After some trial and error I discovered a way to properly change the encoding before saving it in the DB.

A simplified version of what I did:

 $url = 'http://www.smooka.com/blog/';
 $html = file_get_contents($url);

 //Change encoding to UTF-8 from ISO-8859-1
 $html = iconv('UTF-8', 'ISO-8859-1//TRANSLIT', $html);

This partially solved my problem. But for some reason single quotes where displayed with a question mark symbol. After reading documentation, forums, etc.. I discovered that I needed to translate ASCII characters.

 $dom = new Zend_Dom_Query($html);
 $results = $dom->query('div p');

 foreach ($results as $result)
 {
    $line = $result->nodeValue;
    $line = iconv('UTF-8', 'ASCII//TRANSLIT', $line);
 }

Hope this saves you some time, as I was not able to find a complete solution on the web so I had to piece everything together.

//make sure your time is set
date_default_timezone_set('America/New_York');

$datetime = '2004-02-12T15:19:21+00:00';

//convert the given datetime string to time
$newDatetime = strtotime($datetime);

//re-contruct to format
$newDatetime = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', newDatetime);

It’s so obvious, but I only wished, I knew this before trying all sort of crazy stuff.

If you want to unit test an action in a controller that checks the request to see if is an XML HTTP Request using the isXmlHttpRequest() method provided by the Zend Framework, then you will definitely run into a problem.

isXmlHttpRequest() pretty much checks to see if the $_SERVER['HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH'] is set with ‘XMLHttpRequest’, if not, then returns FALSE. I thought that by setting the server variable with XMLHttpRequest directly will allow me to bypass the check.

function myAjaxTestAction()
{
      $_SERVER['HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH'] = 'XMLHttpRequest';

      //then do your ajax tests here
}

This solution seemed like it was going to work, but it turns out that isXmlHttpRequest() makes a call to getHeader() like this:

public function isXmlHttpRequest()
{
        return ($this->getHeader('X_REQUESTED_WITH') == 'XMLHttpRequest');
}

What I didn’t know is that when you are doing unit tests the framework extends the HTTP class and changes the getHeader() to only use headers set using the setHeader or setHeaders methods.
After a couple of minutes tracing over the calls being made. I discovered that the fix was pretty simple, set our headers doing the following in your test case:

function myAjaxTestAction()
{
      $this->request->setHeader('X_REQUESTED_WITH');

      //then do your ajax tests here
}

This will fake an AJAX request and return the expected result.

I hope this article helps many of you since I spent many hours trying to decipher why setting ‘XMLHttpRequest’ to the $_SERVER did not work as I expected.

If no other git process is currently running, this probably means a
git process crashed in this repository earlier. Make sure no other git
process is running and remove the file manually to continue.

The solution is very easy, just delete the .git/index.lock file
~ rm /yourhomedir/.git/index.lock

Then you need to do a git reset
~ git reset

That should do the trick. Let me know if this worked for you.

After reading the reference guide on Zend_Translate I decided that we were going to use “gettext” as our translation adapter. PHP has support for gettext right our of the box, and with the Zend_Translate it’s easy to change adapters, if you decide that you want to use a different adapter.

Assuming that you already have the latest version of Zend Framework (1.10.*) installed in your server, I’m going to explain and guide you guys on how I got it all working.

First you need to get a tool that we will use to parse your project files to create the translation dictionaries. I’m using PoEdit which is free and supports multiple platforms.

Now let’s put some code down in your index.phtml file of you application. This one should be located in /yourapp/application/views/scripts/index/
If it’s not there, then just create one, but make sure you have to corresponding controller and action.
Inside of this file we are going to put the following:

<?php
$t = new Zend_Translate(
	'gettext',  //the adapter
	APPLICATION_PATH.'/translation', //where the lang files will be stored
	'auto',  //set to auto include .mo files
	array('scan' => Zend_Translate::LOCALE_FILENAME) //set to scan lang files
);

echo $t->_("This is my first translation")."<br/>";
?>

Before this piece of code works, we need to generate our translation files, else it will throw an error stating that the application can’t find the corresponding language files.

We need to create a new folder in your application folder. I’m calling it lang, but you can call it anything you want. This folder will be used to store your language files. So you should have something like “/yourapp/application/lang”.

After this, you need to open up PoEdit:

1. Go to File->Catalog Manager

2. Click on the “Create new translations project” icon

3. Give your project a name

4. Select the directory to store your translation files (“/yourapp/application/lang”) and hit OK

With a newly crated project, we can now generate our language file.
To do this,  close the Catalog Manager window

1. Go to File->New Catalog

2. Give it a project Name and/or version and be sure to feel in the appropriate information. Be sure to select Charset  ”utf-8″

3. Now, click on the paths tab. Here you will have to add all the dir paths that point to the files that you want to parse for translation. (/yourapp/application/views/scripts/index/index.phtml)

4. Finally, click on the Keywords tab, and make sure you include the keyword the parser will use to identify the text that needs translation. In our example we will put an underscore “_”  since in our code we have echo $t->_(“This is my first translation”);

