Tips n' Tricks Archives - Page 5 of 10 - {5} Setfive

Thought I’d share a trick that I learned from Metal Toad while working on a Drupal 7 development project. This trick may make you very popular with your clients if they hate the being forced to dig through the content table in the standard admin overlay until they find the specific piece of content in a view they want to edit. Instead, using this method will create a gear button when you hover over the content on the front end, with a link that says “Edit” when you click on it.

I should note that if you style each row in the view using ‘Content’ under the Format > Show menu then views will add the link for you automatically. If you have a very simple view and this is all you need, no need to read further.

Unfortunately for me, many of the views I tend to create are formatted using ‘Fields’ because it provides me more flexibility to customize the output. The drawback is that it doesn’t automatically add these useful contextual edit links for content. But don’t worry, a pretty simple solutions follows..

1.) Open up your view and navigate to the ‘Fields’ section. Click ‘Add’ and search for ‘Content: Edit link’, check the box next to it and apply it to the display.

2.) Navigate back to the ‘Add’ button next to ‘Fields’ section of your view and click on the small arrow to right of of it. Next select ‘Rearrange’ and move your ‘Content: Edit Link’ field to the top of the Fields list. Apply the change.

3.) Now go back and click on the ‘Content: Edit Link’ to bring up the field configuration screen. Expand the ‘Style Settings’ section and make the following changes. Be sure to change the HTML element to DIV and spell the class names exactly as below.

4.) Scroll down further in the same screen until you see the ‘Rewrite Results’ section and expand it. Check the “Rewrite the output of this field” box and put the following HTML into the text box:

<ul><li>[edit_node]</li></ul>

5. ) Scroll up to the ‘No Results Behavior’ section and make sure that “Hide if empty” and “Hide rewriting if empty” check boxes are checked. Apply your changes.

6.) Lastly, you need to add some styling to the edit links wrapper. For my example I used the following which put the edit links in the top left of the content box. If you want it to appear at the top right just leave out the ‘top:0px’ line.

.views-field-edit-node .contextual-links-wrapper {

height: 50px;

width: 50px;

top: 0px;

left: 0px;

}

If you want the wheel to be a different color than standard grey, you can use image editing software to alter the color of the image of the wheel at the following location: “[your projects base url]/modules/contextual/images/gear-select.png “.

Hope this trick helps you as much as it has helped me! Feel free to reach out with any questions.

Earlier this week, one of our adtech clients reached out asking if we could setup IP based geocoding for one of their applications. At a high level, what the application basically does is serve as a backend for an advertising pixel which is embedded on the sites of various publishers. When users are visiting a publisher’s site, the JS pixel makes a HTTP request to our backend from the client’s browser, receives a data payload from the backend, and then does various computations on the frontend.

What our client was looking to do was add the geocoding data into the payload that is returned by the backend. We’ve had some success with the MaxMind database in the past so we decided to investigate using that solution here as well. Initially, we implemented the geocoding using the static MaxMind database along with PHP and memcached to cache the “warmed” MaxMind PHP object. Unfortunately, using PHP presented significant performance issues at the scale we were serving requests. At an average of 20,000 requests/minute, the additional load introduced by the PHP processes serializing and deserializing the MaxMind objects would have ultimately been prohibitively expensive, even across 3 frontends.

So what’s the alternative? Turns out, there’s actually an nginx module that leverages the MaxMind database to make the geocoding data available as CGI parameters. Effectively, this lets you access the geocoding variables for the client’s IP address directly from the $_SERVER variable in PHP. Here’s how you set it up:

Depending on what your setup is, you’ll just need to enable the geoip module in ngnix by following the directions here. Once you have ngnix recompiled with the module on, you’ll need to add the configuration parameters specified into your “server” block. The final configuration step is to add the variables that you want exposed as CGI parameters. All together, you’ll need to end up making these modifications to your config files:

Reload or restart ngnix. Then, to access the variables in PHP you can just grab them out of the $_SERVER variable like:

That’s about it. From our tests, adding the geo module has a negligible effect on performance which is awesome. Of course, your mileage may vary but it’ll certainly be faster than using PHP directly.

I came across an article on phpro.org about the difference between isset, empty and isnull methods that I found it informative so I’m going to summarize and re-post it here.

There are often times where you need to check for empty or null values or if a variable is set. It’s pointed out that in many circumstances the wrong function is used to make these assertions. The code may end up working; however, in some cases using the wrong function returns a value that programmer didn’t expect and leads to errors.

Actions speak much louder than words so I’ll cut to the example. The example script tests the following functions and operators:

isset()
empty()
is_null()
==
===

against the following values:

no value set
null
zero
false
numeric value
empty string

and builds out a comparison table (see below) of the results. The notice above the table is because the isset() function is trying to check a variable that has not been initialized(Not Set).

I’ll be honest, I never knew passing a zero into the empty() function returns a true!

Anyways, the chart below ends up becoming a useful reference guide as well. The code used to produce the table is at the bottom of this post.

The Code

Published in 2011, Eric Reis’s book The Lean Startup became the blueprint that dozens of “web 2.0” companies were built against. At a high level, the book promotes an “agile” like approach to developing a new company. Loosely speaking, the “happy path” to building a new startup would involve synthesizing ideas into a minimal viable product (MVP), receiving feedback, rapidly iterating, and finally reaching product market fit. Due to its simplicity and wide applicability, the “lean startup methodology” has become wildly popular especially among first time entrepreneurs. With this popularity, the concept of a “MVP” has basically become a buzzword rallying cry to justify what people are building.

