Custom Software Development

When installing PHP and MySQL on OSX  you may get the error Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/var/mysql/mysql.sock’.  Or you may also get “No such file or directory” when calling mysql_connect from a PHP page.  This occurs because PHP is looking for the file mysql.sock in it’s typical installation location of /var/mysql/mysql.sock. However the MySQL OSX installer actually puts the file in /tmp/mysql.sock. There are two easy ways to solve the problem.

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In Flex when you bind data to a UI control like a DataGrid, the grid cells refresh every time the dataSource changes. The reverse is also true if the DataGrid is enabled for editing. That is, the dataSource is also updated when you edit a cell.

The TextInput can be bound as well so that when the dataSource changes, the value of the TextInput will automatically update. However, unlike the DataGrid, changing the text of the TextInput will not automatically update the dataSource. Take the following code for example (assuming “source” is a String variable):

<mx:TextInput id="example" text="{source}" />

When the TextInput is changed, the value of source remains the same. It’s only bound one-way. If you want the value of source to be updated when TextInput changes, it’s actually easy, but there are at least five (5) different ways to do it of which I know. For the most straight-forward two-way binding, you could update the TextInput code like so:

<mx:TextInput id="example" text="{source}" valueCommit="{source = example.text;}" />

Technically source is not bound to the TextInput, but it does produce the desired result. source is updated manually whenever the valueCommit event fires. The valueCommit event fires when the TextInput text has been changed onBlur (ie when when TextInput loses focus). If you prefer source to be updated on every key stroke, you can change valueCommit to change instead and the update will occur on every keyUp. If I’m updating a database or making a service call, I prefer valueCommit so the back-end code only fires once after the user is finished updating the field. If the TextInput is an ajax-style auto complete or lookup, the change event might be more desirable so the application can react after each key stroke.

As I mentioned there are five methods to do this. You can bind controls using Flex’s binding features in either MX code or ActionScript. Depending on your application one may be better than the rest as far as keeping your code clean and consistent. For the most part they all achieve the same result. Attached is source code that demonstrates all five techniques:

Download TextInputBinding.zip

If you know of any other ways to bind data to UI Controls, please post a comment.

wget in combination with cron is a useful utility for automating processes in a web application. It’s possible to run most scripting languages from the command line, but sometimes it’s tricky to get those to run correctly when they don’t have the server context.

One simple way to achieve this is to write your automation functions as a regular web-based page within the app and then use wget to post a web request to that URL. You can use cron to schedule the frequency.

wget is fairly simple to use, however one thing that is difficult to find in the documentation is how to get the contents of the document and append them to a file. The normal behavior is to just download the file and save it with it’s original name. You can remedy this by specifying a dash “-” as the output filename, which tells wget to output the document to the console. the –quiet parameter tells wget not to output a bunch of connection info. Finally, we redirect the console output to append to a file using >> at the end. The resulting statement looks something like this:

wget --quiet --output-document=- http://localhost/auto.php?arg=123 >> /path/to/file.log

Depending on your server configuration you may need to put quotes around your URL as well, like so:

wget --quiet --output-document=- "http://localhost/auto.php?arg=123" >> /path/to/file.log

If you are attempting to connect to a secure URL (beginning with “https”), you may also need to add the “–no-check-certificate” option to the command in which case your command would like like so:

wget --quiet --no-check-certificate --output-document=- "https://localhost/auto.php?arg=123" >> /path/to/file.log

If you have your automation script output debug information, then your log file will contain useful information. As an example, I like to output the date and time that the script runs and then any info about failures that may have occurred.

One note about security – if you don’t want people poking around and firing off your automation and/or viewing your debug information, you should implement some type of security, such as a simple username/password arguments or something more robust if required.

The following is a list of UNIX commands that I have found helpful when modifying web sites on the server. Most UNIX commands have many options and parameters which I have not listed here. Instead I have given examples of practical uses. For more complete information on most command, you can refer to the online manual by typing man [command] at the UNIX prompt. Some commands you can type [command] –help or [command] -?

