DownInTheFlood.com

Gettin' A Grip On 'Audacity', a digital audio editor & recording application ...

2011-09-03T16:36:00.003+02:00

it took me around three attempts before i managed to get something done with Audacity, a free digital audio editor and recording application.

here's a few interesting pages for starters:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

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

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Category:Tutorial

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Audacity_Wiki_Home_Page

as Audacity freely admits on one of it's wiki pages:

Recording voice, music, or sound effects can be fun and easy. However, if you want to get the best transfer of a tape or LP to your computer, or record your garage band, you'll find that recording can be more difficult than it first appears, unless you arm yourself with a little basic knowledge. The pages listed here are currently a work in progress, providing many useful tips.

one library required to work with the Audacity software is the LAME MP3 encoder. more details can be found among the following links:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=install&i=lame-mp3

http://lame.buanzo.com.ar/

i downloaded the Lame for Audacity on Windows.exe file & installed LAME on my computer. then i went to edit --> preferences --> file format or file type, clicked the search for library button to look for the lame_enc.dll file which the windows installation program had just created in my Lame For Audacity folder.

now i should be about ready to go ... here's a couple of screenshots again to support this article:

with step one i start the Audacity program ...

& this is what the blank audio editor looks like at start-up:

there are two important settings i would check first: one is the loudspeaker setting, i set this so i could listen to the sound on my computer while recording (i.e. transfering music from a cassette tape to my computer):

the second one is the microphone setting (the screenshot shows my current setting):

now i follow with a series of screenshots from the preference settings:

the first tab allows me to set the audio input/output settings:

at the second tab i set the sound quality:

with the third tab i can set the file format (also mentioned above in connection with the installation of the LAME library):

the fourth tab lets me adjust the file size:

i use the fifth tab to set the default folder for my temporary files created by Audacity:

the sixth tab is used to activate or de-activate various tool parameters:

with the seventh tab i can set keyboard combinations (i've only shown a few here):

while finally the eighth tab allows me to set mouse click types for various functions to use with the Audacity Audio Editor:

i think for the moment that's about it ...

Good Luck!

tom.paine

My Simple iTunes Overview

2011-08-30T12:58:00.014+02:00

before i start working with iTunes i visit the download section of Apple - iTunes. this can be found at this link: http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/. generally iTunes will automatically detect my operating system as well as my location & recommend a download for such:

(i usually untick the fields Email me ... & Keep me up to date ...)

once i downloaded Apple - iTunes & start the installation, this will include Apple - QuickTime & a program that will keep my iTunes version up to date. for this the iTunes program will inform me from time to time that a new iTunes version is available & gives me the choice to install the update now or at a later stage.

here are some examples (with images in german) of how i work with iTunes:

once i start iTunes the initial screen looks like this (click on the thumbnail to view larger image):

in the next step i open a folder containing a music file to drag onto the iTunes screen:

the music file now shows on my iTunes music player (this file has the m4a file extension & i want to convert this file to mp3). the next few images show how to set the kbit/s value for the mp3 conversion:

select edit

select preferences

select import settings

select a pre-defined or user-defined value

select the desired value from the drop-down menu

if i select user-defined, i can select other kbit/s values than the ones pre-defined from the drop-down menu

the image below shows the kbit/s values available from this drop-down menu

make the selection & click OK

while the first steps used the general tab from the preferences selection, for the next step i click the advanced tab. in order to know where my mp3 files will be stored i need to set the default folder for those files as shown in the examples below:

select change

select a folder from the drop-down menu

now i shall create a playlist:
select file --> new playlist

among the playlist menu a new playlist will show & i have the choice to ...

edit the playlist name

i click the music folder at the top & drag my music file to my new playlist for further processing:

if i wish to burn music to a mp3 or audio CD, i can only do so from a playlist. this can also be the playlist named recently added, it doesn't have to be the new playlist i just created.

in order to start the burn process i right-click on the playlist i wish to transfer to a CD & select burn playlist to medium from the drop-down menu

with the next step iTunes asks me if i wish to create a mp3 or audio CD

for my example i select mp3 CD. iTunes then checks the playlist to see if all the songs will fit onto the CD, else display a message, or if the CD is writeable & blank.

to view or change the information of a music file i highlight the track/s & right-click. then i select information from the menu. in case of more than one track it will ask if i want to change the information for more than one track.

once i confirmed iTunes will display the available ID3-tags i may be able to alter or change.

after i changed the track information iTunes will display the changes for each track and/or album.

to convert a track to the mp3 format i have pre-set (as described above), i mark the track, right-click & select create mp3 version from the menu.

now iTunes converts the song to mp3 & stores the file in my iTunes folder. i can follow the progression of the conversion on the screen.

then i can click the music tab on the menu at the left. the song appears there twice. one file is my original, the second one is the mp3 file i just created.

if i want to remove the files from the player i highlight the songs i wish to remove & press delete. iTunes then asks me if i really want to remove the files from the mediathek, which i confirm.

should the files also be stored in my default iTunes folder the program asks me if i want to move the files to the wastebin, in this case i select the button to keep the files.

for my next example i have inserted a audio CD into my CD/DVD-drive. iTunes now connecs with the Gracenote Database to search for the album & tracks details.

