DomainFunk.com » How-To’s

Parsing XML: XML to HTML using PHP!

DomainFunk.com — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:31:59 +0000

Lately I just finished scripting a nice little system that randomizes and publishes content based on an XML feed provided by partner content sponsor. While doing some research for this, I came to know I wasn’t the lone one who wanted to install such a system. The web app, for which I wrote this system, runs a script every week creating new .html files from an XML content feed and keeps creating these plain .HTML files on the fly, in essence growing my content library every week

Hope this comes in hand to you guys out there looking for this.

The Simple Parser

I needed a simple parser which would not need XSLT and the size of the parser would remain small. Since the parser would be placed as a cron job, I needed it to be simple and without the complexities of XSLT. So here is part of the code that made the parser worked.


$doc = new DOMDocument(); //We create a new DOM object.

$doc->load(’samplefeed.xml’,LIBXML_DTDLOAD|LIBXML_DTDATTR); //load all elements of the XML feed. Using LIBXML_DTDLOAD we  load external subset and use LIBXML_DTDATTR to set the default DTD attributes, both are PHP Lib XML constants.

$contentitems = $doc->getElementsByTagName( “books” ); // we are now fetching the elements, and with this statement fetching all elements enclosed within the  tags.
foreach($contentitems as $contentitem)

{
$titles = $contentitem->getElementsByTagName( “title” );

$title = $titles->item(0)->nodeValue; //we are not taking the values from each element nodes.
$authors = $metadata->getElementsByTagName( “byline” );

$author = $authors->item(0)->nodeValue;
$ISBNS = $metadata->getElementsByTagName( “isbn” );

$ISBN = $ISBNS->item(0)->nodeValue;
//below we are starting an HTML file and using a PHP variable to hold it.
$html = ‘
’;
/*main article starts here */
$html = $html.$title.”
”;

$html = $html.$author.”
”;

$html = $html.$ISBN.”
”;
$html =’

/*footer part of the html page */

’;
$ourFileName = “feedarticles/”.trim($title).”.html”; //keeping the title the same as

$ourFileName = str_ireplace(”?”,”",$ourFileName); //removing characters that get attached during char-set conversions or shall we say non-conversions.

$ourFileName = str_ireplace(”_”,”",$ourFileName);

$ourFileName = str_ireplace(”:”,”",$ourFileName);

$ourFileName = str_ireplace(”;”,”",$ourFileName);

$ourFileName = str_ireplace(”‘”,”",$ourFileName);
echo $ourFileName.” creating the file “; //Just echoing the statement while creating the file.

$ourFileHandle = fopen($ourFileName, ‘w’) or die(”can’t open file”); //init the file handle

fwrite($ourFileHandle, $html);//write the file.

fclose($ourFileHandle);//close the file handle.
}
?>
The XML Page
The below is the SampleFeed.xml file, with the fields that will be parsed.



Java Server Pages

SAMS

1234
Logistics

Tata Mcgraw Hil

5678



Note
Albeit, there are better and newer ways of parsing XML using PHP, this was suitable for me, because its pretty simple code  and it works wonders!
Resources
Here are both files zipped up, make sure the permissions are setup right for directories that you want to user write these files into. Here is the entire Simple XML Parser zip, that creates .html files from XML feeds.



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Jquery Feedback Tab
DomainFunk.com — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 13:08:35 +0000
  

Every one must have visited, one of the many interactive websites, with a feedback tab on the side or on the top, this tab keeps following as you scroll. Ever wondered, gee, how do I get that ? No? Yes? Well I did and I found out there are companies out there charging a bomb for this service/product.
So I set out on a quest to get me one of my own feedback tab. Since I love Jquery, I started to hunt for a jquery feedback tab, and I built one, with the help of a nifty plugin. Want to know how to do it?
Here’s how..
jQuery Feedback Tab Requirements
To get started we need the  latest Jquery release from here and a nifty jQuery based plugin, known as boxy.js from here. These two would give us the feedback effect you see on this site. Other than these two we require an image, or alternatively you can just have a div if you did like, for the side “Feedback” tab. You can download all of my jquery feedback tab files from here.
jQuery Feedback Tab Code
Here’s the code required in your page (File) which would be where you would require the jquery feedback tab. Alternatively, if you have a content management system, like wordpress or joomla, you could use the header or the index files, accordingly, if you need help, just drop us a comment or two  




1: 
2: 
 
3: 




The above three lines import the .css file required, that you can play around with and import/include the jquery.js file and the boxy.js plugin file. Make sure the “src” path is set up right, with the proper relative path for these scripts.




