In the last days, i was trying to find a solution hosting multiple Express apps on my vServer the same Server.

Starting with Apache and mod_proxy, i ended up with a plain node solution, which i really like.

Let’s take a quick look on some different approaches out there:

—1—

Using apache on port 80 as a proxy

ProxyPass /nodeurls/ http://localhost:9000/
ProxyPassReverse /nodeurls/ http://localhost:9000/

via stackoverflow

– no websockets
++ probably the easiest way to integrate with your running AMPP-stack

—2—

Using a node.js app on port 80 as a Wrapper for other node apps.

express.createServer()
  .use(express.vhost('hostname1.com', require('/path/to/hostname1').app)
  .use(express.vhost('hostname2.com', require('/path/to/hostname2').app)
.listen(80)

via stackoverflow

++ you can use websockets on port 80
– apps crash/restart/stop globally
–what about your apache or the like?

—3—

Using node.js with node-http-proxy on port 80

var http = require('http')
, httpProxy = require('http-proxy');

httpProxy.createServer({
  hostnameOnly: true,
  router: {
    //web-development.cc
    'www.my-domain.com': '127.0.0.1:3001',
    'www.my-other-domain.de' : '127.0.0.1:3002'
  }
}).listen(80);

++ proxy websockets to any port
– you might need to move your old web server to another port

The really cool thing about using node-http-proxy is its capability of proxying websockets.
So you can have your apps running independtly on different ports while serving everything to the user over port 80 and use stuff like socket.io.

Since i’m new to node.js and miles away from beeing a admin, any feedback is highly appreciated :)

to be honest i didn’t find a clean way yet, but i thought this workaround might be worth sharing.

…since Silverstripes‘ Userforms Module Uses jQuery for Validation you can put these lines of code in your UserDefinedForm.ss Template:

jQuery(document).ready(function(){
    jQuery('form label').each(function(){
      jQuery(this).parent().find('input, textarea').attr('placeholder', jQuery(this).html());
      jQuery(this).remove();
    })
  });

This will iterate over the labels in the form , build placeholder attributes from each one and then remove it.

If anyone knows a way how to do this in PHP, i’d appreciate a comment :)

I recently started digging into node.js and the express framework.
One thing i like about it is that it comes with the beautiful jade template engine by default.

Here are some things that come real hany when you are working with jade.

This one really saved my mental health in more than one case.
Just paste your HTML and you get nice and clean jade code:

http://html2jade.aaron-powell.com/

If you are using Netbeans, make sure you don’t miss to install the beautifully working plugin for .jade files.

https://github.com/lumenlunae/jade-netbeans-syntax-highlighting

If you are developing in PHP and want to check out jade anyway, check this out:

No seriously, check THIS:

https://github.com/everzet/jade.php

…for some reason i needed to get t h i s to work before going to sleep.

I’m running OSX 10.7.3 with macports which usually does the job, but  Google’s V8 Javascript Engine is not available as a port yet.

So… homebrew to the rescue:

installed it:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(/usr/bin/curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/gist/323731)"

and installed v8

brew install v8

wait, this seems too easy.

PECL installed some beta version of the PHP extension.

sudo pecl install channel://pecl.php.net/v8js-0.1.2

added

extension=v8js.so

to the php.ini file.

und bitteschön:

$v8 = new V8Js();
var_dump($v8->executeString("

//hey i'm Javascript Code

//INSIDE PHP !

//wow.
var hello = 'Hallo';

function helloWorld( string ){
return hello + ' ' + string;
}

helloWorld('World');

"));

Such things might come in handy one day, you know.

When you duplicate a page in the Silverstripe Sitetree, related “has_one” Items are automatically copied, which is nice.

But if you have, lets say, multiple related images on that Page, those are not copied when you duplicate that Page.

After reading this discussion, i found out that it’s actually pretty easy to “fix” this.