once the search has been completed the program asks me if i wish to add the CD to my mediathek. in general i select no since i first wish to check my default settings as described above.

now my CD/DVD-drive is also listed in the menu on the left with the album title. the track details are listed on the right. sometimes it happens that the name of a track is spelled incorrectly, i can still correct it here (as described above).

if i wish to convert the CD to mp3 i can either right-click on the CD title & select import CD or alternatively simply click the import CD button at the bottom right side of the player.

to select all the songs of the CD for some reason i can click the edit tab at the top menu, then click select all.

i have decided that i don't want to import all the songs from the CD, but only a few. again i click the edit tab at the top menu & click select none from the menu.

now i tick the check box to the left of the titlename for those songs i do wish to convert to mp3 ...

and click the import CD button at the bottom right side of the player. the progression of the conversion is displayed in the field above the track details. in addition an orange symbol shows next to the track currently being converted.

once the conversion of a track is completed a green symbol is being displayed next to the track.

after all my selected tracks have been converted a green symbol is being displayed next to each converted track & a sound rings to draw my attention to the completion.

should i wish to convert another track i can simply right-click that track & select create mp3 version from the menu.

again the progression of the conversion can be followed as detailed above.

when i now click the music tab on the left menu again iTunes will display the album title with only the converted tracks.

if i click the playlist recently added on the left menu it will also display the converted tracks ...

& i have the choice to burn these tracks onto a CD (audio or mp3).

again i click the music tab on the menu at the left to see the all music files currently still shown with my player. if i want to remove the files from the player i highlight the songs i wish to remove & press delete. iTunes then asks me if i really want to remove the files from the mediathek, which i confirm.

should the files also be stored in my default iTunes folder the program asks me if i want to move the files to the wastebin, in this case i select the button to keep the files.

now iTunes shows only the CD that is still in my CD/DVD-drive.

this is just a relatively brief overview about some iTunes features. what i haven't shown here is that if a track has been renamed or deleted & i wish to play it an exclamation mark shows up to the left of the titlename, which means that the file could not be found.

Recommended Reading:

Hope you enjoy your time using iTunes!

tom.paine

PHP: Amazon Store Manager / Freekrai.net

2010-05-31T12:18:00.004+02:00

today i would like to mention a small problem with the Amazon Store Manager script available from Freekrai.net:

information in the readme.txt file reads: This program has been created by Roger Stringer and works with PHP4. since the introduction of the Amazon Product Advertising Service (formerly known as Amazon Web Services or Amazon E-Commerce Service [ECS], calls to amazon's server require a signed request. the Signature function hmac, however, only works with php5.

another requirement is that the php function allow url fopen must be set to On. to accomplish this simply create a php.ini file with the following line in it:
allow_url_fopen = On;
and save it to the store's root directory.

there is another small error in the aws4class.php5 file:
find
$ValueStringArray[] = "Timestamp=" .gmdate("Y-m-d\TH:i:s\Z");
(should be on line 258) and change it to
$ValueStringArray[] = "Timestamp=" .gmdate("Y-m-d\TH:i:s.000\Z");

should the script still not work you might have to follow the instructions about Troubleshooting in the readme.txt file
replacing
RewriteEngine On
with
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /AmazonStoreManager4/
in the .htaccess file, where in this example /AmazonStoreManager4/ is the scripts root directory.

these are all the basic changes i made to get the script to work.

enjoy!

tom.paine

Software: Windows Install Clean Up

2010-05-16T17:33:00.008+02:00

did you ever experience a problem while trying to install an iTunes update? i had this problem getting this error message that something was wrong with the Windows Installation Package. first i thought it had something to do with my QuickTime Registration Key for QuickTime Pro; however, it took me a while to sit down and try find out why this message always came up.

one day i un-installed (or tried to un-install) every Apple application on my computer (including the Safari Browser). i stumbled across a problem trying to un-install the Apple Software Update. when i checked the properties i found out that the folder where it was looking for a .msi file was empty.

some time ago i downloaded the Windows Install Clean Up tool from Microsoft, but never used it. searching the internet again for details on this issue i came across this article on the Apple support site: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1926. it has a link to the Windows Install Clean Up software: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;290301. there's a warning at the Microsoft site about the use of this tool. however, there's not much to go wrong. i followed the instructions from the Apple support page, starting the Windows Install Clean Up program a window opens that lists all the programs installed. next i selected Apple Software Update and pushed the remove button.

then i re-installed iTunes & QuickTime and the Safari Browser without any problems and any error messages. what i found interesting was that the Apple Software Update folder was now in a different place than where the system required it before for the iTunes update. Problem solved!

enjoy!

tom.paine

PHP: Calin Uioreanu's amazon script

2010-05-02T16:25:00.004+02:00

Amazon Web Services is a neverending story from transition to transition, that is:

it started of as Amazon Web Services, then became Amazon E-Commerce Service and is currently named Amazon Product Advertising.

in the process of keeping the various scripts i've either written myself or downloaded from different sites over the years running, i took up the amazon script from php9.com by Calin Uioreanu the other day. the website no longer seems to exist and through some new channels now available i was able to contact and inform him about the improvements i had been able to make to the script, which unfortunately i did not document. unfortunately because when Calin Uioreanu came back to me he replied that he had only little time now to play with it. he suggested that if i had a blog perhaps i could show the steps it took to get the script running again.

