 failure notices, undelivered notices, auto replies and bounce messages.

Needless to say; I was not the one sending you spam!

]]> http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/06/15/email-address-being-used-to-spam/feed/ Tag cloud view helper http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/06/11/tag-cloud-view-helper/ http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/06/11/tag-cloud-view-helper/#comments Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:43:16 +0000 Andy http://blog.amnuts.com/?p=66 Here's a little view helper to display a tag cloud. All you have to do is supply an array of tags, with the tag name being the index and how many times it's used as the value, and the url you'd like the tags to go to.

PLAIN TEXT
PHP:
  1. <?php
  2.  
  3. /**
  4. * Display a tag cloud
  5. *
  6. * @category   Amnuts
  7. * @package    Amnuts_View
  8. * @subpackage Amnuts_View_Helper
  9. * @copyright  Copyright (c) 2008 Andrew Collington (http://www.amnuts.com/)
  10. * @license    http://framework.zend.com/license/new-bsd     New BSD License
  11. */
  12. class Amnuts_View_Helper_TagCloud
  13. {
  14.     public $view;
  15.  
  16.     /**
  17.      * Output the tag cloud.
  18.      *
  19.      * The $tags parameter is expected to be an array with the tag being the
  20.      * index and the number of times it's used as the value.  For example:
  21.      *
  22.      *     array(
  23.      *         'foo' => 3,
  24.      *         'bar' => 1,
  25.      *         'dog' => 5,
  26.      *         'cat' => 1
  27.      *     )
  28.      *
  29.      * The url will have the tag text appended to it, so that if you supply
  30.      * '/filter/by/tag/' as the url, then given the above array you will have:
  31.      *
  32.      *     <a href="/filter/by/tag/foo">foo</a>
  33.      *     <a href="/filter/by/tag/bar">bar</a>
  34.      *
  35.      * and so on.
  36.      *
  37.      * @param array $tags The tag array
  38.      * @param string $url The link for each tag (with the tag name appended)
  39.      * @param int|string $minFont The minimum font value
  40.      * @param int|string $maxFont The maximum font value
  41.      * @param string $unit The unit of size type (%, em, px, etc.)
  42.      * @return string
  43.      */
  44.     public function tagCloud(array $tags, $url, $minFont = 100, $maxFont = 150, $unit = '%')
  45.     {
  46.         $xhtml = '';
  47.         $cloud = array();
  48.        
  49.         if (!empty($tags)) {
  50.             $min  = min(array_values($tags));
  51.             $max  = max(array_values($tags));
  52.             $diff = $max - $min;
  53.             if (!$diff) {
  54.                 ++$diff;
  55.             }
  56.  
  57.             foreach ($tags as $tag => $count) {
  58.                 $size = $minFont + ($count - $min) * ($maxFont - $minFont) / $diff;
  59.                 $cloud[] = '<a href="' . $url . urlencode($tag)
  60.                          . '" style="font-size:' . $size . $unit . ';">'
  61.                          . $this->view->escape($tag) . '</a>';
  62.             }
  63.             $xhtml .= '<div class="tagCloudContainer"><h4>Tag cloud</h4>' . join(', ', $cloud) . "</div>\n";
  64.         }
  65.         return $xhtml;
  66.     }
  67.  
  68.     /**
  69.      * Set the view object
  70.      *
  71.      * @param Zend_View_Interface $view
  72.      */
  73.     public function setView(Zend_View_Interface $view)
  74.     {
  75.         $this->view = $view;
  76.     }
  77. }
  78.  
  79. ?>

]]> http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/06/11/tag-cloud-view-helper/feed/ StringToTitle filter http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/06/05/stringtotitle-filter/ http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/06/05/stringtotitle-filter/#comments Thu, 05 Jun 2008 12:38:14 +0000 Andy http://blog.amnuts.com/?p=65 I like the filtering capabilities of the Zend Framework, but for some reason there doesn't seem to be a string to title case filter (though there is a string to upper and string to lower). So here it is:

PLAIN TEXT
PHP:
  1. <?php
  2.  
  3. /**
  4. * @see Zend_Filter_Interface
  5. */
  6. require_once 'Zend/Filter/Interface.php';
  7.  
  8. /**
  9. * Convert a string to titlecase.
  10. *
  11. * Seemingly missing from the core Zend distribution.
  12. */
  13. class StringToTitle implements Zend_Filter_Interface
  14. {
  15.     /**
  16.      * Encoding for the input string
  17.      *
  18.      * @var string
  19.      */
  20.     protected $_encoding = null;
  21.  
  22.     /**
  23.      * Set the input encoding for the given string
  24.      *
  25.      * @param  string $encoding
  26.      * @throws Zend_Filter_Exception
  27.      */
  28.     public function setEncoding($encoding = null)
  29.     {
  30.         if (!function_exists('mb_convert_case')) {
  31.             require_once 'Zend/Filter/Exception.php';
  32.             throw new Zend_Filter_Exception('mbstring is required for this feature');
  33.         }
  34.         $this->_encoding = $encoding;
  35.     }
  36.  
  37.     /**
  38.      * Defined by Zend_Filter_Interface
  39.      *
  40.      * Returns the string $value, converting characters to titlecase as necessary
  41.      *
  42.      * @param  string $value
  43.      * @return string
  44.      */
  45.     public function filter($value)
  46.     {
  47.         if ($this->_encoding) {
  48.             return mb_convert_case((string) $value, MB_CASE_TITLE, $this->_encoding);
  49.         }
  50.         return ucwords((string) $value);
  51.     }
  52. }

]]> http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/06/05/stringtotitle-filter/feed/ Damn hackers. http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/06/02/damn-hackers/ http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/06/02/damn-hackers/#comments Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:29:41 +0000 Andy http://blog.amnuts.com/?p=64 Someone exploited a hole in the version of Wordpress that I Was using and managed to destroy my last post about automatically creating model for your Zend Framework app. Unfortunately, I just don't think I have a recent backup of the database around so might not be able to recover it easily.

This has forced me, of course, to update my version of Wordpress. Along with that I've had to change my theme, which has also meant I've had to remove a few pages because they relied on widgets specific to that theme. This all means that this blog is now in a state of flux, so thanks for your patience while I spend a while fixing things back up (which, knowing me, will take months!!)

]]> http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/06/02/damn-hackers/feed/ Auto generating basic models for a Zend Framework app http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/04/11/auto-generating-basic-models-for-a-zend-framework-app/ http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/04/11/auto-generating-basic-models-for-a-zend-framework-app/#comments Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:18:39 +0000 Andy http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/04/11/auto-generating-basic-models-for-a-zend-framework-app/ Do you have a database with foreign keys and just wish you could have something automatically create your ZF models from it? Well, today that was me. So as a little proof of concept, this is the code I came up with to do it for me...

But before we get to that, a few caveats:

  • It's just a proof of concept
  • The output needs updating for proper reference names, etc.
  • Outputs everything to screen in one go and doesn't save the files.

However, it might be handy to someone, so I post it up for your comments.

PLAIN TEXT
PHP:
  1. <?php
  2.  
  3. require_once 'Zend/Loader.php';
  4. Zend_Loader::registerAutoload();
  5.  
  6. $config = array(
  7.     'host'   => 'localhost',
  8.     'username' => 'myusername',
  9.     'password' => 'mypassword',
  10.     'dbname'   => 'mydbname'
  11. );
  12. try {
  13.     $db = Zend_Db::factory('pdo_mysql', $config);
  14. } catch (Zend_Db_Exception $e) {
  15.     echo $e->getMessage();
  16.     die;
  17. }
  18.  
  19. $model = <<<EOT
  20. <?php
  21.  
  22. class %s extends Zend_Db_Table_Abstract
  23. {
  24.     protected \$_name = '%s';
  25. %s
  26. }
  27. EOT;
  28.  
  29. $refmap_outer = <<<EOT
  30.     protected \$_referenceMap   = array(
  31. %s
  32.     );
  33. EOT;
  34.  
  35. $refmap_inner = <<<EOT
  36.         '%s' => array(
  37.             'columns'         => array('%s'),
  38.             'refTableClass'  => '%s',
  39.             'refColumns'        => array('%s')
  40.         )
  41. EOT;
  42.  
  43. $toTable = new Zend_Filter_Inflector(
  44.     ':tbl',
  45.     array(':tbl' => array('Word_CamelCaseToUnderscore', 'StringToLower'))
  46. );
  47.  
  48. $toClass = new Zend_Filter_Inflector(
  49.     ':tbl',
  50.     array(':tbl' => array('StringToLower', 'Word_UnderscoreToCamelCase'))
  51. );
  52.  
  53. foreach ($db->listTables() as $table) {
  54.     $sql = "
  55.         select
  56.             tc.constraint_name,
  57.             kcu.table_name,
  58.             kcu.column_name,
  59.             kcu.referenced_table_name,
  60.             kcu.referenced_column_name
  61.         from
  62.             information_schema.table_constraints tc,
  63.             information_schema.key_column_usage kcu
  64.         where
  65.             tc.table_name = " . $db->quote($table) . "
  66.             and tc.constraint_type = 'FOREIGN KEY'
  67.             and kcu.constraint_name = tc.constraint_name
  68.         ";
  69.     $keys = $db->fetchAll($sql);
  70.  
  71.     $refs = array();
  72.     if (!empty($keys)) {
  73.         $r = 0;
  74.         foreach ($keys as $key) {
  75.             $refs[] = sprintf($refmap_inner,
  76.                     'ref' . ++$r,
  77.                     $key['column_name'],
  78.                     $toClass->filter(array('tbl' => $key['referenced_table_name'])),
  79.                     $key['referenced_column_name']
  80.                 );
  81.         }
  82.     }
  83.     printf($model,
  84.         $toClass->filter(array('tbl' => $table)),
  85.         $toTable->filter(array('tbl' => $table)),
  86.         (!empty($refs) ? sprintf($refmap_outer, join(",\n", $refs)) : '')
  87.     );
  88. }

