Develop a full application using CakePHP

James Fairhurst has come up with an excellent series of postings on how to build a full application using CakePHP. It is a wonderful tutorial for newbies who are starting on CakePHP. Thanks James!

Follow the whole series here: http://www.jamesfairhurst.co.uk/tags/view/cakephp/

Inserting Unicode into MySQL

If Unicodes end up as funny characters after inserting into MySQL, then try executing SET NAMES ‘utf8′ immediately after obtaining a DB connection. For example:

$link = mysql_connect(‘localhost’,'myuser’,'mypassword’);
mysql_query(“SET NAMES ‘utf8′”);
mysql_select_db(‘mydb’);

References: http://www.adviesenzo.nl/examples/php_mysql_charset_fix/

Failed image upload in Joomla 1.5

If we encounter error 403 while uploading images in Joomla 1.5, try adding these 2 lines in .htaccess:

SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off

The fix works for me.

References: http://www.dart-creations.com/the-joomla-blog/blog/media-manager-upload-failed-403-error.html

How to display PHP compilation errors

It’s frustrating when PHP compilation errors are not shown during development. To make such compilation errors visible on the web pages, add this line in .htaccess:

php_value display_errors 1

Alternatively, if access to .htaccess is not allowed, this PHP code achieves the same result too:

ini_set(‘display_errors’,1);

LAMP Virtual Appliance

This is a LAMP VM that’s certified by VMWare: http://www.virtualappliances.net/products/lamp.php

Default username/password is root/root.

WURFL

The WURFL is an XML configuration file which contains information about capabilities and features of many mobile devices: http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/index.php

PEAR: No handlers error

When running PEAR manager to install a package (eg, ./pear install Log), if you encounter this error “No handlers for package.xml version 2.0″, it means your PEAR needs upgrading.

The command to upgrade PEAR:

./pear upgrade PEAR

When upgrading PEAR, you might be prompted to upgrade some other dependencies (such as Archive_Tar):

./pear upgrade Archive_Tar

Template for PHP MySQL queries

<?
$link = mysql_connect(‘localhost’, ‘root’, ‘password’);
if (!$link) {
die(‘Could not connect: ‘ . mysql_error());
}

$db_selected = mysql_select_db(‘jsfbasic’, $link);

$result = mysql_query(‘SELECT * FROM recipe’, $link);

if (!$result) {
die(‘Invalid query: ‘ . mysql_error());
}

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
echo $row[0] . ‘<br />’;
}

mysql_close($link);
?>

Last inserted ID in MySQL

To retrieve the last inserted ID of the auto_increment column:

mysql> select last_insert_id();

The PHP equivalent is:

mysql_insert_id

The above must be invoked from the same thread that performed the insertion.

Predefined variables in PHP

A list of predefined variables in PHP:

• $GLOBALS
• $_SERVER
• $_GET
• $_POST
• $_COOKIE
• $_FILES
• $_ENV
• $_REQUEST
• $_SESSION

Source of info: http://sg.php.net/en/language.variables.predefined