Note, when I specify something in brackets like so: [filename] that is to indicate that you type in a filename or whatever. Do not include the brackets in your command.

Navigating UNIX:

/ (refers to the root directory on the server)
./ (the current directory that you are in)
../ (parent directory of your current directory)

pwd (shows what you current directory is – giving the full path)

ls (lists all the files in your current directory)
ls -al (lists filenames + information)
ls -alR (lists filenames + information in all subdirectories)
ls -alR | more (lists filenames + information in all subdirectories,
pausing when the screen become full)
ls -alR > result.txt (lists filenames + information in all subdirectories,
and ouputs the results to a file instead of the screen)
ls *.html (lists all files ending with .html)
ls -al /home/usr/bob/ (lists files + info for /home/usr/bob)

cd (changes you to a new directory)
cd images
cd / (changes you to the root directory)
cd /home/usr/images
cd .. (this goes back one directory)

Moving, Copying and Deleting Files:

mv [old name] [new name] (move/rename a file)

cp [filename] [new filename] (copy a file)

rm [filename] (delete a file)
rm * (delete all files in your current directory)
rm *.html (delete all files ending in .html
in your current directory)

Creating, Moving, Copying and Deleting Directories:

mkdir [directoryname] (creates a new directory)

ls -d */ (lists all directories within current directory)

cp -r [directoryname] [new directoryname] (copy a directory and all
files/directories in it)

rmdir [directoryname] (remove a directory if it is empty)
rm -r [directoryname] (remove a directory and all files in it)

Searching Files and Directories

find / -name [filename] -print (search the whole server for a file)
find . -name [filename] -print (search for a file starting with
the current directory)
find / -name [directoryname] – type d -print
(search the whole server for a direcory)

grep [text] [filename] (search for text within a file)

sed s/[oldtext]/[newtext]/g [filename] (searches file and replaces all occurances of [oldtext] with [newtext]

Viewing and Editing Files:

tail [filename] – view the tail end of a file, useful for checking the error log
when debugging a script

vi [filename] – opens a file using the vi text editor. you are a true geek if you use vi, however it’s fairly easy to use. (refer to the vi primer in this support forum)

Installing Software & Scripts

For downloaded ‘tar’ scripts, to un-tar and un-gz
tar -xvf [archive.tar] – extracts files from the tar archive ‘archive.tar’
tar -zxvf [archive.tar.gz] extracts files from the tar archive ‘archive.tar.gz’

Getting Server Information

which perl displays the path to perl

For viewing disk space.
du to view disk usage on server
quota to view your disk usage on server

whoami – displays your current username

uptime – displays how long the server has been up and some performance statistics

ps – displays running processes

top – (may be only available to admins) similar to windows task manager

kill -9 [process Id] – terminiates a running process (out of control CGI, etc). The process Id can be obtained using “ps”

File and Directory Permissions

There are three levels of file permission: read, write and execute. In
addition, there are three groups to which you can assign permission,
The file owner, the user group, and everyone. The command chmod followed
by three numbers is used to change permissons. The first number is
the permission for the owner, the second for the group and the third
for everyone. Here are how the levels of permission translate:

0 = — (no permission)
1 = –x (execute only)
2 = -w- (write only)
3 = -wx (write and execute)
4 = r– (read only)
5 = r-x (read and execute)
6 = rw- (read and write)
7 = rwx (read, write and execute)

I prefer that the group always have permission of 0. This prevents other
users on the server from browsing files via Telnet and FTP. Here are the
most common file permissions used:

chmod 604 [filename] (minimum permission for www HTML file)
chmod 705 [directoryname] (minimum permission for www directories)
chmod 705 [filename] (minimum permission for www scripts & programs)
chmod 606 [filename] (permission for datafiles used by www scripts)
chmod 703 [directoryname] (write-only permission for public FTP uploading)