well, in the end i added a whole lot of other stuff to the script, that's why it's so hard for me to tell which changes i made just to get the basic script running. i'll try though to show just these steps.

persons long familiar and in touch with Amazon Web Services will know that the new version requires a SecretAccessKey in addition to the AWSAccessKeyID that was already required in the past. the user can obtain them by registering with aws.amazon.com. somewhere along the line there's something about fees being charged; however for our purpose to get this script going again it's still free of charge.

once the user has registered with aws.amazon.com and obtained the two keys mentioned above we place them into a separate file named #_aws_keys.inc.php5 (for example) like this:

<?php
$ACCESS_KEY_ID = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx";
$SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx";
?>

and save this file into the common/ folder (for example).

now the trouble starts: i couldn't remember when to include the #_aws_keys.inc.php5 file. (having a good editor that can search through the files is always a good idea.) the #_aws_keys.inc.php5 is included in the product4.php5 file which we can find in the classes/ folder.

best is we now open the product4.php5 file and look for:

function getLiveSearch

then search for the following line:

$searchIndex = $missPlacedNodes[$_GET['browse']];

it should be Line 36. after the closing bracket Line 37 we now insert a whole bunch of code that already helps us to send a signed request to amazon.

here now is a big chunk of code that includes a few extras since i changed my script version to accomodate requests to all amazon locales:

if ($locale == 'US') { $site = 'com'; $partnerId = 'AFFILIATE ID FOR LOCALE US'; }
elseif ($locale == 'UK') { $site = 'co.uk'; $partnerId = 'AFFILIATE ID FOR LOCALE UK'; }
elseif ($locale == 'DE') { $site = 'de'; $partnerId = 'AFFILIATE ID FOR LOCALE DE'; }
elseif ($locale == 'JP') { $site = 'jp'; $partnerId = 'AFFILIATE ID FOR LOCALE JP'; }
elseif ($locale == 'FR') { $site = 'fr'; $partnerId = 'AFFILIATE ID FOR LOCALE FR'; }
elseif ($locale == 'CA') { $site = 'ca'; $partnerId = 'AFFILIATE ID FOR LOCALE CA'; }

include_once('common/#_aws_keys.inc.php5');

$timestamp = gmdate("Y-m-d\TH:i:s.\\0\\0\\0\\Z");
$timestamp = str_replace(':','%3A',$timestamp);

// This is needed for '+' added for space character in request
$requestparams='AWSAccessKeyId='.$ACCESS_KEY_ID.'&AssociateTag='.$partnerId.'&Operation=ItemSearch&SearchIndex='.$searchIndex.'&Keywords='.$searchString.'&ItemPage=1&ResponseGroup='.$responseGroup.'&Service=AWSECommerceService&Timestamp='.$timestamp.'&Version=2009-10-01';
$requestparams = str_replace('+','%2B',$requestparams);

$sort_requestparams = explode("&", $requestparams);
sort($sort_requestparams);

$request = "GET\necs.amazonaws.".$site."\n/onca/xml\n".implode("&",$sort_requestparams);
// $request = "GET\necs.amazonaws.com\n/onca/xml\n".$requestparams;

$request = str_replace(':','%3A',$request);
$request = str_replace(';','%3B',$request);
$request = str_replace(',','%2C',$request);

// Signing
$signature = base64_encode(hash_hmac("sha256",$request,$SECRET_ACCESS_KEY,TRUE));

$signature = str_replace('+','%2B',$signature);
$signature = str_replace('=','%3D',$signature);
$signature = str_replace('/','%2F',$signature);

$xmlUrl = 'http://ecs.amazonaws.'.$site.'/onca/xml?'.$requestparams.'&Signature='.$signature;

// echo '<a href="'.$xmlUrl.'" target="new">The Request</a>';

that last line i uncomment if i run into trouble. it then gives me the request link i have assembled that i can use to check the amazon (XML) document for details, either an error message or the document structure, which i may need in order to access the different XML elements.

to make things very easy i have made my version available for download.

and of course the scripts runs as a live demo.

i hope some users may find this useful. if there's any problems, just leave comments and we'll see how we can improve it further, if and when necessary.

enjoy!

tom.paine

Software: Unlocker

2010-05-02T15:51:00.008+02:00

ever so often i came across this error message:

Cannot delete folder: It is being used by another person or program.

the other day i decided to search the internet for comments or a solution to this problem and ran across the website of

CEDRICK 'NITCH' COLLOMB

who wrote a nice little program named Unlocker.

it's free software and a very nice tool to have.

i installed it with the default settings given.

when i now come across a folder that cannot be deleted, after a moment this little tool opens a separate window asking what i would like to do: kill the process, or just release the folder, after which i can try to delete the folder again. so far it has always worked and it's very nice to have.

of course the software supports not only folders, but files as well. i usually had the problem when i moved a complete folder to another drive, and once the folder was empty it could not necessarily be deleted.

i hope that others my find this useful, too.

enjoy!

tom.paine

Books: My Reading List

2009-12-15T21:52:00.005+01:00

what am i reading at the moment? i guess everyone's got some kind of a list of books one currently reads or is interested in reading; the same goes for music, which albums to listen to or crave for, and also what movies one has seen and which ones one might consider to collect as DVD issues. here's my recent reading list:

Thomas Pynchon: Inherent Vice

Alex Halberstadt: Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life and Times of Doc Pomus
this title reminded my of the song i first heard on a Van Morrison record and only later on a Ray Charles album. touchingly written!

Mark Twain: The Complete Interviews (Studies in American Literary Realism and Naturalism)
very interesting reading; i didn't know that Mark Twain at his own time was popularly known as a humorist. in my youth i'd never consider his Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn as humorous literature.

Mark Twain: Bummel durch Deutschland
Mark Twain: Bummel durch Europe
i'm considering getting these about Mark Twain's travels through Germany and Europe. they will certainly make facinating reading about Europe at the time.

Mark Twain: Die Schreckliche Deutsche Sprache (the awful german language)
i haven't seen this one at local bookstores, but it definitely sounds like an inviting title after what i've read so far about Mark Twain.

J. R. Moehringer: The Tender Bar: A Memoir (Audio Book)
i'm not a big fan of audiobooks, i'd rather read; but this one i find interesting since it's being read by the author 'n' i guess he'd put the pronounciations appropriately there where he'd 've wished to highlight or obscure in this tender memoir.

tom.paine

PHP: list all files of a local directory

2009-12-15T21:19:00.007+01:00

... i haven't written an article since march ... here's a short script.

the issue: i wanted to save a list of a music albums i'd converted from CD to mp3 format. to avoid typing it all out i got myself a little script to do the work for me at mouse click:

<pre>
<?php
define('DEFAULT_DIR','D(rive):\\MyFolder\\');
$dir = (isset($_GET['dir'])) ? $_GET['dir'] : DEFAULT_DIR;
if (is_dir($dir)) {
if ($dh = opendir($dir)) {
while (($file = readdir($dh)) !== false) {
echo $file . "\n";
}
closedir($dh);
}
}
?>
</pre>

this code simply lists all files and folders of the MyFolder directory.

there was another code snippet i worked on: i wanted a list of the songtitles of a particular album without the .mp3 file extension; the code looks like this:

<?php
define('DEFAULT_DIR','D(rive):/MyFolder');
$dir = (isset($_GET['dir'])) ? $_GET['dir'] : DEFAULT_DIR;
?>
<html>
<head>
<title>List-All-Files : <?=$dir;?></title>
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">

</script>
<style type="text/css">

</style>
</head>
<body topmargin="0">
<center><h3><u><i>List-All-Files</i></u> : <?=$dir?></h3></center>
<form name="linktable">
<div><input class="button" type="button" value="COPY & PASTE" onclick="copyit();" onmouseover="this.className='button2'" onmouseout="this.className='button1'"></div><br>
<textarea style="width:875px; height:1000px; color:#FFFFFF; background-color:#AB0000;" name="list_table" readonly="readonly">
<?php
filesInDir($dir);
function filesInDir($tdir)
{
$dirs = scandir($tdir);
foreach($dirs as $file) {
if (($file == '.') || ($file == '..')) { }
elseif (is_dir($tdir.'/'.$file)) { filesInDir($tdir.'/'.$file); }
else { echo substr($file,0,strlen($file)-4)."\n"; } }
}
?>
</textarea>
</form>
</body>
</html>

this will list all files of the directory MyFolder minus the last 4 digits of the complete filename. of course if the file-extension would be .html it would still include the . (dot) in the filename; furthermore, this code displays the list in an easy to use copy and paste form field.

well, at least it's something, isn't it?

tom.paine

PHP: how to rename a bunch of files / Windows XP

2009-03-09T13:31:00.007+01:00

last weekend i was looking for a solution to rename a bunch of .mp3 files that had underscores and small letters as filenames while i prefered spaces instead of the underscores and capital letters for the individual words of the filename.

fortunately PHP has some built in functions to replace one character with another as well as renaming files altogether. i assumed that someone had already done something like it, so i went looking for a code-snippet on the internet again.

i came across this link.

this person was struggling with the renaming of some image files. i started to try the examples and various explanations as given when i stumbled across the problem that Windows XP is a bit fuzzy about renaming files. just search this document for Permission Denied and you'll know what i mean.

here's one solution:

function rename_win($oldfile,$newfile) {
if (!rename($oldfile,$newfile)) {
if (copy ($oldfile,$newfile)) {
unlink($oldfile);
return TRUE;
}
return FALSE;
}
return TRUE;
}

but that one didn't work for me either. another problem i had was defining the directory that contained the files to be renamed. after a number of struggles i came up with this solution:

first i placed all the .mp3 files into one folder together with the following code-snippet i saved to a file that i named rename-a-file.php.

<?php
// source: http://forum.de.selfhtml.org/archiv/2004/11/t95097/
$handle = opendir ('.');
while ( $file = readdir ( $handle ) ) {
if ( $file == "." or $file == ".." ) {
} else {
if ( rename( $file, (ucwords(str_replace('_',' ',$file).$new)) ) ) {
echo "File $file found <br>";
} else {
echo "File $file not found <br>";
}
}
} closedir( $handle );
?>

running the script at first i didn't see the changes in the folder until i pressed the refresh button. now all the files had no more underscores and capital letters, even the rename-a-file.php which is now called Rename-a-file.php :-)

i keep the Rename-a-file.php file now in a separate folder named rename that i may not accidentally run the script and rename the files in the folder where i kept the copy originally, with all my other .php files.

here is another example, in this case i didn't need to replace any characters; i only needed to change the lowercase to uppercase characters:

<?php
// source: http://forum.de.selfhtml.org/archiv/2004/11/t95097/
$handle = opendir ('.');
while ( $file = readdir ( $handle ) ) {
if ( $file == "." or $file == ".." ) {
} else {
if ( rename( $file, (ucwords($file).$new) ) ) {
echo "File $file found <br>";
} else {
echo "File $file not found <br>";
}
}
} closedir( $handle );
?>

in these examples i have used the following PHP functions:

opendir
readdir
rename
ucwords
str_replace
closedir

Hopefully this may prove helpful to other users, too. Don't overdo it!

tom.paine

A Strange Way To Search

2009-03-09T13:03:00.009+01:00

in my previous article i mentioned a link i came across while searching for a solution to my CSV problem.

i merely entered php csv if in the form field of the Google Search Engine and grabbed the first link on the list.

here's my original search for php csv if.

Have Fun!

tom.paine

PHP: how to make amendments to a CSV file

2009-02-21T15:23:00.005+01:00

in my third article for today i want to write about a problem i had with a massive csv file the other night:

i got this big CSV file which contains over 3300 lines of entries. those entries include a date, but i can't use that date for sorting. first of all it's written among a string of other details; it's written as 20 February 2000 or February 20, 2000 or February 20 2000. that's 3 different ways. i decided that i needed another column in my CSV file where i'd store the date as a sortable value. i found that a leading id-number was followed by 3 whitespaces, and that those 3 whitespaces were otherwise not used in the document. so i decided to open my CSV file with WordPad and change the 3 whitespaces to 2 pipes thus: ||. inbetween those pipes i would store the date value i want to use for sorting. i spent about 2 nights entering the date by copying and pasting it right there when on the second night my screen got stuck again and i had to re-start my computer. i was just paging down the document when it happened; and i thought that i had just saved the document.

after re-starting my laptop i found out that the document had been in the process of saving when the screen got stuck. only a third of this document was still available to me. of course i had some kind of a backup copy, but that was the copy without the pipes. now i had to decide: do i start from scratch or am i going to look around for a script that could maybe do it with PHP which i wanted to do all the while anyway?.

i was a bit upset about all this since it was such a boring job to do and i knew i would be glad once i'd reached the end of the file.

alright, let me search the internet for some kind of a solution that may come close to what i want to achieve. now, what am i going to search for? how about php amend csv file?

in a german forum i found someone who tried to search for results in a CSV document: http://forum.de.selfhtml.org/archiv/2008/5/t171322/.

i started playing with that one. the person couldn't get his script to work.

here's my version of the script:

<pre style="font-family:'Courier New', Courier; font-size:11px; color:blue;">
<?php
define('SEARCH', '1961');
$s = (isset($_GET['s'])) ? $_GET['s'] : SEARCH;
$csv_file_open = fopen("worksheet.csv", "r");
$row = 1;
while ($data = fgetcsv ($csv_file_open, 1000, "|")) {
if (stristr ( $data[2], $s )) {
echo $data[0] . "|" . $s . "-";
echo $data[1] . "|";
echo $data[2] . "\n";
}
$row++;
}
fclose($csv_file_open);
?>
</pre>

this code snippet lets me search my document for the date 1961 (as a default value) and squeezes it between the id number and the other string devided by the pipe symbol, provided it finds the date value i've given. if i want another search result i could add ?s=1980, for instance, as a url parameter after the file name. the problem is, if i search for New York City, it would enter New York City, where found, between those 2 pipe symbols ... hm ... not exactly what i had in mind.

i gave the idea some more thought and came up with a solution that uses $y as a variable for the year, $m as a variable for the month and $d as a variable for the day. hm, that looks pretty good for starters.

as usual, i made a copy of my first example for keepsake and decided to work with a new php file i named csv-add-date.php.

i kept some of the old code, but for the moment i wouldn't need the $s variable.

here's my code in the csv-add-date.php file:

<pre style="font-family:'Courier New', Courier; font-size:11px; color:blue;">
<?php
define('SEARCH', '1961');
$s = (isset($_GET['s'])) ? $_GET['s'] : SEARCH;
$csv_file_open = fopen("clean_sheet.csv", "r");
$row = 1;
while ($data = fgetcsv ($csv_file_open, 1000, "|")) {
include ( 'csv-calculate-year.php' );
include ( 'csv-calculate-01-jan-day.php' );
include ( 'csv-calculate-02-feb-day.php' );
include ( 'csv-calculate-03-mar-day.php' );
include ( 'csv-calculate-04-apr-day.php' );
include ( 'csv-calculate-05-may-day.php' );
include ( 'csv-calculate-06-jun-day.php' );
include ( 'csv-calculate-07-jul-day.php' );
include ( 'csv-calculate-08-aug-day.php' );
include ( 'csv-calculate-09-sep-day.php' );
include ( 'csv-calculate-10-oct-day.php' );
include ( 'csv-calculate-11-nov-day.php' );
include ( 'csv-calculate-12-dec-day.php' );
echo $data[0] . "|" . $y . "-" . $m . "-" . $d;
echo $data[1] . "|";
echo $data[2] . "\n";
$row++;
}
fclose($csv_file_open);
?>
</pre>

i'm also using a new CSV file which i named clean_sheet.csv.

... and here is an excerpt from my csv-calculate-year.php:

<?php
if (stristr ( $data[2], '1958' )) { $y = '1958'; }
elseif (stristr ( $data[2], '1960' )) { $y = '1960'; }
elseif (stristr ( $data[2], '1961' )) { $y = '1961'; }
elseif (stristr ( $data[2], '1962' )) { $y = '1962'; }
elseif (stristr ( $data[2], '1963' )) { $y = '1963'; }
elseif (stristr ( $data[2], '1964' )) { $y = '1964'; }
elseif (stristr ( $data[2], '1965' )) { $y = '1965'; }
elseif (stristr ( $data[2], '1966' )) { $y = '1966'; }
elseif (stristr ( $data[2], '1967' )) { $y = '1967'; }
elseif (stristr ( $data[2], '1968' )) { $y = '1968'; }
elseif (stristr ( $data[2], '1969' )) { $y = '1969'; }
elseif (stristr ( $data[2], '1970' )) { $y = '1970'; }
...
?>

another example from one of the files that calculate the month and day:

<?php
if ( (stristr ( $data[2], ' 1 January ' )) || (stristr ( $data[2], ' January 1 ' )) || (stristr ( $data[2], ' January 1,' )) ) { $m = '01'; $d = '01'; }
elseif ( (stristr ( $data[2], ' 2 January ' )) || (stristr ( $data[2], ' January 2 ' )) || (stristr ( $data[2], ' January 2,' )) ) { $m = '01'; $d = '02'; }
elseif ( (stristr ( $data[2], ' 3 January ' )) || (stristr ( $data[2], ' January 3 ' )) || (stristr ( $data[2], ' January 3,' )) ) { $m = '01'; $d = '03'; }
elseif ( (stristr ( $data[2], ' 4 January ' )) || (stristr ( $data[2], ' January 4 ' )) || (stristr ( $data[2], ' January 4,' )) ) { $m = '01'; $d = '04'; }
elseif ( (stristr ( $data[2], ' 5 January ' )) || (stristr ( $data[2], ' January 5 ' )) || (stristr ( $data[2], ' January 5,' )) ) { $m = '01'; $d = '05'; }
elseif ( (stristr ( $data[2], ' 6 January ' )) || (stristr ( $data[2], ' January 6 ' )) || (stristr ( $data[2], ' January 6,' )) ) { $m = '01'; $d = '06'; }
elseif ( (stristr ( $data[2], ' 7 January ' )) || (stristr ( $data[2], ' January 7 ' )) || (stristr ( $data[2], ' January 7,' )) ) { $m = '01'; $d = '07'; }
elseif ( (stristr ( $data[2], ' 8 January ' )) || (stristr ( $data[2], ' January 8 ' )) || (stristr ( $data[2], ' January 8,' )) ) { $m = '01'; $d = '08'; }
elseif ( (stristr ( $data[2], ' 9 January ' )) || (stristr ( $data[2], ' January 9 ' )) || (stristr ( $data[2], ' January 9,' )) ) { $m = '01'; $d = '09'; }
elseif ( (stristr ( $data[2], ' 10 January ' )) || (stristr ( $data[2], ' January 10 ' )) || (stristr ( $data[2], ' January 10,' )) ) { $m = '01'; $d = '10'; }
...
?>

that last code is included in 12 files one for each month. in each one i had to replace the name of the month, say January with March for instance; and $m = '01 ought to be replaced with $m = '02 in the case of February.

those year and month/day files are included in the csv-add-date.php file using PHP's include function.

this csv-add-date.php file basically loads the clean_sheet.csv file and adds the year, month and day before it displays the content on the screen. it does not write the content to the clean_sheet.csv file. i think i'm going to get that done in another step to another new CSV file ... in case something should go wrong again.

now i can save myself a lot of time ... and boredom ... and repeat the process if necessary. this exercise has also taught me how to search through CSV files and display the results. that may be the topic of another article ...

i hope that this has been of some help to PHP coders.

Good Luck!

tom.paine

PHP: how to delete the last line of a file?