So assuming I had a database structure like:

PLAIN TEXT
SQL:
  1. --
  2. -- Table structure for table `users`
  3. --
  4. CREATE TABLE `users` (
  5.   `id` int(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  6.   `added` datetime NOT NULL,
  7.   `username` varchar(32) NOT NULL,
  8.   `password` varchar(64) NOT NULL,
  9.   `name_first` varchar(32) NOT NULL,
  10.   `name_last` varchar(32) NOT NULL,
  11.   `name_nick` varchar(32) NOT NULL,
  12.   PRIMARY KEY  (`id`),
  13.   KEY `username` (`username`)
  14. ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
  15. -- --------------------------------------------------------
  16. --
  17. -- Table structure for table `user_tags`
  18. --
  19. CREATE TABLE `user_tags` (
  20.   `id` int(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  21.   `user_id` int(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL,
  22.   `tag_user_id` int(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL,
  23.   `tag` varchar(24) NOT NULL,
  24.   PRIMARY KEY  (`id`),
  25.   KEY `tag` (`tag`),
  26.   KEY `fk_user_tags_user_id` (`user_id`),
  27.   KEY `fk_user_tags_tag_user_id` (`tag_user_id`)
  28. ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
  29. --
  30. -- Constraints for table `user_tags`
  31. --
  32. ALTER TABLE `user_tags`
  33.   ADD CONSTRAINT `fk_user_tags_user_id` FOREIGN KEY (`user_id`) REFERENCES `users` (`id`) ON DELETE NO ACTION ON UPDATE NO ACTION,
  34.   ADD CONSTRAINT `fk_user_tags_tag_user_id` FOREIGN KEY (`tag_user_id`) REFERENCES `users` (`id`) ON DELETE NO ACTION ON UPDATE NO ACTION;

it would output something like:

PLAIN TEXT
PHP:
  1. <?php
  2.  
  3. class UserTags extends Zend_Db_Table_Abstract
  4. {
  5.     protected $_name = 'user_tags';
  6.     protected $_referenceMap    = array(
  7.         'ref1' => array(
  8.             'columns'         => array('user_id'),
  9.             'refTableClass'  => 'Users',
  10.             'refColumns'        => array('id')
  11.         ),
  12.         'ref2' => array(
  13.             'columns'         => array('tag_user_id'),
  14.             'refTableClass'  => 'Users',
  15.             'refColumns'        => array('id')
  16.         )
  17.     );
  18. }
  19.  
  20. <?php
  21.  
  22. class Users extends Zend_Db_Table_Abstract
  23. {
  24.     protected $_name = 'users';
  25. }

]]> http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/04/11/auto-generating-basic-models-for-a-zend-framework-app/feed/ Second Life at the University of Sussex http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/03/12/second-life-at-the-university-of-sussex/ http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/03/12/second-life-at-the-university-of-sussex/#comments Wed, 12 Mar 2008 11:37:41 +0000 Andy http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/03/12/second-life-at-sussex-university/ The team that I work in - University of Sussex Web Team - have just created large portions of the campus in Second Life. Well, when I say "the team" it was mainly down to our graduate intern who has done a fantastic job... So much so that it's been reported in a local newspaper, on the radio, on a tv news broadcast (both morning and evening editions), and is also now on the BBC News 24 homepage as well as various other sites:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sussex/7290762.stm

If you get a chance, swing by the campus in Second Life. The SURL is: http://slurl.com/secondlife/University%20of%20Sussex/75/16/38

Anyway; congratulations to Tom (the intern) for such a great job and Beth (the previous intern) who assisted!