Note that some systems use AFS filesystem and chmod does not behave as expected.You can sometimes identify AFS if the path that you are using begins like so /afs/path/to/files/ If your system uses AFS, then the following commands are used instead of chmod.

fs setacl [directory] [group] [access] (set file permissions)
fs listacl [directory] (list file permissions)

example:

fs setacl . httpd rliw (set read, lookup, insert, write to http for current dir)

Scheduling Tasks

You can schedule tasks to run automatically by using the UNIX cron command.
To use this, you create a text file with cron instructions, then process
this file. cron instructions are basically UNIX commands with extra info
about the time that they will run.

One important thing to note is that it is best to use full paths when
creating your cron file. As an example, create a file called mycronfile
and in it place one line:

0 1 * * * cp /usr/www/file.txt /usr/www/backup.txt

now at the command line, type the following:

crontab mycronfile

You have just scheduled an automated task! This task will run at the time
specified until you decide you want to cancel it.
There are six fields in this file. The first five represent the time that
the job will run. The sixth field is a UNIX command that will run at the
specified time. The above example will run every night at 1AM, at which
time it will copy a file.

Here is how the fields break down:

Field 1 | Field 2 | Field 3 | Field 4 | Field 5
Minutes | Hours | Day of Month | Month | Day of Week
(0-59) | (0-23) | (1-31) | (1-12) | (0-6)

You can enter a number in the field, a range of numbers, or an * to indicate all.
Here are a few more examples. These examples use the ls command, which would be
pretty useless. Note the time that it runs, though.

0 1 * * 1-5 ls (this would run every Monday-Friday at 1am)
0 1 * * 1,3,5 ls (this would run every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 1am)
10 2 1 * * ls (this would run at 2:10am on the first of every month)
0 1 1 1 * ls (this would run at 1am on January 1 every year)

If you have a more complicated command that you want to run, it is sometimes
helpful to create a shell script and have that script run. You specify the
shell script as you would any UNIX command. For example:

0 1 * * * /usr/www/myscript

There are some other crontab switches that are useful:

crontab -l (lists your currently scheduled tasks)
crontab -r (delete all currently scheduled tasks)
crontab -e (directly edit your scheduled tasks)

Credits
——–

Originally created by J. Hinkle
Additional content provided by Dave Wojo

This page explains how to set file permissions for the three most common type of web files: pages, scripts and data/config files.

To keep things simple, let’s make the following assumptions:

a. pages should be readable/writable by the owner and readable by the web visitor.
b. scripts should be readable/writable/executable by the owner and readable/executable by the web visitor.
c. data-config files should be readable/writable by the owner and readable/writable by the web visitor.
And also, lets use the following abbreviations:

- – - (or 0) = no permission
r – - (or 4) = read-only permission
rw – (or 6) = read/write permission
rwx (or 7) = read/write/execute permission

To change UNIX file permissions using your shell account (Telnet):

When changing file permissions on a UNIX server, there are three groups to which you assign permissions: owner, group, other. Owner is typically you. Group is typically all users with accounts on your server. Other is typically the web visitors. Using the chmod command on a UNIX server, you can set the permissions for each of those groups.

1. Log into your account and go to the directory where the files are located
2. Use the chmod command to change permissions like so:
2a. chmod 604 page.html
2b. chmod 705 script.cgi
2c. chmod 606 config-data.txt

To change UNIX file permissions using your FTP software:

1. Log into your account and go to the directory where the files are located.
2. Highlight the file that you want to change permission.
3. Locate the “file permission” or “chmod” command on your FTP software software (you may need to refer to the manual or help file)
4. There should be three groups. Each group should have either checkboxes or a selection for the permission type.
4a. set pages to rw- for the owner, no permission for the group, and r–for other
4b. set scripts to rwx for the owner, no permission for the group, and r-x for other
4c. set data/config files to rw- for the owner, no permission for the group, and rw- for other