4: $(function() {
5:    /* set global variable for boxy window */
6:    var contactBoxy = null;
7:    /* what to do when click on contact us link */

8:    $(’.contact_us’).click(function(){
9:        var boxy_content;
10:        boxy_content += “
”;
11:       boxy_content += “
Subject
Your name and/or email:
Comment:

>\” />”;
12:        boxy_content += “
”;
13:        contactBoxy = new Boxy(boxy_content, {
14:            title: “Send feedback”,
15:            draggable: false,
16:           modal:true,
17:            behaviours: function(c) {
18:                c.find(’#feedbacked’).submit(function() {
19:                    Boxy.get(this).setContent(”
Sending…
”);
20:                    // submit form by ajax using post and send 3 values: subject, your_email, comment
21:                    $.post(”http://tweetfeat.com/wp-content/themes/default/suggest.php”, { subject: c.find(”input[name='subject']“).val(), your_email: c.find(”input[name='your_email']“).val(), comment: c.find(”#comment”).val()},
22:                    function(data){
23:                      /*set boxy content to data from ajax call back*/
24:                        contactBoxy.setContent(”
”+data+”
”);
25:                    });
26:                    return false;
27:                });
28:            }
29:        });
30:        return false;
31:    });

32: });




The above code is responsible for creating the modal box, just like the ones we see with facebook.com. The code is very self explanatory, again if you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments. There are comments above that would be of help to some.




33: #feedback{
34: position:fixed;
35: width:50px;
36: height:150px;

37: top: 150px;
38: z-index:1;

39: }




The above is the CSS code for the tab, now the tab can be an image or div or both, like in our case we have both, a div with the background as a gradient and the foreground being the text “Feedback”.




40: 





Place the above code just after the  tag. Since the position of the div is fixed, it would be appearing outside the normal frame of the browser.
Conclusion:
I hope this post would save you the cost for the feedback being implemented, as a give away, our first five followers would get a “Free Jquery Feedback Tab” installation from us. All you have to do is subscribe and leave a comment!
Download Entire jQuery Feedback Tab Source Code, With Example. Click Here.
Resources
For more on boxy, I suggest visiting @ http://onehackoranother.com/projects/jquery/boxy/



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Photoshop: Day turns to night!
DomainFunk.com — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 08:07:38 +0000
  
A quick photoshop video tutorial to convert day pictures/images into night pictures/images. Pretty Simple and straight forward. 

    
      
      
      
      
      
      
        Photoshop Tutorial: Day to Night
      
      
      
    




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How-to: Javascript Inheritance
DomainFunk.com — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:09:49 +0000
  
Many of us, still are scared of using javascript. Some of us think that Javascript has become outdated, yet a larger, more “hard core” webmasters love it and have evolved with it, in to ajax, etc. But, personally, when I started learning Javascript back in the 1995’s, it was extremely intimidating, with me still being in college and still learning how to write small functions with it, which would validate a user input form.
However, as time went on by I fell for it and today, I am still deeply in love it. I also love the way it has evolved and has made Ajax, jQuery, etc happen! So this article would be more so about an intermediate Javascript article, explaining inheritance within Javascript.
Javascript and the Concept of Inheritance
There are two popular ways of working with Javascript and the concept of Inheritance. Out of these the first and the more popular way of working with inheritance is known as the “prototype way”. Its much easier to understand if you try it with a blank and open mind.
Javascript Inheritance - Prototyping
The prototype way or prototyping a class, usually deals with using a function prototype instead of a class. What I mean is, that using a prototype or syntax of a class definition, we use the same prototype, that of a fuction to define a class in javascript.
For instance
 function Iam () {

        this.alive = true;

}

Iam.prototype.notdead = function () {

        return true;

};


An Object that would inherit Iam:


Dave.prototype = new Iam;

function Dave () {

        this.writes = true;

}

Dave.prototype.getsBored = function () {

        return "Never!";

};


Now, if we create an instance of Dave object, and call its member methods, the result would be:
// Create an instance of the Dave object

var me = new Dave();

me.getsBored();

/*

        Returns "Never!" as it's a method

        belonging to the Dave object

*/
me.breathes();

/*

        Returns true. Since the Davet object

        doesn't have a breathes method of

        its own, it goes back in the

        prototype chain to its parent

        object, Iam, and finds the

        method there

*/

Javascript Inheritance: Calling a parent member method.
If you want to call the member method that was overiden in the child class, from the parent class or (let me put in a better way) – if you want to call a super method for an object, this is how it would be called.



Dave.prototype.getsBored = function ( ) {

Iam.prototype.getsBored.call(this);

return “Never1”;

/* all we have to do is call the member method from the parent class, and for that all we need to know is the syntax, as stated above, the name of the class and the name of the member method we want to access and use */

};
Direction two: Javascript Inheritance
The second way of using Javascript Inheritance is one in which we mimic class-based inheritance. Using this alternative of Javascript Inheritance, most developers and webmasters would feel comfortable if they have been exposed to other OOP languages and are coming from an OOP background. For most webmasters for whom languages like Java, C++, etc are new, the above mentioned method of using Javascript Inheritance would suffice.

Mimicking Class Based Inheritance in Javascript
For class based inheritance, the above code then translates to:
var Iam = Class.extend({ breathing : true; lives function ()

{ return true; }

});

var Dave = Iam.extend({ writes : true; getsBored() : function {return “Never!”;}

});

var me = new Dave();

me.getsbored();

me.lives();


Javascript Inheritance and Super Calls
Normal scripting with Javascript and advanced javascript libraries, one may almost never use super calls, because you may never feel the need. However, if your programing schema is such that you have to, then you could use super calls. Be advised that alot of super calls, espcially in javascript are not recommended due to code optimizations.
Syntax to use?
While both syntaxes or methods describe above are fairly easy, it really depends on your background as a webmaster and which way you feel comfortable. Using the prototype syntax is fairly a good idea, because its more native to javascript compiler, and has no dependencies or extra code, it is easily readable and more precise as to what is happening between the lines, pun intended! So, my personal favorite would be the prototype method.

Need for Javascript Inheritance?
I would go ahead suggest this, use javascript inheritance only when you know you should, don’t just use it because its available.  Most newbie webmasters use javascript inheritance alot and tend to overuse, where it may not be used at all! If you are new and are looking to start with a syntax pattern that you can adhere to, I would strongly recommend The Yahoo Javascript Patter@ http://yuiblog.com/blog/2007/06/12/module-pattern/
Javascript Inheritance Resources
Definitive Guide to Javascript Inheritance@ http://books.google.com/books?id=2weL0iAfrEMC&pg=PA167&dq=prototype+inheritance+in+javascript&sig=ACfU3U1S1YegUWWwIFPqlEWCgMvQv3kSgQ#PPA151,M1
Simple JavaScript Inheritance - John Resig@ http://ejohn.org/blog/simple-javascript-inheritance/
Base of Javascript Inheritance@ http://dean.edwards.name/weblog/2006/03/base/
Defining classes and inheritance - Prototype JavaScript Framewor@ http://prototypejs.org/learn/class-inheritance



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How To - SSL
DomainFunk.com — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 21:09:08 +0000
  
What is SSL?
Short for Secure Sockets Layer, SSL is a protocol or a set of rules that was “invented” or released by NetScape. These suite of rules or protocols are still used to ensure that transactions over the internet, namely, between the webservers and the browsers, are carried out securely. 
The SSL set of rules or protocols, work with identifying the entities involved in the transaction, again the webserver and/or the webbrowser, using a Certification Authority or CA.  SSL is mainly used for securely transferring documents via the internet. 



