PHP Archives - Page 12 of 19 - {5} Setfive

Recently I was working on an API call which uses a form to validate the data you are passing in. I ran into the issue of getting all the errors for a form in Symfony2 is not as straight forward as you would think. At first I tried `$form->getErrors()` and then looped through the errors. That didn’t get all of them. After looking around I found:

This works really well for any errors which are bound to a field. However it will not catch global errors such as a unique validator. It should probably be renamed from getAllErrors(). In order to get those you need to also loop through $form->getErrors(). This was returning the global errors only for me. Here is my code in the end:

There may be a better way, just wanted to shoot this out as not many people had good solutions on it.

Bonus: If you are using the translator service on validators and you get an error which is the ‘validators’ translation files, make sure you use the proper domain, ie: $translator->trans(‘key’,array(),’validators’).

Recently I was working on a project where we had a page which loads tons of data from numerous sources. I decided after a while that we wanted to AJAX each section of data so that the page would load a bit quicker. After splitting up the requests and sending them asyncronously, there was little improvement. I thought at first it may be due to the fact we were pinging a single API for most of the data multiple times, that wasn’t it. Maybe it was a browser limit? Nope was still far below the 6 requests most allow. I setup xdebug and kcachegrind and to my surprise it was the session_start() that was taking the most time on the requests.

I looked around the web for a while trying to figure out what in the world was going on. It turns out that PHP’s default session_start will block future session_starts for the same session until the session is closed. This is because the default method uses a file on the filesystem which it locks until you close it. If you want more information on this and how to close it you can read a bit more here.

We switched over to database based sessions and it fixed it. In symfony 1.4 the default session storage uses the file system, however switching over to sfPDOSessionStorage is very easy and quick.

With Facebook’s move to deprecate FBML for tabs the documentation around how to make a “please Like! before…” has become much more choppy and inconsistent. Anyway, I recently found myself in a position where I needed to make this happen so here goes.

With in-line FBML deprecated, the only way to accomplish this without using a third party branded solution is to create a Facebook iframe app. Here are the steps you need to take to get something up using PHP and the Facebook PHP SDK.

1. Create a new Facebook Application at https://developers.facebook.com/apps

2. Configure your new Facebook App the enable “Website” and “Page Tab”. You’ll need to enter a valid URL for the following fields:

Site URL
Page Tab URL
Secure Page Tab URL

You’ll also want to use a HTTPs URL since Facebook sessions default to HTTPs by default and your iframe will be marked insecure if its over vanilla HTTP. For this walk through, lets assume were using https://www.setfive.com/fb/index.php? as the URL.

3. Now, you’ll want to add your new App to a Facebook Page. The easiest way to do this is to use this URL https://www.facebook.com/dialog/pagetab?app_id=YOUR_APP_ID&next=YOUR_URL replacing YOUR_APP_ID and YOUR_URL with your App ID and then a URL that is derived from your endpoint (or even just your endpoint). When you load that URL, you’ll be prompted to add your app to a page – select the page you want and submit the form.

4. The final piece is throwing together the actual PHP script. You’ll need the Facebook PHP SDK available on GitHub – https://github.com/facebook/php-sdk. Clone that and then this is the PHP script you’ll need:

And thats it! Now you’ll be able to gate content from non-fans while growing the fanbase of your Facebook Page.

Drop any questions in the comments.

Recently, we inherited a Drupal 6 site via a client of ours and ran into a pretty irritating bug with the Location module.

The site had been configured to allow users to create profiles using Node Profile along with the Location to allow users to input their street addresses.

Anyway, the issue was that when we created a View that included Location fields the fields were always rendering as blank even when we confirmed there was data in the database. A bit of poking around lead to this issue.

It turns out that due to an optimization in CCK or Views that the tables that have the data for the location fields are not getting JOIN’ed in when the view is executed. Unfortunately, the patch provided on the issue doesn’t work on the latest 3.x release of the Location module.

The fix that worked for us is #14 (copied below)

/**
* Preprocess hook for location().
*/
function yourtheme_preprocess_location(&$variables) {
  if (!isset($variables['location']['name']) && isset($variables['location']['lid'])) {
    $variables['location'] = array_merge($variables['location'], location_load_location($variables['location']['lid']));
    template_preprocess_location($variables);
  }
}

Basically, you’ll need to add the above snippet to a template.php file in your theme and change the name to reflect the theme you’re using. What this function does is basically pre-process the location fields to pull in the data so that the View will work properly.

Anyway, enough blogging it’s football time.

I recently took the Symfony2 plunge and started working on a little fun side project (more on that later).

Anyway, this particular project involves sending out daily text messages using the rather awesome Twilio API so I decided to use a Symfony2 task for this. The documentation on how to actually add your own task is a bit sparse so I figured I’d share.

The process is actually pretty straight forward:

In your bundle create a directory named “Command” (without the quotes).
Create a file that extends ContainerAwareCommand
Create a protected function configure – “protected function configure()” to allow you to configure the name of your task and add any options or arguments you might need.
Create a protected function execute – “protected function execute(InputInterface $input, OutputInterface $output)” to actually do whatever needs to be done.
Thats it! Now you can run app/console and you’ll see your task.

Here is the code for mine:

Category: PHP

Symfony2 – Getting All Errors From a Form in a Controller

AJAX Request Slow With PHP? Here’s Why

Facebook: How-to force users to LIKE page

Fixing blank CCK Location fields in Views

Adding a task/command in Symfony2