I had experimented with Datamapper, and it was great. But there was complex join statement I needed that DM didn’t support… so I had to just write out the SQL like normal.  I then realized it’s just as easy to use CI’s Active Record or regular query command and create your own methods.  Plus, it keeps things pretty speedy.

2) You DO need a base Model

I’ve only just recently started using Jamie Rumbelow’s MY_Model and it’s changed everything. Previously, when I wanting to get a single record from a table, I was writing $this->db->from('table')->where('id',$id)->limit(1)->get()->row(); for every single table. Now, that’s already included for every Model I make.

3) It’s helpful to look at the core code

For example, I was curious how the Active Record was implemented, so I opened up DB_active_rec.php. I know some people prefer to use “->get()” by adding in the table name and limit as parameters, and I wondering if there was difference in how it’s handled.  Interestingly, it runs the exact same “from()” method, just as if you had “->from()” in the query.

And while this is a micro-optimization, if you want to return a single result and you’re sure it’s the first result… use “->limit(1)”.  The “row()” method will work with multiple rows returned, so there’s logic built in to just return the first row.  Adding “->limit(1)” will help skip all that.

4) The url helper really needs to be auto-loaded by default

In my autoload file, I always load the database and sessions libraries and the url helper. I can’t remember a project where those didn’t get used.  I’ll occasionally autoload the form helper as well, but that’s a project-by-project call.

But the url helper… I honestly can’t see how anyone would ever NOT use that in every project.  ”site_url()” and “redirect()” just seem like no-brainers.

5) Object-Oriented programming and MVC

Prior to learning Codeigniter, I was experience in Drupal and WordPress, and a bit of Joomla, but working with them isn’t strict OO.  The custom stuff I programmed was really procedural or functional, based on the fact that I learned programming using PHP 4 and classic ASP/ vbscript.  While I read about and tried using Classes and methods, I just didn’t get it. With CI, I had the ‘flipped switch’ moment, where Objects and Classes made total sense.

Now, I’m onto learning as much as I can about OO in PHP 5.3, including namespaces and inheritance… which aren’t yet built into CI

1) The best unsubscribe link takes you to a page that says “You’ve been removed from our list”… and that’s it.  Simple, effective, and I won’t hate you or your company afterwards.

2) The second best way (if you really think your email recipients are so stupid they may click it unintentionally) is to have a page with two buttons. One saying “Unsubscribe” and another saying  ”Oops! I made a mistake! I don’t know how links works! Derp” or something.

3) NEVER ask for my email address to unsubscribe. You sent me the freaking email, you should KNOW my address. Also, I often use the “plus trick” for my gmail, and asking me to track down exactly what email address I used for your stupid, spammy site will just fill me rage and hatred for you and your babies.

4) NEVER send an “Unsubscribe Confirmation” email. Seriously? Are you that stupid? I just said “Don’t send me any more emails” and you’re going to do the exact opposite? How are you able to feed and clothe yourself?

5) Do NOT ask me to sign in and “change my notification preferences”. More than likely, I already forgot the password for your lame company that TechCrunch will never cover, and I’ll just have to do a “forgot password” thingy… meaning I must both find what email address I used AND get another email from you. Fail. Fail. Hatred. Fail.

background:#ccc;

background: -webkit-gradient(linear, 0 0, 0 100%, from(#ccc), to(#eee));

background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #ccc, #eee);

IE gets no gradient…. because, come on.

Looking through the Facebook Developer pages, it seemed like a fairly straight-forward process to get a User’s Facebook auth tokens… and with CI2 having querystring support now, I thought I could do everything in a simple Facebook controller.  Here’s what I got:

 class Facebook extends CI_Controller { public function __construct() { parent::__construct(); // replace these with Application ID and Application Secret. $this->appid = '12345'; $this->apisecret = '123abc123'; } // if you have a Facebook login button on your site, link it here public function index(){ // set the page you want Facebook to send the user back to $callback = site_url('facebook/confirm'); // create the FB auth url to redirect the user to. 'scope' is // a comma sep list of the permissions you want. then direct them to it $url = "https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/authorize?client_id={$this->appid}&redirect_uri={$callback}&scope=email,publish_stream"; redirect($url); } public function confirm(){ // get the code from the querystring $redirect = site_url('facebook/confirm'); $code = $this->input->get('code'); if($code): // now to get the auth token. '__getpage' is just a CURL method $gettoken = "https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?client_id={$this->appid}&redirect_uri={$redirect}&client_secret={$this->apisecret}&code={$code}"; $return = $this->__getpage($gettoken); // put the token into the $access_token variable parse_str($return); // now you can save the token to a database, and use it to access the user's graph // for example, this will return all their basic info. check the FB Dev docs for more. $infourl = "https://graph.facebook.com/me?access_token=$access_token"; $return = $this->__getpage($infourl); $info = json_decode($return); print_r($info); endif; } private function __getpage($url){ $ch = curl_init(); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); $return = curl_exec($ch); curl_close($ch); return $return; } } 

That’s about it. You could put it all in “index()”, but I wanted to separate it a little.

update: code formatting is a bit wonky. i’ll try to fix that later.

1) Morningwood – Nth Degree

2) Frankie Valli – December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)

3) Glass Tiger – Don’t Forget Me When I’m Gone

4) Dolly Parton – Here You Come Again

5) Duran Duran – Hold Back The Rain

6) Duran Duran – The Reflex (yes, 2 Duran Duran songs)

7) The Beatles – Good Morning Good Morning (pretty much any Beatles, though)

Public Image Ltd – Disappointed

9) Radiohead – Bones

So in the effort of being a good community member, I’m offering the CodeIgniter/Datamapper base that I use.

The guts of the program literally took a few hours yesterday, since I’m already aware of how to access Twitter and Facebook’s API.  I think the big hurdle is convincing people to essentially hand over their accounts to a service… with the knowledge that an alert post could come up at any time.  Also, trusting that the service won’t use the information for “evil”.  If it all works, however, it could be a huge boost to the Amber Alert system.

Imagine, the instant an alert is issued, it’s posted to multiple accounts and in front of millions (10s of millions?) of people.  One argument might be, if you follow 50 people who signed up for the service, you’d get 50 of the exact same message in your stream… but really, it only happens infrequently, and it’s to help find a missing and endangered child. People should be able to overlook that.

Right now, I think I have it working well… but I’ve only been able to test it with my accounts. I’m not sure how it will scale, but it seems to be okay. Here are some details of how I have it setup…

First, if you login using Twitter, I’m saving your “twitter name”, “oauth token”, and “oauth secret token”.  With Facebook, I’m saving your “name”,”oauth token”, and “facebook id”, and asking for offline posting privileges.  Then I have a table that sets whether you have the service active or not, keyed off your unique id. After you activate the service, you’re done.

After that, I have a script that checks for new Amber Alerts… though I’m hoping to add in international alerts.  If it finds a new one, it sends out a post with a link to the Amber Alert page. I also built a sort-of “panic button” script, in case something goes horribly wrong… or the site is compromised… I can run it and the whole system is wiped. Contingency plans, you know.

So it’s all at AutoAlert.Me. I’m probably not going to publicize it anymore than this post and tweet, and just having it running for my own accounts… but it’s there if others want to use it too.

First, I wrote down the numbers, and immediately noticed the first numbers “1024″ and “512″ were suspiciously binary… though, that seems somewhat coincidental now. However, I plotted all the numbers into a spreadsheet, then did a conversion to binary.  I began thinking that maybe the 1s and 0s were like the beat of a Christmas song, so I tapped them out, and it didn’t seem to be anything.  Though bits seemed to be like “Jingle Bells” or “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”, they never played out for the entire song. I got a bit sidetracked, thinking this was a designer, that maybe the numbers should be converted to HEX values, and use those colors for something.  Again, it didn’t pan out.  Here’s where I was at that point:

Then, as I looked at the column of binary numbers, I noticed there was a pattern… not in the numbers, but in the shape of the groups of numbers. I converted the column to monospace type and started connecting the 1s. It really didn’t make sense at first… but I saw the last group of numbers made a Greek Sigma “Σ” and an “X”. So I thought “Sigma Chi”, a fraternity.  The numbers above it made a “W” and a Sigma, and I thought maybe the “W” was supposed to be a Psi, but I couldn’t find anything relevant for “Psi Sigma”. At that point, I hadn’t connected all the 1s correctly, so I went back and connected all the 1s, even diagonally. The patterns became a lot clearer… but it still didn’t make sense.  At that point, I had my table turned just a bit to the side, and noticed the Sigma could actually be a sideways “M” and the “W” a sideways “E”… so I had “E M M X”.  With that, I saw I already had the “A” and a “Y”. Once I made one more missed connection of 1s, I had the two “R”s and figured the extra bit in the first group was an “!”.  From there, it was a simple matter of re-ordering the letters to make: MERRY XMAS!

Thanks to Chris Shiflett for the fun diversion. Though, it looks like I missed submitting the correct answer by only a few minutes (congrats Cogocogo) … it was still an enjoyable brain exercise.

Rammstein Steamroller