This what i ended up with and seems to be working fine:

//assuming your page has the following related Dataobjects

public static $has_many = array(
'Images' => 'MyImageDataObject'
);

public static $many_many = array(
'Something' => 'AnotherPageTypeOrWhatever

);

The following code would automatically duplicate the has_many related DataObjects
and just set the relation to the many_many Objects on the created page:

        

          

              
<?php 

public function duplicate() {
 
  $items_to_duplicate = array(
    'Images',
    'Somehting'
  );
 
  $page = parent::duplicate();
 
  //duplicate has many items
  foreach ($this->has_many() as $key => $className) {
    if (in_array($key, $items_to_duplicate)) {
      foreach ($this->{$key}() as $item) {
        $newField = $item->duplicate();
        $id = get_class($this) . 'ID';
        $newField->{$id} = $page->ID;
        $newField->write();
      }
    }
  }
 
  //set the relation to many_many items on created page
  foreach ($this->many_many() as $key => $className) {
    if (in_array($key, $items_to_duplicate)) {
     $page->{$key}()->addMany($this->{$key}()->getIdList());
    }
  }
 
  return $page;
}
          

          

            view raw
            silverstripe_duplicate_relations.php
            This Gist brought to you by GitHub.
          
        

..as already suggested in the forum, i still think this would make a handy core feature, wouldn’t it?
Would be cool to globally specify relations to duplicate in the page-config with something like

public static $relations_to_copy = array(
 'Images',
 'Somehting'
);

With some advanced scheduled-post-voodoo i successfully managed to publish this post already yesterday with some completely unrelated queries and no text. this was not intended – please accept my apologies :P

Anyway: In the footer of my magento shop we might have a summary of the shopping cart,
which i simply put in the footer.phtml template file:

<?php if (Mage::getModel('checkout/cart')->getItemsCount() > 0): ?>
  <div class="footer_cart_widget">
    <a href="/checkout/cart" class="cart">
      <?php echo $this->__('Warenkorb') ?>:<br />
      <span class="cart_meta">
        <?php echo Mage::getModel('checkout/cart')->getItemsCount() ?>
        <?php if (Mage::getModel('checkout/cart')->getItemsCount() == 1): ?>
          Produkt:
        <?php else: ?>
          Produkte:
        <?php endif; ?>
        <?php echo $this->helper('checkout')->formatPrice(Mage::getSingleton('checkout/cart')->getQuote()->getGrandTotal()); ?>
      </span>
    </a>
  </div>
<?php endif; ?>

This means we might need to disable the caching for the footer HTML block,
so that my cart summary will stay dynamically generated.

This is how you can do it:

copy

app/code/core/Mage/Page/Block/Html/Footer.php

to

app/code/local/Mage/Page/Block/Html/Footer.php

and just comment out the following lines:

//$this->addData(array(
//    'cache_lifetime'=> false,
//    'cache_tags'    => array(Mage_Core_Model_Store::CACHE_TAG, Mage_Cms_Model_Block::CACHE_TAG)
//));

you could also put the cart values in the getCacheKeyInfo() method, but as this would result in caching a footer for any state of the shopping cart from my understanding, i don’t think it’s necessarily a good idea.

I just started digging in the shop software magento for a project and set up the following development environment.

In this scenario development is done on two local machines while products and pages beeing already edited on the “Live”-Web-Server.
Git is used for version control and deployment. Also FTP SSH.

Magento is quite nice when it comes to deployment, as most config stuff is stored in XML files.
Those files are kept locally and ignored from version control.

So this is what my .gitignore looks like:

#cache, sessions, logs
/var/cache/*
/var/session/*
/var/locks/*
/var/report/*
/var/log/*
#media folder - images etc...
/media/*

#local config files
/app/etc/local.xml
.htaccess

#database dump
/database.sql

So i got a copy of the repository in each environment with a local .htaccess and local.xml file.

