First of all I will congratulate you on upgrading to wordpress 3.2.1. Having latest version means your site is updated and safe.

Now coming to the point, some of you might have faced this problem. You create a new page or post and do not want to allow comments on that. So you scroll down but cannot find the discussion box. The box which has 2 checkboxes “Allow comments” and “Allow trackbacks and pingbacks”.

To fix this, look at the top right of your screen for the Screen Options button. Click that and you will see a lot of checkboxes there. Click the Discussion  checkbox and close the screen options. Now scroll to bottom of the page and you will find the box sitting there.

WP3.2.1 has several other options like Custom fields, slug, Author which you can also enable from here.

Here is a small code snippet that will give you intersecting dates between 2 date ranges. Say, for example, you have 2 date ranges, 1-Jan-2011 to 31-Mar-2011 and 23-Feb-2011 to 4-May-2011.  This function will give you 23-Feb-2011 to 31-Mar-2011 as result.

Here is the code:

$a1  = "2011-01-01";
$a2  = "2011-03-31";
$b1  = "2011-02-23";
$b2  = "2011-05-04";

$intersection = getIntersection($a1,$a2,$b1,$b2);
if($intersection === false)
{
	echo 'No intersecting dates found';
}
else
{
	echo 'From '.date('d-M-Y', $intersection['start']).' till '.date('d-M-Y', $intersection['end']);
}

function getIntersection($a1,$a2,$b1,$b2)
{
	$a1 = strtotime($a1);
	$a2 = strtotime($a2);
	$b1 = strtotime($b1);
	$b2 = strtotime($b2);
	if($b1 > $a2 || $a1 > $b2 || $a2 < $a1 || $b2 < $b1)
	{
		return false;
	}
	$start = $a1 < $b1 ? $b1 : $a1;
	$end = $a2 < $b2 ? $a2 : $b2;

	return array('start' => $start, 'end' => $end);
}

Above will show the following on browser :

From 23-Feb-2011 till 31-Mar-2011

If the 2 date ranges have any intersecting dates, an array will be returned which will have start and end elements that represent the beginning and end of intersecting range.  Set of dates given below will return false as there are no intersecting dates.

$a1  = "2011-01-01";
$a2  = "2011-03-31";
$b1  = "2011-04-23";
$b2  = "2011-05-04";

$intersection = getIntersection($a1,$a2,$b1,$b2);

This will show

No intersecting dates found

The code is self-explanatory. As you can see, first we have used php function strtotime to convert all dates to timestamps. Then we can compare them easily. This way you can use whatever(allowed) date format you wish.

Recently I was contacted by Richard from Packt Publication to review their new book “Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.3.x for Effective MySQL Management“. Being a PHP-MySQL developer and an avid reader of technical books myself, I instantly agreed.

It took me a bit longer to read it then I had expected. At first, I had decided to just skim through the important chapters but it was interesting enough to change my decision. I then read all chapters one by one and realized that despite using phpMyAdmin on a daily basis, there is so much more to it that we developers are unaware of.

The author of this book is Marc Delisle, who is contributing to this project for more then 12 years. The book contains 19 chapters and 2 appendices. In my opinion the book can be divided broadly into 5 parts.

Chapter 1 to Chapter 3
I will say these warm up chapters as they cover installation, configuration and overview of phpMyAdmin interface in detail. Experienced users may skip these but beginners should go through each one of them.

Chapter 4 to Chapter 7
These 4 chapters explain through data management i.e. creating database and table structures and import/export of data.

Chapter 8 to Chapter 12
You will find all information on querying tables(including multiple table queries), table and database operations, creating relations and keys etc. I liked these chapters the most.

Chapter 13 to Chapter 15
These chapters cover data synchronization, bookmarking and generation of printable reports and schemas from phpMyAdmin. Very useful chapters indeed, in case you want to synchronize data between 2 servers or you want the schemas printed or available in pdf format.