]]> http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/03/12/second-life-at-the-university-of-sussex/feed/ Zend Framework 1.5 preview release http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/01/29/zend-framework-15-preview-release/ http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/01/29/zend-framework-15-preview-release/#comments Tue, 29 Jan 2008 09:55:46 +0000 Andy http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/01/29/zend-framework-15-preview-release/ For those that don't know by now, version 1.5 of the Zend Framework is now out in preview release. Congratulations to everyone who has had apart in getting out this release - from programmers to documentation writers to project managers!

There are a lot of very interesting updates and new features. Some notable ones are the inclusion of Zend_Form, Zend_Layout, OpenID and LDAP adapters for authentication, Technorati web service, as well has handy tweaks Zend_Db_Table such as being able to directly access the select object.

As it's a preview release the code isn't intended for production systems just yet, though I hope the time frame for getting it to stable release is short enough so that I can use it soon, but long enough to work out any major kinks. ;-)

]]> http://blog.amnuts.com/2008/01/29/zend-framework-15-preview-release/feed/ The lesser of two evils? http://blog.amnuts.com/2007/12/17/the-lesser-of-two-evils/ http://blog.amnuts.com/2007/12/17/the-lesser-of-two-evils/#comments Mon, 17 Dec 2007 22:12:06 +0000 Andy http://blog.amnuts.com/2007/12/17/the-lesser-of-two-evils/ A few times I have been asked at work to decide on whether we should build an application or use something that's out there already. Unfortunately, it's never an easy choice for us... On the one hand something can be built that's geared exactly to what is needed, but nothing else, and it'll take time to plan, design and build it. Yet on the other hand you can have something that's already been built so all the designing is not required, but it may have a lot of extra functionality that you have to rip out or things don't work just as you want it to so will have to alter it anyway.

At this point I bet you're thinking, "Andy is now going to give us the answer on what the best choice is, you just see..." Actually, no. No, I'm not. I can in all honestly say that I don't know what the best course of action is. On one side I really favour creating the application myself because then I know exactly how it'll work. But on the flip side of that, I'll then have to do all the work and might not be able to put in all the features that are able to go in applications worked on by many people.

I suppose there is no clear winner here as it would probably depend on budget and deadlines, but I thought I'd open it up for debate anyway. Anyone want to comment?

]]> http://blog.amnuts.com/2007/12/17/the-lesser-of-two-evils/feed/ Force a file download http://blog.amnuts.com/2007/10/24/force-a-file-download/ http://blog.amnuts.com/2007/10/24/force-a-file-download/#comments Wed, 24 Oct 2007 12:03:01 +0000 Andy http://blog.amnuts.com/2007/10/24/force-a-file-download/ Here's a small function that will allow you to force a file download.

PLAIN TEXT
PHP:
  1. /**
  2. * Force a file download via HTTP.
  3. *
  4. * File is required to be on the same server and accessible via a path.
  5. * If the file cannot be found or some other error occurs then a
  6. * '204 No content' header is sent.
  7. *
  8. * @param string $path Path and file name
  9. * @param string $name Name of file when saved on user's computer,
  10. *                     null for basename from path
  11. * @param string $type Content type header info (e.g., 'application/vnd.ms-excel')
  12. * @return void
  13. * @access public
  14. */
  15. /* public static */ function download($path, $name = null, $type = 'binary/octet-stream')
  16. {
  17.     if (headers_sent()) {
  18.         echo 'File download failure: HTTP headers have already been sent and cannot be changed.';
  19.         exit;
  20.     }
  21.    
  22.     $path = realpath($path);
  23.     if ($path === false || !is_file($path) || !is_readable($path)) {
  24.         header('HTTP/1.0 204 No Content');
  25.         exit;
  26.     }
  27.  
  28.     $name = (empty($name)) ? basename($path) : $name;
  29.     $size = filesize($path);
  30.  
  31.     header('Expires: Mon, 20 May 1974 23:58:00 GMT');
  32.     header('Last-Modified: ' . gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s') . ' GMT');
  33.     header('Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate');
  34.     header('Cache-Control: post-check=0, pre-check=0', false);
  35.     header('Cache-Control: private');
  36.     header('Pragma: no-cache');
  37.     header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary"