When submitting a PHP form, the script does not stop
If you submit a PHP form which passes a large amount of data using the POST method, like a file upload form, it would be a good idea to increase the value of the PHP configuration variable post_max_size (you will find it in the php.ini file) if it seems like the script is running forever. post_max_size should be set to a value larger than the maximum sum of the sizes of the files the script is used to upload.
Importing a MySQL data file using phpMyAdmin results in incomplete data in MySQL
I tried moving all my databases from MySQL 4.1 to MySQL 5.1 on Windows and since I had some InnoDB tables I could not just copy the data files between MySQL Server versions (from C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\MySQL\MySQL 4.1\data\ to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\MySQL\MySQL 5.1\data\).
So, after I exported the data from the old MySQL Server version I tried importing it to the MySQL 5.1 using phpMyAdmin.
The file to import was 42MB in size, so I had to set some PHP configuration variables (in php.ini file) to greater values:
post_max_size = 64M upload_max_filesize = 64M
At first it looked like the phpMyAdmin import script entered a loop or something, as it wouldn’t stop even after running for several minutes and, as I was looking into the data files it was producing, no new files appeared. It was like it blocked on a table with a large number of records, which didn’t make any sense. Then I restarted the Apache server and I tried the import all over again. The same thing was happening. I finally decided to let it run for more time and the script finally stopped. But the data imported was incomplete; a part of the records in the large table I thought script blocked on, and every table and database from there on were missing, with no PHP or MySQL error returned.
Then I thought the script needed even more time to run, so I increased the value of the PHP configuration variable max_execution_time, but with the same result.
The solution. It seems that the execution time limit for the import script in phpMyAdmin is defined by the variable $cfg['ExecTimeLimit'] in <path_to_phpMyAdmin>/libraries/config.default.php and the value of this variable should be a lot greater than its default value of 300 seconds when importing a great amount of data. In my case it needed about an hour (3600 seconds) to complete. So you have to set this variable depending on the quantity of data you are importing.
You might also need to set the MySQL configuration variable max_allowed_packet (in my case, in C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.1\my.ini) to a greater value, if you have large queries in the data file you want to import, for avoiding MySQL error 2006, ‘mysql server has gone away’.
base html tag does not apply correctly to all javascript and style files
Problem: The
<base href="http://example.com/path/to/res/">
did not work at all on Internet Explorer – no javascript or style files were loaded and worked partially in Mozilla Firefox – a few javascript files were not pointing to the path that should be transformed by base href attribute.
Example:
Array( [0] => 1 ) <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <base href="http://example.com/path/to/res/"> <link rel="stylesheet" href="./css/styles.css" type="text/css" /> <scrupt src="./js/jquery.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <scrupt src="./js/j1.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <scrupt src="./js/j2.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
This code produced a page with no style files and no javascript files included in Interenet Explorer 8 and a few javascript files (j1.js and j2.js) were not included in Firefox 3.5 because base tag was not applied. After several tests and all kind of different arrangements we discovered that the problem was the output before the page source the
Array ...
thing.
Solution: no output before the page’s headers otherwise you can get all kind of strange results including a html base tag not working correctly.
Object doesn’t support property or method. Adding options in a <select> from a child window on Internet Explorer
Full error message: Object doesn’t support property or method. I got this error message in Internet Explorer 7 every time i tried to run code similar to the next snippet:
window.opener.form.select[select.length] = new Option(text, value);
The problem is that on Internet Explorer due to some mysterious security restrictions you are not allowed to add new options in a select element that resides in the parent (opener) window. In order to do this you need a workaround.
The easiest workaround is to write a function in the parent window that adds elements in the select element. The function should look something like this:
function addOptionToSelect(formName, selectName, optionText, optionValue) {
var elem = document.forms[formName].elements[selectName];
elem.options[elem.length] = new Option(optionText, optionValue);
}
This function has to be written in the parent window’s javascript and it will be accessed from child window with some code like this:
window.opener.addOptionToSelect(formName, selectName, optionText, optioValue);
Conclusion: Internet Explorer sucks.
jquery pngFix fixed
I tried to use the pngFix from this website: http://jquery.andreaseberhard.de/pngFix/. But it didn’t work and i received an javascript error in IE6.
After several minutes of debugging and tries i found out that the error is generated by old syntax in selecting elements. It used
jQuery(this).find("img[@src$=.png]").each(...);
instead of
jQuery(this).find("img[src$=.png]").each(...);
So the fix is: Remove the “@” character form the selector string.
The same thing for the “pack” version except that the replaced string is:
[@m$=.M]
and the replacement string is:
[m$=.M]
.
How to dynamically add attributes and child nodes to an XML element in Flex
This is how I copied all the attributes of an XML node (srcXMLNode) to another XML node (dstXMLNode) in Flex, without knowing the names of those attributes:
for each(var attr:XML in srcXMLNode.attributes())
{
dstXMLNode.@[attr.name()] = attr;
}
And this is the way I added child nodes of an XML element to another:
for each(var elem:XML in srcXMLNode.elements())
{
dstXMLNode[elem.name()] = elem;
}
If you know a better way to do this, feel free to write a comment.
Php script redirects even when output started before calling header() function
This happens because of output_buffering is on.
In order to turn off output buffering modify php.ini if you have access and set:
output_buffering = Off
or add in the local directory a .htaccess file containing this line:
php_value output_buffering Off # or 0
Microsoft Outlook 2003 – Downloading Same Email Twice
Most of the emails I was receiving through Microsoft Outlook 2003 I was getting duplicates. The weird thing was that not every email was duplicated and many times I believed that I had fixed the problem (doing various changes in my outlook settings) but I discovered later when automatic checking occurred that I was wrong.
The problem: I discovered that I have each rule duplicated and that’s why Outlook 2003 was downloading the same email twice.
The fix: I removed the duplicated rules.
mysqldump – with exec() function from php outputs empty file
This error occurs on any operating system (windows, linux). The problem is that instead of getting a sql file with the database data you get a empty (0 kb.) file.
So we have the following code:
$command = "mysqldump --opt --skip-extended-insert --complete-insert -h ".$DB_HOST." -u ".$DB_USER." -p ".$DB_PASS." ".$DB_NAME." > backup.sql"; exec($command, $ret_arr, $ret_code); echo "ret_arr: <br />"; print_r($ret_arr);
and we get an empty file and no output.
So we will fix this error in a few steps:
1. First we need to make sure that we have access to mysqldump command. For Linux machines this command is accessible from anywhere if not you will have to find the place where mysqldump file is (usually the bin folder of mysql).
In order to do this we have to get some output from our command so we will strip all the options from the command and we will remain with this:
$command = "mysqldump"; // mysqldump.exe on Windows
So execute the php script. It’s ok if you get output like this:
Array ( [0] => Usage: mysqldump [OPTIONS] database [tables] [1] => OR mysqldump [OPTIONS] --databases [OPTIONS] DB1 [DB2 DB3...] [2] => OR mysqldump [OPTIONS] --all-databases [OPTIONS] [3] => For more options, use mysqldump --help )
If you don’t see something like that then you must check to see the path to the mysqldump command.
If you are in windows make sure you append the full path to the command. If you have a folder like I have C:\\Program Files\\MySQL\\MySQL Server 4.1\\bin\\mysqldump.exe with spaces in it you must make sure that you enclose the command between quotes like this:
$command = "\"C:\\Program Files\\MySQL\\MySQL Server 4.1\\bin\\mysqldump.exe\" --opt --skip-extended-insert --complete-insert -h ".$DB_HOST." -u ".$DB_USER." -p ".$DB_PASS." ".$DB_NAME." > backup.sql";
If append the right path to the command and you still cannot get the output then this article can’t help.
2. Make sure you have the rights to create the sql file. This step is mostly for Linux machines where it is very possible that you may try to create a file from php in a folder where you don’t have writing rights.
So to test this after the previous step is done you can do the following: append to the previous command extra options so that the output is not returned but instead written in a file. So we have the previous command:
In Windows:
$command = "\"C:\\Program Files\\MySQL\\MySQL Server 4.1\\bin\\mysqldump.exe\" > backup.sql";
In Linux:
$command = "mysqldump > backup.sql";
After running the file “backup.sql” should be created.
3. You must now correct your statement. This means that we must use the long versions of the options like this:
Windows:
$command = "\"C:\\Program Files\\MySQL\\MySQL Server 4.1\\bin\\mysqldump.exe\" --opt --skip-extended-insert --complete-insert --host=".$DB_HOST." --user=".$DB_USER." --password=".$DB_PASS." ".$DB_NAME." > backup.sql";
Linux:
$command = "mysqldump --opt --skip-extended-insert --complete-insert --host=".$DB_HOST." --user=".$DB_USER." --password=".$DB_PASS." ".$DB_NAME." > backup.sql";
The fix: The options for mysqldump when called from php must be in the longer version. Instead of –u use –user, instead of –p use –password and so on.
The attachment of an email sent via PHP has 0 bytes
I wanted to send an email that only contained an attachment as follows:
$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$headers .= "To: <".$to_email.">\r\n";
$headers .= "From: ".$from_name." <".$from_email.">";
$random_hash = md5(date('r', time()));
// add boundary string and mime type specification
$headers .= "\r\nContent-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"PHP-mixed-".$random_hash."\"";
// read the atachment file contents from a string previously formed,
// encode it with MIME base64,
// and split it into smaller chunks
$attachment = chunk_split(base64_encode($content));
// construct the body of the message
$message = "--PHP-mixed-".$random_hash;
// my attachment was an html file
$message .= "\r\nContent-Type: text/html; name=\"".$filename."\"";
$message .= "\r\nContent-Transfer-Encoding: base64";
$message .= "\r\nContent-Disposition: attachment\r\n".$attachment."\r\n";
$message .= "\r\n--PHP-mixed-".$random_hash."--";
// Windows
ini_set('sendmail_from', $return_email);
mail($to_email, addslashes($subject), $message, $headers);
ini_restore('sendmail_from');
// Linux
// mail($to_email, addslashes($subject), $message, $headers, "-r ".$return_email);
I received an email with an attachment, but the problem was that the attached file had 0 bytes.
To my surprise, after comparing the source of the email with the source of an email with a complete attachment, I found out the problem: before the actual content of the attachment ($attachment) there should be an empty line.
I replaced the line of code:
$message .= "\r\nContent-Disposition: attachment\r\n".$attachment."\r\n";
with:
$message .= "\r\nContent-Disposition: attachment\r\n\r\n".$attachment."\r\n"; // notice the double \r\n
and it worked! This way I received the email with the correct attachment.