Why SSL?
As stated above, SSL or Secure Sockets Layer provides an interface for the internet user(s) to securely transmit document or any data using the browser and the webserver. 
This is achieved using Encryption/Decryption technologies along with “certificates” of authenticity provided by a certification authority. 
How does SSL Work?
SSL works on the principles of encryption and decryption. SSL works on public key/private key encryption algorithms, which means that encryption can be done using only one key and decryption at the target destination would require a key pair. Essentialy this means that with every SSL transaction there are two keys involved one that encrypts and  one that decrypts in conjuction with the key that was used to decrypt the document or data transmitted. It might be a confusing, but the concept is extremely simple.
Step #1 A client browser(basically web user) would request a secure website or secure webpage.
Step #2 A certificate, identifying the webserver is sent to the client browser along with a pubic key by the browser hosting this secure webpage or website.
Step #3 The client browser checks the certificate to and authenticates the certificate with the help of the Certification Authority. It also checks if the certificate is still valid and its validation hasn’t expired and the certificate belongs to website or webpage requested. 
Step #4 After the above step has been completed and the certificate is validated, the client browser uses the public key to encrypt the data or document to be transmitted. The destination URL is also encrypted. After encryption has been completed, the data or document is transmitted.
Step #5 The webserver hosting the secured website or webpage then decrypts the encrypted data or document using a private key only available to the server, in conjunction with the public key.
Step #6 The webserver then sends in the requested data which is again encrypted using the symmetric or public key.
Step #7 The client browser decrypts the data and makes it available to the internet user. 
[Data/Request]–>[Public Key]–>Encrypted Data–>[Private Key]–>[Message]
So, what do you get?
Every communication, using the internet, may it be emails or payments via credit cards, has a “route” or a relay and is relayed between eight to thirty two (8-32) servers before it reaches its destination. Every such “relay” or stop over server could be vulnerable to attack or might already may have been penetrated. Thence, every such point or “relay” would be a security risk where your personal data is concerned. Every such “relay” would be a gateway for viruses, hackers, phishers, malicious scripts; many of which can intercept your personal data at any given time and could make copies of it, or even alter it leading to identity theft or even more!
So, instead of the placing the security burden on to you as an internet user, now the burden of security falls with the CA, the webserver and the client browser. Which essentially decide if its secure enough to transmit your personal data using the internet. This is only possible with the use of SSL or SSL Certificates.
What is more interesting is that more than 90% of internet users have come across a security alert! And a major chunk of such users, IGNORE such security alerts, taking their internet browsing and usage for granted. Another big chunk just stop browsing such websites.
So if you are an internet user, we would advise you to pay attention to such warnings and if you are a webmaster or if you have an online business we would strongly advise you to get an SSL certificate today. A secure connection definitely means a secure web browsing experience for online shoppers, business owners, general internet users. 
Digital Certificates or SSL Certificates do not cost much and easy to setup and provide a better, a very secure experience for all internet users and website owners, webmasters are strongly urged to get these setup on your websites. Why Compromise on Security, right?
SSL certificates or Digital Certificates, is just one of the many steps that can be take to make the internet a more secure place. 
It would be wise to know that SSL’s predecessor is here, and is known as “TLS” or Transport Layer Security.
SSL Resources
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/SSL-Certificates-HOWTO/c118.html

http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2008/SSL.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/pki/nss/ssl/draft302.txt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSSL

http://www.openssl.org/



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How to - Web Contact Forms
DomainFunk.com — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:12:31 +0000
  
The web has always been the foremost option to promote our enterprise or offers. But online promotion of our business is only half a job done. Today, with the internet reaching across homes and crossing all international borders and making the world more “flat”, it only makes sense to use its potential in making our businesses and endeavors grow and make them visible to a global market. With websites becoming more and more interactive, it only makes sense to have an inbuilt, solid CRM or customer relationship management built in, within our websites. For starters, this can be achieved by the use of contact forms.




