NeedForSpeed – Our First Facebook Application for Electronic Arts

I am a big fan of NeedForSpeed since version 2. You remember that? Those days were complete fun chasing with FZR2000 or McLaren F1. I specially liked to run on Hollywood track in NFS2SE.

Today, a new version of NFS (ProStreet) has been released. And we, a small developers team in Trippert Labs released the Facebook app named NeedForSpeed for this game . This is built using PHP and MySQL having MemCached as caching engine.

Lets have some Racing!

So 260K Users in 2 months is Not Huge, u bet?

We (Trippert Inc) are recently working on developing facebook applications, and as a part of this, we released Holiday Gifts two months ago. This nice app is built using PHP with MySQL in backend. And you know what do we get after these two months? a surprising amount of total users – almost 260K by today.

Thats a nice figure, what do you think?

List of RSS Feeds I read almost everyday

I am sharing a list of RSS feeds that I read almost everyday. And which one is my favorites RSS reader? Well, I use GoogleReader because of it’s excellent features like star and feed history. also I like it’s feed sharing feature.

1. Ajaxian : http://www.ajaxian.com/index.xml
2. Cow’s Blog : http://cow.neondragon.net/xml.php
3. IBM Developer Works (Web) : http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/views/web/rss/libraryview.jsp
4. IBM Developer Works (Open Source) : http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/views/opensource/rss/libraryview.jsp
5. Designer Folio : http://feeds.feedburner.com/dezinerfolio
6. Digg Technology : http://digg.com/rss/containertechnology.xml
7. DZone Latest Front Page Links : http://www.dzone.com/feed/frontpage/rss.xml
8. Freelance Switch : http://feeds.feedburner.com/FreelanceSwitch
9. HacksZine : http://hackszine.com/index.xml
10. International PHP Magazine News : http://www.php-mag.net/magphpde/psecom,id,26,noeid,26,.html
11. JSLabs High Performance Web Apps : http://feeds.feedburner.com/jaslabs
12. LifeHack : http://www.lifehack.org/feed/
13. Mashable : http://feeds.feedburner.com/Mashable
14. Maxdesign : http://www.maxdesign.com.au/feed/
15. Newsvine (PHP) : http://www.newsvine.com/_feeds/rss2/tag?id=php&d=v
16. PHP Freaks : http://www.phpfreaks.com/feeds/articles.xml
17. PHP Magazine : http://www.phpmagazine.net/syndicate.xml
18. PHP Coding Practise: http://php-coding-practices.com/feed/
19. PHP Developer : http://phpdeveloper.org/phpdev.rdf
20. PHP Geek : http://www.phpgeek.com/wordpress/feed
21. PHP Architct News : http://www.phparch.com/phpa.rss
22. Planet Ajaxian : http://planet.ajaxian.com/index.xml
23. Planet PHP : http://planet-php.org/rdf/
24. Programmable Web : http://feeds.feedburner.com/ProgrammableWeb
25. ROScripts : http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArticlesAndProgrammingTutorials
26. Sitepoint Blogs : http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/feed/
27. Sitepoint News : http://www.sitepoint.com/recent.rdf
28. Smashing Magazine : http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-rss.php
29. Jonathan Snooks Blog : http://snook.ca/jonathan/index.rdf
30. TechCrunch : http://feeds.feedburner.com/Techcrunch
31. Technorati Javascript Links : http://feeds.technorati.com/search/Javascript
32. Technorati PHP Links: http://feeds.technorati.com/search/PHP
33. Veerle’s Blog : http://feeds.feedburner.com/veerlesblog
34. Web2List : http://feeds.feedburner.com/Web2list
35. Zen Habits : http://feeds.feedburner.com/zenhabits
36. Del.icio.us PHP Tags : http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/php
37. PHPExperts Forum : http://rss.groups.yahoo.com/group/phpexperts/rss
38. 456 Berea Street : http://www.456bereastreet.com/feed.xml
39. Particle Tree : http://feeds.feedburner.com/particletree
40. Simple Bits : http://simplebits.com/xml/rss.xml

Using ActiveRecord Library Separately from CodeIgniter

CodeIgniters ActiveRecord library is a nice implementation (though modified) of ActiveRecord design pattern. It comes bundled with CodeIgniter. So if you want to use Just this library in your application individually instead of using full CodeIgniter framework, what to do?

Today I’ve spent some time and separate the ActiveRecord library from CodeIgniter. Now you can use it via a class named ActiveRecordFactory. Here’s how to do it (I separate only the MySQL driver) .