5. Hit OK and make sure that you save the file with a name such as mylang_en.po. The _en is crucial, since Zend_Translate will scan the appropriate language file and use this naming convention to load the appropriate file

Since by default the PoEdit PHP parser handles files with .php extension. We need to modify the preferences so that it allows other types, such as .phtml files.
To do this, go to Edit->Preferences->Parsers  When you get to parsers select PHP and then click on the EDIT button. In the parser setup window we need to add *.phtml extension to the “List of extensions” field in the Language section, separated by semicolons. The field should be something like this: *.php;*.phtml
Then, in the Invocation section, you need to add  -L php to the parser command. This should look like this  xgettext --force-po -o %o %C %K %F -L php

Once you have completed this, a pop up screen will show the progress of the catalog update and then list you all the parsed strings. Hit OK and then you will be in the translation view. Just select the string you would like to translate save and you are good to go.

Once you’ve completed the following steps just copy the .po file and create additional one’s for the languages you want to do translation. Remember the naming convention discussed on the steps above.

In your code to switch languages, you need to put the following line $t->setLocale('es'); This for example will switch the locale to Spanish and will try to load a file with “_es”

<?php
$t = new Zend_Translate('gettext', APPLICATION_PATH.'/translation', 'auto', array('scan' => Zend_Translate::LOCALE_FILENAME));

echo $t->_("This is my first translation")."<br/>";

//change locale to spanish
$t->setLocale('es');

echo $t->_("This is my Second translation")."<br/>";
?>

New Major Features:

• Create multiple galleries
• Ability to put a caption to each image
• Added Multi-Language support

Also you will find this version to be better integrated into GetSimple, by using another plugin I created called “Admin Tab Loader” that is really more intended for GetSimple Plugin developers.

If you want to see what a image gallery created with the plugin click to view the demo.

CSS border radius generator for lazy people

This simple site gives you a quick an easy way to generate the CSS code for the awesome border-radius property.

CSS3 Sandbox

Here you would find a bunch of cool tools to try out. They have XRAY and MRI that are aimed more to the developer that wants to debug and  get quick information related to the page elements. But, If what you are looking is for CSS3 code generators, then explore the CSS3 Sandbox. It features code generators for Gradients, Shadows, CSS transform, CSS text stroke.

Last but not least, you should check out CSS3.Info. They have a lot of good resources and information on everything related to CSS3.

Enough rambling!

Simple Image Gallery, is a new plug-in created to include a much needed functionality to Get Simple CMS. It uses the build in file manager to manipulate and upload new images to the server, then, just go to the plugins tab and click on the Simple Image Gallery link. The only thing you need to do here, is select the images you want to display in your image gallery. Once you have selected all the images you want to display in your page. Go to the pages manager and select the page you want to include the gallery. Once in the page editor, open the page options and select “Enable Image Gallery” and save the page and you are done!

Installation is pretty simple. Just download the plugin, unzip it, upload the unzipped content to the plugins directory.

Download: Simple Image Gallery Plugin - v1.1.0

As always, if you have suggestions, concerns, you find bugs or just want to comment on how great the plugin is. Feel free to do so.

This is my first attempt at creating plugins for Get Simple CMS, an awesome CMS system I’ve been playing around lately. So, I recommend you guys check it out, if you are looking for a “Simple” content management system for your next project.

This plugin allows you to easily add TweetMeme’s reTweet Button to the content pages in GetSimple. It also includes a settings panel in the settings section of the administration area when you can customize the plugin.

Some of the available settings are:

• Change the URL shortener
• Change the size of the button (compact/expanded)
• Change the @username who will be reTweeting the post
• Disable the button for specific pages

Download: TweetMeme reTweet GetSimple Plugin - v1.0

Feel free to give feedback and let me know if you encounter any problems.

This week I had the chance to play around with Google’s charts API, and let me tell you that I’m loving it. In the past couple of years I’ve had to integrate charts into the different projects. I have used everything from Fusion Charts, to PHP/SWF Charts, and DOJO’s charting engine. But, since I learned that Google provided developers with an API to create charts on the fly, I wanted to give it a try.

To create static bart chart is as simple as:

<img src="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?
cht=bvs
&chs=200x125
&chd=t:10,50,60,80,40|50,60,100,40,20
&chco=4d89f9,c6d9fd
&chbh=20&chds=0,160"/>

Let me break out the parameters for you into:
// this is the chart type
cht=bvs
//this is the bar colors
chco=4D89F9,C6D9FD
//this is the chart values
chd=t:10,50,60,80,40|50,60,100,40,20
//chart dimensions
chds=0,160

In the Google Charts API website you can find more info regarding this simple but useful chart api. But, that’s not all. They also have the Google Visualization API where they actually give you more advanced and dynamic set of visualization tools. They pretty much opened their entire library of data visualization helpers to allow developers like yourself create user interfaces that contain elements that some of your users will be used to seeing, since graphs, charts and other elements you will find in this API is already being implemented in google products.

I encourage you to check both, the more simple and straight forward Charts API, or the more advanced and dynamic Visualtization API.

Feel free to let me and the readers know on the exiting ways you are utilizing those API’s