Why Contact Forms?
Contact forms enable your to-be clients to get in touch with you and to post feedback of your website, products and/or services. If you are a local business, thinking of getting a website, get one. A website with contact forms would make your business global, giving a global market audience a chance to interact with you, your employees and opt for your services or products.
Contact Forms ensure more visitors and to-be clients to know much more about your services and guarantee more leads for your products or services.
Most websites today have a “contact us” or “email us” section, using which most visitors get in touch with the business owners for further inquiries, questions, feedbacks, etc. More often than not, most websites just leave an email address exposed on such pages, while at the bottom of it all this works just fine where generating leads or getting feedbacks from customers or to-be customers are concerned, what it lacks is security. In such cases your email address is exposed to not just your customers but also “programs” or spammers, which collect these email addresses and spam your inbox.
A contact form, would definitely help prevent this situation and would definitely offer a better user experience.
The Ideal Contact Form
An ideal “contact us” webpage would have the name and address of the business owner or individual, with a form that would take generalized inputs from the user. On submitting such a form, the details would be mailed to you and the individual who had filled up the form. An ideal contact form would take Name, address, email and remarks/questions as inputs and would be effortless to the user as possible. Normally, such contact forms are built on the idea that the user visiting your website may not have time to fill in too many details. So these are kept short and sweet and right to the point.
So….Contact Forms….
In simple words, a contact form ensures a secure medium of interaction between your business(you) and your potential market, in a global sense. A contact form is an extremely crucial step to be taken where your online business is concerned and would definitely increase your leads/sales by atleast ~8%. These and other benefits would be enough for any business online to put up contact forms. The only down side of such contact us forms, is people like to feel more secure when submitting personal information like their name, address and email address. This could be addressed by a “privacy policy” section on your website and it is highly recommended to have a privacy policy web page, as google is also known to count this in where SEO is concerned.
How to create a contact form?
Contact forms differ in structure depending upon the websites. A simple website would have a simple HTML form that would take in the text typed in the text fields by the user. A site may also have validations in such a contact form. These validations could be written in any scripting language like JavaScript, Ajax or PHP. This would make sure the visitor hasn’t sent incorrect data, i.e., the validations acts as constraints, and these constraints make sure that there are no blank fields and the email address submitted by a website user is valid. The validations show the form again with error messages only if errors are present, of course. We can use this to send a copy directly to the employees of the company or just to keep a back-up.
Anyone would be able to create a basic contact form of his or her own after some initial reading on HTML and Javascript. We must get familiar with the basic HTML tags first:
The “
” tag : helps create a form for the user input. It consists of a very important attribute that must be specified in the ‘<>’ of the form tag. It is the ‘action’ method. The URL is its value.
Optional attribute: ‘method’: helps to send data to the action URL. It takes two values: get and post.
The form tag must have a closing “
” tag also.
Within the “
” and “
”  tags, we place our textboxes and form submission buttons.
We have the “” tag which defines the start of an input field where the user can enter data. This is where the interesting part of creating textboxes and buttons come into play. They are created depending on the attributes that are passed to the “” tag.
To create a textbox we must pass the attribute ‘type=”text”’ and for a button pass ‘type=”button”’.
Here is a HTML code snippet of a contact form.

$sysmail = “you@yourdomain.com”;
if ($_POST['sendmessage'])

{

if(!isset($_POST['message']))

{

$messages = “You’re email needs to contain a message, dummy!!!
”;

}

elseif(!preg_match(”/^.*?@.*?$/”, $_POST['email']))

{

$messages = “Stop trying to trick me and use a real email, or me and you will fall out!!
”;

}

elseif(mail($sysmail, stripslashes(trim($_POST['subject'])), stripslashes(trim($_POST['message'])), “From: ” . $_POST['email'] . “\r\n”))

{

$messages = “Thanks for your message someone will get back to you shortly.
”;

}

else {

$messages = “The programmer who wrote this isn’t as clever as he thinks, and something has gone wrong.
”;

}

}

?>

Contact Form
























Your Email Address : 



Message Subject : 



Your Message 














As you can see from the above Contact Form Code example, we have used php and HTML to create a simple form that would mail the details entered into the form to a predefined email address ‘you@yourdomain.com’. This form accepts, email address, message subject and message body as the input here. Your contact form input could vary and would be defined by your business logic. For more please feel free to look at the resources provided below.
More Contact Form Resources
A quick kickstart on getting such contact forms up and running on your website, without any prior html or web scripting experience would be to visit http://www.emailmeform.com/ or www.mycontactform.com
Full featured tutorial on contact forms @ http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/forms/

For more information to create contact forms please refer http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp
For more information on scripting languages please refer:

http://www.w3schools.com/Vbscript/default.asp

http://www.w3schools.com/js/default.asp

http://www.tizag.com/phpT/



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