I separate the “database” folder under the “system” directory of CodeIgniter. Then I removed all folders in database/drivers except “mysql”. (I need only MySQL, )

I modified the class definition at database/drivers/mysql_driver.php
Previously It Was : class CI_DB_mysql_driver extends CI_DB {
Now : class CI_DB_mysql_driver {

I modified the class definition at database/DB_driver.php
Previously It Was : class CI_DB_driver {
Now : class CI_DB_driver extends CI_DB_mysql_driver {

And finally I create a ActiveRecord Factory to instantiate codeigniters Active Record Properly. Here is the code

File: database/ActiveRecordFactory.php


<?
/**
 * This is a Factory to create an instance of Code Igniters Active Record Class
 *
 * @author Hasin [http://hasin.wordpress.com]
 */

define(BASEPATH,"./");
include_once ("drivers/mysql/mysql_driver.php");
include_once ("DB_driver.php");
include_once ("DB_active_rec.php");
include_once ("DB_result.php");
include_once ("drivers/mysql/mysql_result.php");

function log_message(){/*just suppress logging*/}

Class ActiveRecordFactory {
    private static $dsn;
    private static $CIAR;
    public static function Factory($dsn=null)
    {
        if (!empty($dsn)) self::$dsn = $dsn;
        if (empty(self::$CIAR))
        {
            if (!empty(self::$dsn))
            self::$CIAR = new CI_DB_active_record($dsn) ;
            else 
            throw new Exception("Please give a DSN in this format 'driver://username:password@hostname/database'");
        }
        return self::$CIAR;
    }
}
?>



Now You can test The ActiveRecord library like this

<?
include(“database/ActiveRecordFactory.php”);
$activerecord = ActiveRecordFactory::Factory(“mysql://user:password@localhost/test”);
$activerecord = ActiveRecordFactory::Factory();

$activerecord->select(“name”);
$activerecord->where(“id=”,”10″);
$activerecord->orwhere(“id=”,”19″);
print_r($activerecord->get(“users”)->result_array());

$activerecord->select(“name”);
$activerecord->where(“id=”,”10″);
$activerecord->orwhere(“id=”,”19″);
echo $activerecord->get(“users”)->num_rows();

$activerecord->insert(“users”,array(“name”=>”CodeIgniter”,”pass”=>”CI Rocks”));
?>

You can download the complete example from here http://hasin.javapark.net/ActiveRecord.zip

Prelude to foundation: Its time to go for a better PHP Framework

I remember those old days when I had to write everything by myself. I wrote huge libraries to work with MySQL. Then I learned PostgreSQL and SQLite but didn’t rewrote my old library to work with those, I was running short of time. So I forsake the opportunity to write a db library which works with them. What I did was plain code relevant to database specific portions. Oh ya, that was a long time ago.

Soon after that I came to know adoDB which made my dream come true. I was so much happy getting my all db specific works done in a much more smarter way. I get rid of database portability issues. I was very happy that time.

I learned smarty soon after I realize that my codes are getting ugly with all the inline HTMLs and PHPs. Nothing could be smarter than separating the presentation logic from the business layer. I am a big smarty fan since that time. It saves my sleep for many nights.

But again I am recurrently suffering from maintainability issues. I was not surprised to find that my code is becoming huge unmanageable giant and it takes huge time for refactoring the application. I was very sad those days. Oh what a disaster that was.

When working with my team members located remote places, I fall into a deep shit. How can we manage and track the changes done by us? Even I was getting strange code in my routine which I bet was not written by me!! It was a terrific job

Vulnerable bug in CodeIgniter which took us hours to fix our corrupted database

We use codeigniter internally to develop our web solutions in somewhere in… net limited. Day before yesterday we suffered a terrible situation for an internal bug in code igniter which corrupted data inside some tables of our application database and then it tooks hours to find the origin of that bug, to fix it and to repair the corrupted data. Let me explain what happened.

Lets guess that we have one table named “users” with the following field

1. user_id
2. username
3. password
4. email

At some point, if you want to update the password field of this table, for a particular user, what will you write in your code?


$data = array("password"=>$new_password);
$this->db->where("user_id",$user_id);
$this->db->update("users", $data);

CodeIgniter’s ActiveRecord creates the query like the following

UPDATE users set password=’{$new_password}’ where user_id=’{$user_id}’;

Well, it’s ok and the quesry seems pretty fine. Now what should happen if you pass a valid user id to this code? Password of only that user will be updated. But what will happen when the passed $user_id is null?? Thats the most pathetic part that Codeigniter ActiveRecord plays. Instead of generating the following query,

UPDATE users set password=’{$new_password}’ where user_id=”;

CodeIgniter’s ORM actually generates the following

UPDATE users set password=’{$new_password}’ where user_id;

You find the difference of the above two queries right? one contains “where user_id=” ” and another contains just “where user_id” . Now if your backend database is MySQL and this query executes? You know what the hell will happen? It will replace all the user’s password with this new password instead of failing as MySQL count the “where user_id” part equals to false and returns all users. But If your Database is PostgreSQL, it fails, you are lucky.

So day before yesterday we suffered this problem against our commercial application which corrupts our user profile data. We immediate fixed the issue from our backup db (well, we lost 3 data) and then we started to find out what actually went wrong and found this vulnerable bug in CI.