Unfortunately, a common problem we’ve noticed is that people focus solely on the MVP and end up neglecting the other parts of the business, notably sales and marketing. To combat this, you should really be thinking of building a minimal viable business instead of specifically an MVP. Ok great, so what are the components of an MVB?

Product (MVP)

The product that you’re actually building is ultimately going to be one of the most important parts of your new business. Surprisingly, I’d argue that the exact features that make it into the MVP aren’t terribly important. What is key, is that your users experience an “aha!” moment while using the product which will help you convey the value. Another key takeaway is less is more. Start small and grow the product to avoid leaving users overwhelmed, confused, and discouraged.

User Acquisition

Awesome. So you’ve built a fantastic product, now how are you going to get in front of people? First time tech founders often overlook an effective user acquisition strategy and it ends up being a major risk factor for them. Hallmarks of an effective strategy are that it needs to be replicable, measurable, and generally affordable. Because of this, “getting great PR”, “going viral” or “buying a super bowl commercial” generally don’t qualify as tractable strategies. Instead, things like paid search, affiliate marketing, and native content ads would be more reasonable strategies to consider.

Community

Community is another area that is often overlooked. Even though it’s usually associated with B2C companies, it’s still important for B2B companies. On the B2C side, the majority of users are less likely to engage with “empty” social sites since no one wants to be the only person at the party. You’ll need a strategy to seed any social features your site has and also keep the heartbeat there once you launch. From a B2B perspective, you’ll still need to think about things like answering support issues, writing newsletters, and generating blog content. Although they seem trivial, having an actionable plan for these “community” issues helps establish user trust and win brand champions.

Metrics

The last piece of the “minimum viable business” are the KPIs and metrics that you’re looking to track. Tracking key indicators is important because they provide a yardstick to let you know if you’re moving in the the right direction. A key point is to make sure you’re tracking useful numbers. Vanity metrics like “# of followers” or “page views” aren’t really going to help you determine the health of your business. You’ll need numbers like “customer acquisition cost” or “lifetime value” which help you distill how your company is doing.

That’s a wrap

Wrapping up, building an MVP is just one of the components of building a successful startup. You’ll need to consider several other important aspects which will help you build, measure, and iterate along your path to building a successful company.

As with all advice, just remember that 90% of all advice is bullshit.

We recently just finished hiring another engineer for our team (welcome Jared!), during which we’ve seen quite a few different applications and it also led to my previous post about what we’d like to see recruiters do before contacting us.

While I am certainly no hiring expert, I think some of the following points may help people applying for a job out.

Read the Full Posting

Many job postings, including ours, will include details about what they want to see from any potential candidate. I’ve seen everything from a simple put in the subject “XYZ” to answer the following programming questions. On some of our job postings we include something like include your favorite beer, the best place you’ve vacationed, etc.. These questions aren’t only used to weed out spam, but we like to see what people come up with and to see if they are a good fit. Regardless of what the posting request is, it’s important to fully read it and apply properly. Several potential candidates didn’t read ours in full and didn’t follow the simple application instructions. If you don’t follow the instructions it can reflect poorly as it may indicate you aren’t able to pay attention to details.

Shorter Can Be Better

I remember back in college when working on resumes many advocated “keep it to a single page”; I can’t agree more now. I’ve received some resumes that are over 6 pages long. A resume, in my point of view, should be something that bullet points your skills, experience, and education. Most of the time, you can fit all this information on to a single page. Being clear and concise pays its dividends. I’m much more interested in the resumes that I could briefly look at and get a good feeling about the candidate. The long resumes often spent a half page to page summarizing some activity at a previous job; it’s much easier to inquire about a specific experience you have if I don’t understand it.

Keep Programming Languages Short

One thing I saw on an alarming number of resumes was that someone would list 10+ programming languages as their core languages. I’m all for having basic knowledge in multiple languages, but I wouldn’t list all the languages I’ve ever worked on as my core language.

The long lists (java,python,php,ruby, perl, c++, c# and scala), more often on recent graduates, seemed more like a list of languages the candidate knew existed. Understandably, right out school you may not have a specific language that you have an in-depth knowledge of. In this case, I recommend looking up what language the job position that you are applying for is, and list that and one or two others that compliment it (such as PHP, Javascript, SQL) rather than listing everything you’ve ever worked in. I gave much more attention to candidates who applied with fewer languages and then listed a few projects/concepts they did within each language.

Past Projects, Not Classwork

One of the last points I want to touch on is when people want to know past projects you’ve worked on. What I’m looking for is something to just show that you can put all the programming concepts you’ve learned together to form some sort of project. Whether this is a simple side project you had or something you worked on at your last job, it shows you are able to take some theory and apply it to realistic applications. Often at career fairs I’d get 30 resumes all which list the exact same project, which was an assignment from class. While coming straight from college you may not have many side projects, have at least one (or make one), and list it first. By having at least one side project that you’ve built (or been a major part of), it shows that you’re able to take what you’ve learned in theory and apply it. Classroom assignments are often “fill in the blank” or too rigid, follow these exact instructions, to demonstrate your full capabilities.

While these are only some of the points I look for on incoming applicants, they are extremely important. Let me now if you think I’ve missed a few!

Good luck on applying to your next job!

Category: Tips n’ Tricks

Drupal 7 Views: Directly Edit Content Rendered In Views

PHP: Geocoding with MaxMind and nginx

isset(), empty(), is_null() – What’s the difference?