Updated Zend SubForm usage
Using Zend Framework v 1.12, we can validate an array of data using a subForm.
In this example, we want to validate up to 10 transaction_ids passed in an array.
The validation for each will used Zend_Validate_Db_RecordExists to make sure the transaction_id exists in the database and is for the currently logged in seller_id.
Using Zend Framework v 1.12, we can validate an array of data using a subForm.
In this example, we want to validate up to 10 transaction_ids passed in an array.
The validation for each will used Zend_Validate_Db_RecordExists to make sure the transaction_id exists in the database and is for the currently logged in seller_id.
$form = new Zend_Form();
// add validations for the 'simple', non Array elements
$form->addElement( ................. );
$form->addElement( ................. );
$form->addElement( ................. );
// add validations for the 'transaction_id' input field
// Input: transaction_id[0] = 'value'
// transaction_id[1] = 'value'
// ...
// transaction_id[9] = 'value'
$this->createTransactionIdSubForm($form, 10);
/**
* createTransactionIdSubForm creates a form element that handles an array of
* transaction_ids. Each will be validated to exist in the database and be
* valid for our current seller_id.
*
* @param Zend_Form $form
* @param integer $nbr_of_ids defines the number of subForm element to build
*/
public function createTransactionIdSubForm($form, $nbr_of_ids)
{
$subForm = new Zend_Form_SubForm();
// Create a validator for each array element of the transaction_id array
for($i=0; $i < $nbr_of_ids; $i++) {
$subForm->addElement('text', (string) $i, array(
'required' => false,
'filters' => array('Digits'),
'validators' => array(
array('Db_RecordExists', true, array(
'transaction',
'transaction_id',
'(select seller_id
from activity
where activity_id = transaction.activity_id
) = '.$this->getSellerId()
))
)));
}
$form->addSubForm($subForm, 'transaction_id');
}
NOTE: This solution only works on a Mac! It requires AppleScript and the Terminal application.
I am constantly ssh’ing into different machines and then forgetting which window is which machine.
My solution is to use different color settings for different environments. For example, when I ssh into a production machine I want the Mac Terminal Profile to change to “Red Sands”. And, when I close ssh I want it to revert back to the Profile that was in use originally. This is not a new problem and there are 100’s of similar looking solutions out there. However all the solutions I could find suffer from the same flaw — when a ssh session running in a background Window+Tab times out or gets disconnected, that window is not ‘reset’. In most cases the currently active window is reset, which is not at all what we want.
There are 2 files. Put both in /usr/local/bin and do ‘chmod +x’ on them. The code assumes that your current ssh program is in /usr/bin/ssh. If it’s somewhere else, change the 2nd to last line in the ssh file.
In the following file, modify the case statement to include any servers you have. For each server provide a Terminal Profile Name to use.