So we suggest the CodeIgniter team to fix the issue immediately and change their ORM code so that it creates the query like the following if the value of passed argument is null. because it will fail to execute in all db. Otherwise the fellow user’s of code igniter, prepare for the dooms day.

UPDATE users set password=’{$new_password}’ where user_id=”;

Just PHP will give you nothing… unless you upgrade yourself

I have been working with PHP for more than 3yrs (I believe still I am beginner in this category) – I was present in several interview board. Which things disappointed me most is the “lack of eagerness” to learn what comes new. Sometime developers thinks that learning Only PHP will help them to get lucrative jobs!! OMG

Specially in BD most of the time PHP developers plays multiple roles in the companies, they are developer, they are template designers, they are HTML coders, they are DBA, they are PMs….what the heck. Only few companies have different people for these roles.

How far you can go just learning PHP (RAW code, in ancient style, that means PHP+HTML together, yak!!)? You have to have knowledge in CSS, JS, Frameworks, Multiple DBS

When it comes the question of CSS, you should maintain a list of websites where from you can get updates. Dont learn the CSS from book, but goto websites and see what is happening… If you are still using Tables to design

Autoloading Data Models

Hi Guys

Consider you have a model like this

class samplemodel
{
public method setName(){/*set the name*}
public method setEmail(){/*set the email*}
}

Models are usually relevant to database tables. So if you have tables with 10-12+ fields you may define accessor methods for all these fields in your model. Now when loading data manually in the model after submitting an HTML form you need to call them like this

$model = new samplemodel();
$model->setName(“some name”);
$model->setEmail(“some email”);
……………………..

For models with few accessor methods it may be easy to type manually all these data. But for 10-20-30 its totally ridiculous.

Thats why I designed this small Automatic Data Loader class which takes a model as first argument and and data array as second argument and then loads data from that array to that model. How is it looking?

$val)
{
if (is_callable(array($module,”get{$key}”),$callable))
{
echo “$key
“;
call_user_func(array(&$module,”set{$key}”),$val);
}
}
}
}
?>

Now if you have two input object named “email” and “name” for example in yoru html form and you call this loader as shown below, it will load all the data from $_POST to the model automatically.

$model = new samplemodel();
dataloader::load($model, $_POST);

as the model is accessed with BY_REFERENCE style, so it will fetch $model->setName() and $model->setEmail with appropriate $_POST data and your model will be loaded automatically.

This comes really handy when you have to load models with many accessor methods. I developed this object while working for Bangla Chat Engine last night and Ha Ha HA, it really saves my time.

Caution: Using raw user submitted data from $_POST or $_GET is not secured. You should filter them first.

Using More DBs concurrently in PHP+MySQL – a Solution

Last night Hasan provided me a new solution which seems awesome. I am describing it here

$db1 = mysql_connect("host","user","pwd")
mysql_select_db("db1", $db1);
$res1 = mysql_query("query",$db1);

$db2 = mysql_connect("host","user","pwd")
mysql_select_db("db2", $db2);
$res2 = mysql_query("query",$db2);

At this point you can only fetch records from you previous ResultSet, i.e $res1 – But you cannot execute new query in $db1, even if you supply the link as because the link was overwritten by the new db.

so at this point the following script will fail
$res3 = mysql_query("query",$db1); //this will fail

So how to solve that?

take a look below.
$db1 = mysql_connect("host","user","pwd")
mysql_select_db("db1", $db1);
$res1 = mysql_query("query",$db1);

$db2 = mysql_connect("host","user","pwd", true)
mysql_select_db("db2", $db2);
$res2 = mysql_query("query",$db2);

So mysql_connect hasa nother optional boolean parameter which indicates whether a link will be created or not. as we connect to the $db2 with this optional parameter set to ‘true’, so both link will remain live.

now the following query will execute successfully.
$res3 = mysql_query("query",$db1);

Thanks goes to Hasan for informing me abt the fourth parameter.

Qucik and Dirty – using 2 DB concurrently in MySQL

Day b4 yesterday I was stuck with a simple and frustrating problem. You know that using builtin mysql support in PHP you cannot use concurrently more than one database to work with. That was also my problem while working in such a project where I badly need to read data from one database, validate it against existing data in second database and then insert the data into the second database. So you got the project? Yes its a simple data migration project. But the problem is that I cannot import the old database tables into the new one and I have to work with them keeping seperate.

So you may ask how about reading all the data from first database, then store it in a temporary media and then again read them while inserting in second db. Well that was not possible because in first DB I had 10 tables and in I have to merge all those info in two table in second database. Also I have to validate some of those data against existing data in second DB.

There comes the idea. What I did is a quick-n-dirty solution of this problem. I connected to the first DB using MySQL API, and I connected to the 2nd DB using MySQLi API. That gives me live connection of two DB at the same time. So I read data from first DB using MySQL API and then inserted using MySQLi API.

For sure I could apply another solutions like temporary storage. But why bother when you can trick??? This is just a one time operation, no matter how you do it. All you need is a merged output, at minimum efforts. Ha Ha Ha.