Chapter 16 to Chapter 19
Chapters for advanced and experienced users, these explain data transformation, creating views, stored procedures, executing triggers etc. Chapter 18 is specifically for versioning and tracking database changes. Final chapter is all about administering the MySQL server with phpMyAdmin. All of these chapters are extremely useful.

Conclusion

Each chapter is explained in a detailed manner which sometimes seems too much, but thats my perspective, someone who has been using phpMyAdmin for more then 5-6 years now. Beginner and intermediate users will find those details useful and easy to understand.

Overall, I liked the book and learned about few things I did not know even existed. I will definitely recommend it. For new users of phpMyAdmin, it starts from beginner level and explains each task by breaking it down in steps. More advanced users may skip initial 5-6 chapters but later chapters will be definitely helpful for them.

You can see more details on this book at Packt’s website at this link and buy at either Packt website or amazon.

This post contains some of the useful and interesting tech links I found during last week. To keep up to date with the latest information, subscribe to the feed or follow me on twitter @v08i.

How to write a simple application on jQuery Mobile : http://goo.gl/5DpOO

50 Free Tools and Apps for Web Designers and Developers : http://goo.gl/6YjNL

10 Useful jQuery Plugins for Images : http://goo.gl/VTk1F

20 less known Open Source PHP CMS-es : http://goo.gl/cM6f3

11 More Things I Learned From the jQuery Source : http://goo.gl/2zBh7

CSSReset : All the most common CSS Reset scripts in one place : http://goo.gl/8OV9E

JavaScript Slider – TinySlider 2 : http://goo.gl/526cL

I have combined the 2 previous posts for expanding and shortening goo.gl URLs and have created a small class for it. Below is the download link for the class.

Expanding a URL

<?php
include('GAPIClass.php');

$objAPI = new GAPIClass('your_api_key_here');
$result = $objAPI->expand('http://goo.gl/WlFX');
if(FALSE === $result)
{
	echo $objAPI->error;
}
else
{
	echo 'Long URL:'.$result;
}
?>

Shorten A URL

<?php
include('GAPIClass.php');

$objAPI = new GAPIClass('your_api_key_here');
$result = $objAPI->shorten('https://www.packtpub.com/php-jquery-cookbook-to-create-interactive-web-applications/book');

if(FALSE === $result)
{
	echo $objAPI->error;
}
else
{
	echo 'Short URL:'.$result;
}
?>

As I have mentioned earlier that Google recommends an API key. The class has a flag variable called keyWarning. By default it is true and it will show the following warning message if you do not pass an API key while instantiating the class:

Currently you are not using an API key. It is recommended that you use one. Click here to learn more about the API key

To turn this notification off, just use this line:

$objAPI->keyWarning = false;

Here is a collection of 15 resources on HTML5 that I think will be useful to web developers as well as designers.

What is HTML5? (Infographic)

Dive Into HTML5

HTML 5 Demos and Examples

HTML5 Boilerplate :A rock-solid default for HTML5 awesome

HTML 5 Cheat Sheet (PDF)

28 HTML5 Features, Tips, and Techniques you Must Know

A Beginners Look Into HTML5

15 Easy Guides on Getting You Started with HTML5

35 Inspiring Examples of Websites Using HTML5

When to Use the HTML5 “section” Element

Don’t Forget About HTML5’s “Little Guys”

How to Build Cross-Browser HTML5 Forms

HTML5 Gallery – A showcase of sites using HTML5 markup

30+ Useful HTML5 Tutorials For Web Designers

HTML5 Doctor

This post contains some of the useful and interesting tech links I found during this week. To keep up to date with the latest information, subscribe to the feed or follow me on twitter @v08i