File: /usr/local/bin/ssh
#!/bin/sh
##
## Author: Darrin Skinner -- skinner@skinner.com
##
## This changes the terminal color depending on the ssh target environment
## and it changes it back to the original color when ssh exits
##
## In the case statement below, provide a search pattern
## and a Terminal Profile Name to use for each server.
##
HOSTNAME=$@
case $HOSTNAME in
dev.*) COLOR="Homebrew" ;; ## All development servers
qa.*) COLOR="Man Page" ;; ## All QA servers
train*) COLOR="Novel" ;; ## Training server
prod.*) COLOR="Red Sands";; ## All Production servers
*) COLOR="Pro" ;; ## Everything else
esac
ORIG_COLOR=`set_term_color "$COLOR"`
/usr/bin/ssh $@
ORIG_COLOR=`set_term_color "$ORIG_COLOR"`
File: /usr/local/bin/set_term_color
#!/bin/bash
##
## Author: Darrin Skinner -- skinner@skinner.com
##
## This script will change the Mac Terminal setting (i.e. the
## Terminal colors) to the requisted Profile.
## The old/original Profile name is returned.
##
## It will search through all the Terminal windows+tabs until it
## finds the one the script is running from and execute the
## new settings in that window+tab.
##
## Usage:
## set_term_color Novel
## set_term_color "Red Sands"
##
## The argument to pass is:
## The Terminal "color theme" Profile desired
## -> Ocean, Novel, Homebrew, etc
##
mySettingName=$1
myTTY=`tty`
osascript <<EOD
set mySettingName to "$mySettingName"
set myTTY to "$myTTY"
tell application "Terminal"
set allWindows to number of windows
repeat with thisWindow from 1 to allWindows
set allTabs to number of tabs of window thisWindow
repeat with thisTab from 1 to allTabs
if tty of tab thisTab of window thisWindow is myTTY then
set thisSettings to name of current settings of tab thisTab of window thisWindow
set current settings of tab thisTab of window thisWindow to settings set mySettingName
return thisSettings
end if
end repeat
end repeat
end tell
EOD
The Zend_Cache is a great way to save (i.e. cache) the results of a function. Using ->call() it will automatically handle building a unique key for each cache based on the arguments passed to the function. So, all you have to do is ->call() the function and use the results as you normally would.
The following example caches the results of calling the getData function in the CustomStats class. The cache automatically expires after 120 seconds which results in the getData function being run only once every other minute.
$class_name = 'CustomStats';
$function_name = 'getData';
try {
$cache = Zend_Cache::factory('Function', 'File', array(
'caching' => true,
'lifetime' => 120, // 120 seconds
'cache_id_prefix' => $function_name,
'automatic_serialization' => true
), array(
'cache_dir' => APPLICATION_PATH."/cache/",
'hashed_directory_level' => 2,
'hashed_directory_perm' => '0755',
'cache_file_perm' => '0644'
));
if ($class_name) {
$results = $cache->call(array($class_name,$function_name),
array($param1,$param2,$etc));
} else {
$results = $cache->call($function_name,
array($param1,$param2,$etc));
}
} catch(Zend_Cache_Exception $e) {
// Don't blowup if Zend_Cache fails ...
// ... just put a message in the log and continue.
trigger_error($e->getMessage(), E_USER_NOTICE);
$results = false;
}
print $results;
I’ve been working with Amazon’s AWS CloudSearch product for about a year now and it continues to be a challenge in minimalism. The product seemingly only has a few features. The trick is to figure out how to do more than just few things with it….
This article is a quick introduction to CloudSearch including some of the limitations and workarounds possible. My background is very Relational Database heavy which actually made it harder for me to grok CloudSearch. Hopefully, this article will help others get up to speed quickly.
I’ve been working with Amazon’s AWS CloudSearch product for about a year now and it continues to be a challenge in minimalism. The product seemingly only has a few features. The trick is to figure out how to do more than just few things with it….
We have a 3-tier hierarchy of Geography data for each Activity stored in the search domain. Unfortunately, there is no native support for anything like hierarchical data in AWS-CS. So, we need to create our own custom solution. There are two parts to the solution: (a) structuring the data in AWS and (b) post-processing the search results into a nested (hierarchical) array.
Given an Activity that takes place in 2 different Geo’s as follows:
Create 3 literal facet fields with the following content.NOTE: AWS uses |‘s as delimiters between faceted fields and we chose to use >‘s between hierarchy levels of the geographies.
In the search results from AWS, the above 3 facet fields will be represented as facet data “something like” this:
Since the level n data contains the level n-1 parent values in it, it’s a simple matter to convert this “in code” to a proper multi-dimensional array like this…
The above array makes presenting this information on a web page in a visually intuitive way super simple. Notice that we’ve change the ‘value’ field to match just the last node/level of the geo name since this is what want to display to the end users. And, we’ve introduced a new field called primary_key that can be used as an ‘exact match’ filter value for drilling to that specific geo.
When filtering on the geography, the calling program will pass the ‘primary_key’ to the search function. The search function looks at the number of >‘s and determines if the filter is for a geo_level_1, 2, or 3 field. It then constructs a match express like (and geo_level_3:’Phoenix>Mesa>Apache Wells’). Since the geo fields are defined as ‘literal’ we don’t need to worry about CloudSearch inadvertently doing any partial matching. We always pass a 100% exactly matching value for these fields.
This approach provides a complete, end-to-end solution for dealing with displaying and filtering hierarchical data in AWS CloudSearch.
In the above scenario, we created a way to handle displaying and filtering hierarchical facet data. But what if we want to search that data too? The are two blockers to that idea (1) facet fields can not ‘also’ be searchable and (2) literal fields require exact matching to be returned. The solution is to create another field that is (a) searchable and (b) defined as text (assuming you want partial matching to return results!). The other “trick” is to define the new field to use the existing field as it’s source. In this way, no additional work is required to maintain the new fields’ data. If you know that all your geo’s are 3 levels deep, then you can just use geo_level_3 as a source since it has the super set of names in it already. Otherwise, fields for additional levels will also need to be created. Alternatively, you can specify all 3 fields (geo_level_1, geo_level_2, and geo_level_3) as source fields for the new searchable field. The values for each of the source fields will be concatenated into the target field.
