In my case, I’m speaking of symfony v.1.0 on the Openpolis project.

Since the project is doing well what it needs to do, we’re not really spending time upgrading it to the latest version of symfony.
But the administration generator in that version lacks the batch actions, that were introduced in version 1.1.

Fortunately, there exists a patch, by Francois (Zaninotto?), attached to ticket #2100, that allows you to get batch actions quite easily, by modifying the generator.

You have to apply the patch to the last revision of the sf1.0 source code, and that revision is a bit different from the last revision at the time of the patch, so, the patch command may not help you. But doing that manually is not so hard, after all.

The only problem is it modifies the sfPropelAdmin default generator and thus the kernel of the symfony code.
I explain here how it is possible to do that without any modification to the kernel.

First, you have to duplicate the default generator into the [project_root]/data/sfPropelAdmin/ directory, and rename it to, say, batchable.

Then you apply the patch to the newly created generator, leaving the default generator, within the symfony data directory, untouched.

You have to copy two classes, from the symfony lib directory into a lib/generator path, renaming them

• sfPropelAdminGenerator -> sfBatchablePropelAdminGenerator
• sfPropelCrudGenerator -> sfBatchablePropelCrudGenerator

They also have to extend their batchable counterpart

  class sfBatchablePropelAdminGenerator extends sfBatchablePropelCrudGenerator {...}
  class sfBatchablePropelCrudGenerator extends sfBatchableAdminGenerator {...}

Then you can override the sfAdminGenerator class, with an sfBatchableAdminGenerator

 abstract class sfBatchableAdminGenerator extends sfAdminGenerator

 public function getOptionToAction($actionName, $params)

Once done that, you can add the batch_actions section to the generator.yml.

Deleting selected items comes for free, once the patches are applied correctly, but if you want to roll your custom actions, then you just have to define them in the actions.class.php of your backend module, and your’ ready to go!

If you use this code:

$html = file_get_html($your_url);

The $html variable ends up containing the Document Object Module, or DOM of the web page at $your_url. From that it is almost a breeze to grab parts of the page. For example, this code:

foreach ($dom->find('div#TrCons table tr.evidence') as $i => $row) 
{
  echo trim($row->innertext) . "\n";
}

would output all the html content of the table rows (TR) of class “evidence”, within the DIV that has the attribute id set to “TrCons”.

While scraping some of the internal pages at the official italian Senate web site, we found some really weird errors while parsing.

The parsed DOM was plain wrong, right after the invocation of the file_get_html function. Some branches of the DOM contained pieces of HTML taken from other branches, plus some weird integer numbers.

There were two hints:

• this only happened in some pages
• the mismatched HTML code had always to do with comments

So, I analyzed the source code (it is all in one single file) and got this:
the algorythm works by firstly removing the noise from the html code, then restoring it after the parsing.
By noise, all those information not useful for the parsing purpose is intended and, among that, the html comments.

Since the error had to do with comments, I concentrated on the noise removing and restoring parts of the code.

There are two functions for this: remove_noise and restore_noise.

Very basically, the remove_noise function

• searches the whole text for some patterns (for example the html comment open and close tags),
• stores each found pattern in the noise hash, with a key named “___noise___DDD” (DDD is a 3 digits number),
• substitutes the found pattern with the string “___noise___DDD”.

The restore_noise function does the exact reverse.
For each ___noise___DDD pattern found in the text, it grabs the corresponding value in the haash and substitutes it back.

Very nice, and it is also suddenly clear where the problem is!

What if there are more than 1000 substitutions to do?
The code would break and would result in weird errors, exactly the errors I was finding (only on those pages that had more than a thousand noise in it).

So, I patched the code, by increasing the number of digits used in the ___noise___ pattern from 3 to 5.
That way, the library can handle pages with up to 100 thousands noise in it.

It is a rough patch, I admit, but it should be still sufficient for most of the web pages out there.

A bug was filed by me on sourceforge.
You can download the proposed patch here.

The move is widely interpreted as a critic against the government, that only grants funds for government bills.