22 Brilliant and Advanced jQuery Effects to WOW Your Visitors – http://goo.gl/IUz3d

12 Cool Javascript – jQuery checkbox replacement you shouldn’t miss – http://goo.gl/4OxcT

70 Must See CSS3 Tips, Tricks And Tutorials – http://goo.gl/VarE4

The anatomy of a WordPress theme – http://goo.gl/CCdLH

Google URL Shortener API – http://goo.gl/Ia1fl

DOM Monster – http://goo.gl/nGySG

Why You Should Never Search For Free WordPress Themes in Google or Anywhere Else – http://goo.gl/QSzTE

45 Cheat-Sheet Desktop Wallpaper For Web Designers and Developers – http://goo.gl/u1VT9

What Makes a Good Website – http://goo.gl/Ua9ZW

Listamatic – various types of lists with ul and CSS – http://goo.gl/EzlcX

If you are getting an internal server error 500 after installing wordpress while accessing admin, here is the fix.

Most likely it is caused by low memory limit on your server. To fix it, create a new file named php.ini in you wp-admin directory and put the following line in it.

memory_limit = 64M

Save the file, then reload the admin page and it will work fine.

In past 2 posts you saw how short URLs can be expanded using the Google URL shortener API. This post shows how URLs can be shortened using this API.

API key is not mandatory for test purpose. Use this link to get an API key.

For shortening URLs, 2 points must be noted. First, a HTTP POST is required and the post data should be in JSON format. Here is the code:

//This is the URL you want to shorten
$longUrl = 'https://www.packtpub.com/php-jquery-cookbook-to-create-interactive-web-applications/book';
$apiKey = 'your_api_key_here';
//Get API key from : http://code.google.com/apis/console/

$postData = array('longUrl' => $longUrl, 'key' => $apiKey);
$jsonData = json_encode($postData);

$curlObj = curl_init();

curl_setopt($curlObj, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://www.googleapis.com/urlshortener/v1/url');
curl_setopt($curlObj, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($curlObj, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0);
curl_setopt($curlObj, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($curlObj, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-type:application/json'));
curl_setopt($curlObj, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($curlObj, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $jsonData);

$response = curl_exec($curlObj);

//change the response json string to object
$json = json_decode($response);

curl_close($curlObj);

echo 'Shortened URL is: '.$json->id;

Here is the JSON response from Google:

{
 "kind": "urlshortener#url",
 "id": "http://goo.gl/lBfOH",
 "longUrl": "https://www.packtpub.com/php-jquery-cookbook-to-create-interactive-web-applications/book"
}

You can also read these:

• PHP class for expanding and shortening URLs using Google URL shortener API
• Expanding URLs using cURL
• Expand URLs using file_get_contents

Yesterday I wrote this post explaining how short goo.gl URLs can be expanded using the newly launched goo.gl API. In that code we used php function get_file_contents to get the response from API.

How about implementing the same functionality using cURL now? If you have libcurl support installed with PHP, you are ready to use the cURL functions of PHP.

Here is the code. API key is not mandatory but Google recommends that you use one. It will increase your per day usage limits too. Follow this link to get an API key.

$shortUrl = 'http://goo.gl/WlFX';
$apiKey = 'your_api_key_here';

$curlObj = curl_init();

curl_setopt($curlObj, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://www.googleapis.com/urlshortener/v1/url?shortUrl='.$shortUrl.'&key='.$apiKey);
curl_setopt($curlObj, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($curlObj, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($curlObj, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0);

$response = curl_exec($curlObj);

curl_close($curlObj);
$json = json_decode($response);

if($json->status === "OK")
{
	echo $json->longUrl;
}
else
{
	echo 'Bad luck.';
}

And here is the full JSON response:

{
 "kind": "urlshortener#url",
 "id": "http://goo.gl/WlFX",
 "longUrl": "https://www.packtpub.com/php-jquery-cookbook-to-create-interactive-web-applications/book",
 "status": "OK"
}

Am important point to note. Since the API is on https, set the value for CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER to false. This will stop cURL from verifying the SSL certificate.