If you do need to include multiple geo level fields into your search field, be aware that this will cause values like ‘Phoenix’ to appear more than once in the data. As a result when someone searches for “gondola rides in Phoenix”, the text_relevance score will be more weighted toward the geo_search field than other fields (i.e. wherever ‘gondola’ and ‘rides’ was found). This can be handled using relative field weighting in you rank expression… but that’s a topic for another day 🙂 If you can’t wait, here’s Amazon’s documentation about that
… http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch/latest/developerguide/fwranking.html
Zend Forms … what can you do with it?
The general structure of a Zend_Form class is :
class my_form extends Zend_Form
{
protected $_originalData; //holds the data used to populate the form.
/**
* setOriginalData is automatically used by the
* constructor when invoked with the argument...
* (array('originalData' => $array_of_data));
*/
public function setOriginalData(array $original_data)
{
$this->_originalData = $original_data;
return $this;
}
public function init()
{
if (empty($this->_originalData)) {
throw new Zend_Form_Exception("originalData must be set during construction.");
}
$this->setName('MapLocationForm')
->setAttrib('enctype', 'multipart/form-data');
// initialize form
$this->setMethod('post');
// --------------- csrf handling --------------------------
$this->addElement(new Zend_Form_Element_Hash('csrf',
array('salt' => $this->getName(),
'timeout' => 1800)));
$this->getElement('csrf')
->getValidator('Identical')
->setMessage('There was a problem with your form submission, please try again.');
// ---------------------------------------------------------
$street = new Zend_Form_Element_Text('map_street');
$street ->setOptions(array('size' => '40', 'maxlength' => '60'))
->setRequired(false)
->addFilter('StringTrim')
->setLabel("Street address");
$city = new Zend_Form_Element_Text('map_city');
$city ->setOptions(array('size' => '40', 'maxlength' => '40'))
->setRequired(false)
->addFilter('StringTrim')
->setLabel("City");
$submit = new Zend_Form_Element_Submit('submit');
$submit ->setOptions(array('ignore' => true))
->setAttrib('class','bp') // add a class of 'bp' to the input element
->setLabel('Save');
$cancel = new Zend_Form_Element_Button('cancel');
$cancel ->setOptions(array('ignore' => true))
// add a class of 'bs' to the button element
->setAttrib('class','bs')
// suppress the ability to 'tab' to the cancel button
->setAttrib('tabindex','-1')
->setLabel('Cancel and exit to other.php')
->setAttrib('onclick', "window.location.href='/other.php';return false");
// setup the form elements
$this->addElement($street)
->addElement($city)
->addElement($submit)
->addElement($cancel);
// add data to the form...
$this->populate($this->_originalData);
}
}
The point of this blog is to highlight the things you can do with a form element all in one place (i.e. here).
->setLabel("Element Label")
->setRequired(true|false)
->setAtrtrib('class','<class_name>') // associate a class name with the element
->setAttrib('tabindex','-1') // suppress tabbing to this element
->setOptions(array('size' => '20,'
'maxlength' => '40') // for text elements
->setOptions(array('rows' => '2',
'cols' => '30',
'maxlength' => 200,
'style' => 'width:100%')) // for textarea elements
->addDecorator('HtmlTag', array('tag'=>'div',
'class'=>'input-wrapper'))
->addValidator('NotEmpty',
true,
array('messages'=> "Please enter a value, it's reqired."))
->addValidator('regex',
true,
array(NUMBER_6DECIMAL,
'messages'=> "Please enter a number with up to 6 decimals."))
->addValidator('between',
true,
array('min' => -90,
'max' => 90,
'messages'=> Please enter a Latitude between -90 and 90."));
->addValidator('Int',
true,
array('messages' => "zip code must be all numeric."))
->addValidator('StringLength',
true,
array(3, 5, 'messages'=>"value must be 3 to 5 characters long."));
->addValidator('StringLength',
true,
array(5, 5, 'messages'=>"zip code must be 5 digits."));
NOTE: NUMBER_6DECIMAL = /^-?[0-9]*(\.[0-9]{1,6})?$/
 | kitepwr on Zend Form — validate an… |