Fini is a high-rank leader of the PDL (Freedom’s People), the main party of the centre-right coalition that is currently governing the country.

original sources, in italian:
La Repubblica
Il Corriere della Sera

I may add that in order to have it work with a macport version of mysql, the invocation of the gem install command was modified like this:

sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64" gem install -t mysql -- --with-mysql-config=/opt/local/bin/mysql_config5 mysql

And the definition in my .profile file was:

export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH:/opt/local/lib/mysql5/mysql/

Luckily mine were still working, so I could go on for a while, before upgrading my packages (mysql, apache2, php5, svn, git).
There is actually no easy way to upgrade all the macport packages after the OS X 10.6 upgrade.
I have tried:

  sudo port -f upgrade installed

I couldn’t find anything on the web about this particular problem (upgrading macports OS X 10.6).
But http://trac.macports.org/wiki/Migration on the Macports web site, suggests to re-install all of the macports, by following these simple steps:

1. Save the list of installed ports:
   

     sudo port installed > myports.txt
   

2. Clean any partially completed builds, and uninstall all installed ports:
   

     sudo port clean all
     sudo port -f uninstall installed
   

3. Browse myports.txt and install the ports that you actually want to use (as opposed to those that are only needed as dependencies) one by one, remembering to specify the appropriate variants:
   

     sudo port install portname +variant1 +variant2 ...
   

It took an awful lot of time, but it worked.

One of the things I find useful is that I can install, natively, with no dual boot or virtual machines, a development environment for the web applications I usually develop (LAMP stack)
To do that I use Macports.
It’s a package manager that allows to install, along with the native libraries and applications installed by default on the OS X system, the whole package of GPL tools usualy found in a GNU-Linux system.

With few commands, like:

sudo port install mysql5 +server
sudo port install apache2
sudo port install php5 +apache2 +mysql5 +pear +readline

After a quite long compilation time, actually, you get a perfectly functioning LAMP stack. Well, it’s a story, not a tutorial, so your mileage may vary.

Ok, the other day I find that some bits of a web application are not functioning properly any more. That is, on my Mac they’re not working, while on the production server they are.
After a small investigation, it turns out that it’s a problem with the libxml2 library (a Gnome library used to work with XML code). The Mac uses its own native library (under /usr/lib), while the Macports install a different one under /opt/local/lib.
Somehow (you find details here), the two libraries can’t really work together well.

So last night, in a hacking frenzy, I change the name of the native library, from /usr/lib/libxml2.2.dylib to libxml2.2.dylib.old, hoping that without the native library, the system would go for the Macports one.

Soon after, all applications stop working. Well, they actually do not stop working, but no new applications can be opened any more.
I suppose, since all configuration files in OS X are XML (the .plist files), all applications use this library while starting up.

My terminal is still open, so I try to rename the original library, to restore things properly. But I have no permission and after a sudo command, the terminal crashes. After three trials, all my terminals are gone.
I can’t rename the library through the still working Finder, since I have no permissions.

I am cut out.

So I restart.

Great mistake. Nothing happens. Apart from the rolling wheel on gray background, I mean.
It’s 11pm and I had to import some data urgently. Instead I find myself short of packing the Mac and bringing it to the assistance, and God knows for how many days.

Calmly, I grab another laptop and start browsing the Net, querying how to enter a Mac when you’re closed out.
If you press some keys, during the startup phase, you can do some pretty interesting stuff.
For example:

• C – boot from CD or DVD
• Command V – start in verbose mode
• Command S – start in Single User mode
• MousePad key – eject a disk when blocked

I start by booting from the Leopard DVD, but I can’t find a “Restore messed up system” or something like that among the options, so I pass.

I try with the Single User Mode. The shell appears and I am inside, as root.
Too easy. I try to rename the bloody library, but file-system is mounted in read only mode. Of course.

So I browse the Net again (keywords: mac single user read only) and get to this article.

So I follow the instructions:

/sbin/fsck -y
/sbin/mount -wu /

and I am root on my own file system, mounted in read-write mode.

At this point:

• I rename the library
• Anyone can sit in front of my mac, break in as root and do pretty much anything, even find my password and lurk into my private data

Conforted by the results, I consider the two hours spent walking on the razor blade as an interesting experience.

Update

The method described in the linked artcle, to obtain the password, is not working any more. The exploit was blocked.