2009-02-21T14:49:00.004+01:00

i'm a little friend of MySQL, but a big friend of writing content to files, text files or csv (comma-separated-value) files. one reason is that i haven't really worked that much with MySQL. i just know the basics and have usually worked with them when setting up a forum or webshop. those scripts are readily available all across the internet.

i was going to set up a table using either XML or PHP's array function with a script that would write either the XML file, or a PHP fie that i could include in another script which in turn could be used to create an XML file or simply HTML.

i looked at various examples and tutorials on the internet on how to manipulate XML files with PHP, but i wasn't too happy about where the new elements would be placed in the XML document eventually.

of course one of the problems would always be: how would i squeeze a new set of elements before the closing root element; or how would i get rid of the ?> at the end of the php file i wish to include somewhere else.

the basic idea i found here: http://bytes.com/groups/php/11847-how-delete-last-line-file.

below is the code snippet from that page that got me going:

$inp = file('yourfile.name');
$out = fopen('yourfile.name','w');
for ($i=0;$i<count($inp)-1;$i++)
fwrite($out,$inp[$i]);
fclose($out);

in this particular case the information of one file is written to another file. (not 100% what i was looking for).

in the end i started using this example:

$my_input = '$my_'.$_GET['my_number'].' = array ( $my_date => \''.$_GET['my_date'].'\', $my_city => \''.$_GET['my_city'].'\', $my_links => \''.$_GET['my_links'].'\', \'$my_update => \''.$_GET['my_update'].'\', );'."\n";
// load the data and delete the line from the array
$lines = file('#_MyIncludeFile.inc.php');
$last = sizeof($lines)-1;
unset($lines[$last]);

// write the new data to the file
$input = fopen('#_MyIncludeFile.inc.php','w');
fwrite($input, implode('', $lines));
fwrite($input, $my_input);
fwrite($input, "?>");
fclose($input);

the $_GET variables are submitted from a form:
<form method="GET" action="WriteToFile.php">
<table>
<tr><td>my my number:</td><td><input type="text" name="my_number" /></td></tr>
<tr><td>my my date:</td><td><input type="text" name="my_date" /></td></tr>
<tr><td>my my city:</td><td><input type="text" name="my_city" /></td></tr>
<tr><td>my my links:</td><td><input type="text" name="my_links" /></td></tr>
<tr><td><input type="hidden" name="my_update" value="<?=time();?>" /><br />
<br /><input type="submit" value="send" /></td></tr>
</table>
</form>

the WriteToFile.php file also contains this form for further input.

this script writes CSV data to a PHP file which can then be used elsewhere for further analyzes.

i think that says it all ... or are there any questions?

Good Luck again!

tom.paine

"Class 'XSLTProcessor' not found"

2009-02-21T13:22:00.019+01:00

the other day i was trying an example from an xsl tutorial and couldn't get it to work, instead i got the error message "Class 'XSLTProcessor' not found".

here is how i solved it:

first i thought my php versions were not up to date. i'm running php4 and php5 with Apache 1.3 under OS Windows XP. i downloaded the Windows Binaries ZIP folders, unpacked them and placed the contents into my c:\php4 and c:\php5 directories respectively and re-started Apache. trying the example again i still got the same error message.

i thought that maybe something wasn't right in the php.ini files. therefore i made a copy of the php.ini-recommended and renamed it php.ini. i opened the php.ini file with WordPad and searched the document for xsl. the search went to the line that reads ;extension=php_xsl.dll. i uncommented that line by removing the semi-colon. now the line reads: extension=php_xsl.dll. After re-starting the server again i tried the script example once more and still got the same error message: "Class 'XSLTProcessor' not found".

alright ... i was wondering which php.ini file php was looking at and saved the following code snippet in a file named test.php:

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

after i ran this test.php file php displayed the current settings and i found that it was not looking for the php.ini file in the c:\php4 or c:\php5 directories at all, but in the c:\WINDOWS directory.

okay ... i looked for that php.ini file in the c:\WINDOWS directory, opend the file, searched for xsl again and made the change as described above.

after re-starting the server and running the script example again, believe it or not, it still gave me that error message. things like that can become quite frustrating, especially if one tests a script in the localhost environment where it won't and at the webhosting server, where it may work.

i'm not giving up so easily. i knew that the xsl extension under windows is a .dll file that can be found in the ext dirctory. and i also knew that this was a feature only introduced with php5. i checked to see if the php_xsl.dll file existed in the ext folder, which it did; then i went back to the php documentation to see how i would have to set up php under windows and came across this comment: http://de2.php.net/manual/de/book.xsl.php#65277.

alright, so i had to change the path to this ext directory.

i had the php.ini file still open (WordPad) and searched for extension_dir. the line read:

extension_dir = "./"

which i changed to read:

extension_dir = "./ext"

re-starting the Apache Server one more time and running the example script once more at last i saw the expected result on the screen and could go to rest happily after all.

so before someone else has to battle with this issue:
first: check to see if the php_xsl.dll file exists;
second: check to see which php.ini file you gotta change;
third: uncomment ;extension=php_xsl.dll and change the extension directory to extension_dir = "./ext" in the relevant php.ini file.

... and don't forget to re-start the Apache Server!