Theres a few things stored in DB by magento, though.
The most obvious is the “web/secure/base_url” and “web/unsecure/base_url” which both reside in the “core_config_data” table.
Those have to be set to the name of the host you’re working on.

This can be done with a shell script like this:

#create a dupm of the live DB on the server
ssh user@server.com 'mysqldump -u[username] -p[password] > ~/db_dump.sql'

#copy DB dump to local machine
scp user@server.com:~/db_dump.sql ./database.sql

#import SQL
mysql -u[local_mysql_user] -p[local_mysql_pw] [local_db_name] < ./database.sql

#update config settings in the DB
mysql -u[local_mysql_user] -p[local_mysql_pw] [local_db_name]<UPDATE
core_config_data
SET value='http://local.server.com/'
WHERE value ='http://server.com';
EOFMYSQL

This way all CMS and products  can be edited on the server, while the local machines can be easily synched.
For me this works fine, as we are working only in the file system in the local environment.
In case you can’t use the online Server as “database master” this might be not that simple.

As we most likely don’t want the whole /media folder under version control we might want to have another shell script to copy the media files to the local machine (via SCP in this case):

#remove local media folder
rm -rf ./media/*
#fetch media files
scp -r ssh_user@server.com:~/magento_folder/media/* ./media

I guess this could be done more efficiently with maybe ant or something.
But for the moment this works fine for me.

So now i can update my local environment with one line on the console:

git pull; sh sync_db.sh; sh sync_media.sh

someone just +1′d this nice addon for firefox:
(thanks, conrad :)

Tilt visualizes the DOM in 3D and is a lot faster than i expected.

Although it’s flagged experimental it’s easily installed and works like a charm on my macbook with Firefox 6.

Definetly makes you think twice about your markup nesting level ;)

This is a small shell script to set up silverstripe CMS
along with some modules i often use (as seen in ivo’s post)

The script has two parameters:
- the folder to clone the whole thing into
- the branch/tag to checkout afterwards

# install silverstripe + common modules from github
# usage sh install_silverstripe.sh <folder_name> <tag/branch>
# examples:
# sh install_silverstripe.sh some_folder tags/2.4.5
# sh install_silverstripe.sh some_folder master

As Silverstripe itself is split up in 3 repositories
(the installer/base folder, the cms and the sapphire framework itself)
we fetch the base folder first:

#set up project base folder
git clone git@github.com:silverstripe/silverstripe-installer.git $1
cd $1
git checkout $2

Get the cms

#setup cms
git clone git@github.com:silverstripe/silverstripe-cms.git cms
cd cms
git checkout $2
cd ..

Get sapphire …

#setup framework
git clone git@github.com:silverstripe/sapphire.git sapphire
cd sapphire
git checkout $2
cd ..

Setup some permissions for the web installer.

#set permissions for install
chmod 0777 assets assets/*
chmod 0666 .htaccess mysite/_config.php assets/*/*

Fetch the blackcandy theme from a fourth repository.
Backup the tutorial theme in case we need it.

#install blackcandy theme
mv themes/tutorial ./
rm -rf themes
git clone https://github.com/silverstripe-themes/silverstripe-blackcandy.git themes
cd themes
git checkout $2
cd ..
mv tutorial themes

Install some modules

# install common modules
git clone https://github.com/unclecheese/Uploadify.git uploadify
git clone https://github.com/unclecheese/DataObjectManager.git dataobject_manager
git clone https://github.com/silverstripe/silverstripe-userforms.git userforms

iIput the script on github
…in case you might wanna use it or add something i’ve missed.

If you are going to install the mp3 en/decoder lame on debian lenny,
this is how i got it done:

choose your package: http://debian-multimedia.org/pool/main/l/lame/

wget http://debian-multimedia.org/pool/main/l/lame/lame_3.98.2-0.4_i386.deb
dpkg -i lame_3.98.2-0.4_i386.deb

yay!