Minority Report (the movie) was rude compard to these interfaces by  Jeff Han at Perceptive Pixel.

From a post of Giles Turnbull on MacDevCenter

There are different methods to remotely open files hosted on a linux box:

1. connect over ssh and work in a shell with vi
2. connect over ftp and either:
• download each file, modify it and upload it back to the server
• use a software that lets you working with a remote location like if it was an additional local disk (WebDrive or Interarchy, or many others)
3. expose the working directory on a server and connect with a client over the WebDav protocol
4. use an IDE to handle the connection over FTP or WebDav (Eclipse, Komodo, and many others)

This items are ordered by a rough subjective scale: from geek to cool guy.
Geeks will usually never go under level 2, while cool guys will never go above level 3.

Then there are objective pros and cons, that do not depend on one’s coolnes level, those are:

• time needed to start the work session up
• possibility to see and manage the files and directory structure
• type of development process, whether in team or solitary

Generally I like to work with Vi, via shell when I have to edit few files, let’s say for example the Apache configuration files.

While developing a PHP, Django or Rails project I like to constantly check the directory structure of the whole project.

If the file I’m working with is a long class with many methods, I like to have a sort of code navigator, like those you find in complex IDEs.

If working in a team with more than one developer, I’d like a Source Code Manager, like SVN or Git, to avoid damaging code conflicts.

That said, this is the solution I found, using WebDav (that is point 4, or cool guy, I know).

Let’s say we have a Linux Fedora using an Apache 2.0 web server. Configurations for other distributions are similar and do not depend on software versions.

First, you have to install and configure the WebDav apache modules. They are: mod_dav and mod_dav_fs.
Configuration requires the specification of the location of the lock-database for WebDav:

# WebDAV module configuration section.
#
# Location of the WebDAV lock database.
DAVLockDB /var/lib/dav/lockdb

Then access permissions to the resources must be configured.

• create a virtual host dedicated to the dav accesses, with a third-level domain (dav.mydomain.org)
• specify an alias to a directory in the virtual host
• specify read and execute permissions for apache to that directory, limiting write permissions to authenticated user (apache authentication)
• generate username and password with htdigest

The virtual host specifications:

<VirtualHost 192.168.177.111>
  ServerName dav.MYDOMAIN.ORG
  DocumentRoot “/home/USER”
  DirectoryIndex index.html

  <Directory “/home/USER”>
    AllowOverride All
    Order Deny,Allow
    Allow from all
  </Directory>

  <Location /MYPATH>
    DAV On

    # Authentication
    AuthType Digest
    AuthName “DAVAccess”
    AuthDigestDomain /MYPATH
    AuthDigestFile /var/www/.digest-pw

    # Limit write permission to list of valid users.
    <LimitExcept GET PROPFIND OPTIONS REPORT>
      Require valid-user
    </LimitExcept>

  </Location>

  CustomLog logs/dav_access_log combined
  ErrorLog logs/dav_error_log

</VirtualHost>

Now, since writing permissions are given to the authenticated user, it is possible to remotely connect to the resource.

On OS X:

• go to the Finder (click on desktop)
• Apple-k
• insert http://dav.mydomain.org/project
• insert username and password

A remote disk, named “project” can now be used to read and write, like if it was a normal local directory.

Using TextMate, a nice text editor, the command
mate /Volumes/project/
from the shell of the Mac Terminal, opens the text editor with the directory tree. Opening a file, modifying and saving it, is equivalent to modifying it on the remote server.

On a Windoww or Linux machine, you can obtain the same result by using the default resource explorer application (Explorer under Windows, Nautilus, Konqueror or other under Linux).

This solution is good to work in a lonely mode over a very fast remote connection.
If you are in a team, conflicts are not handled (no Code Source Management).
If you are over a slow connection, creating the whole directory structure to see it inside TextMate results in a lot of requests and may take long time.

Update

Explorer, under Windows XP does not seem to support the WebDav protocol in a correct way and creates damages easily.
Moreover, I use to work in a team now, and using SVN or GIT is inevitable. The best thing is to have a local box reproducing the development environment (Linux or Mac OS X are slightly better at the task, if you tend to work with open source technologies).

An online tool to check if a domain is available, through Ajax.
It only works for .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz e .us