Robert Frew's Blog

How to Set PHP Error Logging in nginx

rob — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 18:10:00 +0000

It took some digging but I found out how to set php error logging in nginx. This is useful if you have virtual hosts or want to log separate sites. Just place the following in the php section of your nginx.conf configuration file and set the path to where you want the logs to be written.

fastcgi_param PHP_VALUE "error_log=/var/log/nginx/host1.php.error.log";

That’s it!

Drag, Drop, Sort & Delete with jQuery & jQueryUI

rob — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 21:57:42 +0000

In my previous post, I discussed how to add drag, drop, sort and delete functions to your website. However, it utilized the prototype and scriptaculous libraries. I had recently changed my site to only use the jQuery library so I needed a way to do this using jQuery. As with my previous post, I could not find any tutorials or how to’s on how to do this so I figured it out on my own and thought I’d share it with the rest of you.

If you are looking for a prototype and scriptaculous solution, look here: http://robertfrew.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/drag-drop-sort-delete-with-script-aculo-us/

Why would you need such a function? This is useful for things such as photo management. In my case, my users can manage their photo albums by viewing a thumbnail page. From that page, they can re-arrange the position of images by dragging them to the correct position. This utilizes the sortable function of jQueryUI. Upon dropping the thumbnail in it’s desired position, on the users screen, it sorts in the foreground. Behind the scenes, it updates the database and arranges the photos in order correctly. If they wish to delete an image, they can drag it to a trash can icon and drop it. It will then remove it from the thumbnail list, reorder (sort) the positions, and remove the image from the database.

Here is the code I used:

Sorting Example

Drag and drop list items to sort them out

Image 1
Image 2
Image 3
Image 4

Drag here to delete.

Drag, Drop, Sort & Delete with Script.aculo.us

rob — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 16:30:27 +0000

I’ve been combing the web for this solution to no avail. I would have thought that I was not the only person looking for something like this.

If you are looking for a jQuery solution, look here: http://robertfrew.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/drag-drop-sort-delete-with-jquery-jqueryui/

One of my websites is a membership based website. It allows you to create photo albums. All of it has been custom created using PHP & MySQL. To manage the photos, I created an admin page that displays thumbnails of all your photos. This page allows you to sort your thumbnails by using the Script.aculo.us libraries Sortables function. To edit individual images, you double click the image and it takes you to another page which features more advanced editing options such as rotate, crop, scale, etc…. This page also was the only way you could delete the image.

I soon found out by a number of my members that if you had a lot of images that you wanted to delete, it was a long and cumbersome process having to open each image to delete it. So I figured since I was already utilizing the drag and drop functions of Script.aculo.us through the Sortables function, why not add a drag and drop delete function.

The first thing I checked was the library docs. I found that they didn’t really give insight into how the Sortables function actually used the drag and drop functions and really didn’t give any examples on how to take advantage of some of the features. So I ventured out onto the web in search of a solution. To my surprise, there weren’t any how to’s or examples anywhere. I did find a couple of forum posts where others like me were looking for a solution but there were no responses.

So, I decided to experiment myself and low and behold, I found a solution on my own. And because I utilize other persons solutions for other problems, I figured I’d give back to the community.

Here is my solution for Drag, Drop, Sort & Delete using the javascript frameworks of prototype.js and script.aculo.us. This solution assumes you already have the Sortables function in use. If not, there are many articles out there already such as Scriptaculous Lists with PHP by Greg Neustaetter.

Sorting Example

Drag and drop list items to sort them out

Image 1
Image 2
Image 3
Image 4

Drag here to delete.

How to get Eclipse 3.5 (Galileo) and Flex Builder working together.

rob — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:26:34 +0000

Have you downloaded the latest version of Eclipse and you can’t get it to work with the Adobe Flex Builder plug-in? Well, here are a few steps you can take to hopefully get it to work again.

First, download and install Eclipse 3.5.

Second, if you do not already have Flex Builder installed, download and install as well. Once the installation is complete, navigate to where you installed Eclipse, for example: C:/Program Files/Eclipse. This should be the directory or folder that contains the eclipse.exe file or executable. In this directory, make sure another folder called ‘links’ exists. If it does not, create it.

Enter the ‘links’ directory and create a new text file called ‘com.adobe.flexbuilder.feature.core.link’ without any closing file extension such as .txt. Edit this file and add the following contents into it:

path=C:/Program Files/Adobe/Flex Builder 3 Plug-in

Replace ‘C:/Program Files/Adobe/Flex Builder 3 Plug-in’ with the path to your Flex Builder installation directory or folder.

Save the file and close it. Then launch Eclipse. Now go to Window Menu, select “Open Perspective” then “Other.” You should see your Flex Development Perspective listed. If you previously entered a license key for Flex Builder, it will recognize it for you. Otherwise, it will ask you to enter your license key.

Voila! You should have a working Eclipse 3.5/Flex Builder environment.

Credit for this find goes to Adam Ness.