Good Luck!

tom.paine

A Free-Fallin' Introduction to Amazon Web Services

2008-11-08T19:58:00.023+01:00

going through my old email folder the other day i came across Amazon Web Services Newsletter #3 dated 27 August 2003.
the summaries of that newsletter are given below:


===========
1. AWS News
===========

Summary
-------
* Product Description Returned
* Availability in Lite Results
* Japanese Marketplace Access
* Japanese Search
* UPC Search
* Scratchpad for UK
* RSS Feeds
* Shopping Cart Similarities
* ASIN Link Changes
* Honor System Payment API Beta Test
* SOAP Error Response
* Proper use of International Servers

=============
2. AWS Issues
=============

Summary
-------
* Determining Buyability Using Availability
* Developer Token Usage
* Using Older Versions of AWS
* Storing ASINs
* NuSOAP Compatibility

===================
3. In the Community
===================

Summary
-------
* Discussion Board
* Board Summary
* Weekly Chats
* Newsletter
* Featured Sites and Applications
* Press

==================
4. Tips and Tricks
==================

Summary
-------
* Featured style sheet
* Featured code snippet
* Featured tip
* Your contributions welcome
* Local Associates Programs

among Featured Sites and Applications is a link to an article for a Mozilla tool for browing the Amazon Catalog:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mozilla/2003/05/02/casestudy2.html
today i took a look at another chapter referred to at the beginning of this casestudy:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mozilla/2002/12/17/app_dev.html.

That same newsletter also features a link to an interesting article on RSS by author: Ravikiran Muvva at Code101.com:
http://www.code101.com/Code101/DisplayArticle.aspx?cid=41.

going through my email archive looking for more information i discovered that this newsletter was the oldest one i'd kept. some time after that i changed my email account setup and seem to have stored everything related to Amazon Web Services from newsletter #10 onwards. that means i can document quite a history on the development of Amazon Web Services to the present stage.

with this article i would like to guide the reader through an example of how i recently migrated a script from Amazon Web Services 3.0 -- which was the stage we were in on August 27th, 2003 -- to the present version Amazon E-Commerce Service 4.0.

on 6 February 2007 Amazon informed its Web Service Subscribers as follows:


*****************************************************************
AMAZON ECS 3.0 SUNSET: PLEASE MIGRATE TO AMAZON ECS 4.0
*****************************************************************
After many years of useful service, the Amazon E-Commerce Service 3.0
(Amazon ECS 3.0) web service will be shut down on March 31, 2008. Since
the introduction of Amazon ECS 4.0 in late 2004 the usage of Amazon ECS 3.0
has steadily declined as sites and applications have naturally migrated to
Amazon ECS 4.0. In June of 2006 (Version: 2006-06-28), we achieved
complete feature and data parity between the two services and are now
requesting that all existing sites and applications be migrated to Amazon
ECS 4.0 within the next 12 months. Beginning March 31, 2008, we will no
longer be accepting Amazon ECS 3.0 requests. The existing maintenance
effort saved by shutting down Amazon ECS 3.0 will be re-invested into
Amazon ECS 4.0 to allow for the introduction of more features and
capabilities.

Let's take a look at Chapter 6 from Paul Bausch's Amazon Hacks Book:

Hack 80 Program AWS with Perl

below is the original code listing:

#!/usr/bin/perl
# amazon_http.pl
# A typical Amazon Web API Perl script using the XML/HTTP interface
# Usage: amazon_http.pl <keyword>

#Your Amazon developer's token
my $dev_key='insert developer token';

#Your Amazon affiliate code
my $af_tag='insert associate tag';

#Take the keyword from the command-line
my $keyword =shift @ARGV or die "Usage:perl amazon_http.pl <keyword>\n";

#Assemble the URL
my $url = "http://xml.amazon.com/onca/xml3?t=" . $af_tag . "&dev-t=" . $dev_key . "&type=lite&f=xml&mode=books&" . "KeywordSearch=" . $keyword;

use strict;

#Use the XML::Parser  and LWP::Simple Perl modules
use XML::Simple;
use LWP::Simple;

my $content = get($url);
die "Could not retrieve $url" unless $content;

my $xmlsimple = XML::Simple->new(  );
my $response = $xmlsimple->XMLin($content);

foreach my $result (@{$response->{Details}}){
    #Print out the main bits of each result
    print
    join "\n",
    $result->{ProductName}||"no title",
    "ASIN: " . $result->{Asin} . ", " .
    $result->{OurPrice} . "\n\n";
}

as we can see this code is meant to be used from the command line. however, i wanted to execute this code from my host's server using my browser. therefore i changed the following line from

#Take the keyword from the command-line
my $keyword =shift @ARGV or die "Usage:perl amazon_http.pl \n";

#Take the keyword from the command-line
my $keyword = 'Bob%20Dylan';

now my code looks like this:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# amazon_http.pl
# A typical Amazon Web API Perl script using the XML/HTTP interface
# Usage: amazon_http.pl <keyword>

BEGIN {
$| = 1;
open (STDERR, ">&STDOUT");
print qq~Content-type: text/html\n\n~;
}

#Your Amazon developer's token
my $dev_key='D23VNPYO8ODZL6';

#Your Amazon affiliate code
my $af_tag='downinthefloo-20';

#Take the keyword from the command-line
my $keyword = 'Bob%20Dylan';

#Assemble the URL
my $url = "http://xml.amazon.com/onca/xml3?t=" . $af_tag . "&dev-t=" . $dev_key . "&type=lite&f=xml&mode=books&" . "KeywordSearch=" . $keyword;

print "<a href=\"".$url."\" target=\"new\">The Request</a><br> <br>";

use strict;

#Use the XML::Parser  and LWP::Simple Perl modules
use XML::Simple;
use LWP::Simple;

my $content = get($url);
die "Could not retrieve $url" unless $content;

my $xmlsimple = XML::Simple->new(  );
my $response = $xmlsimple->XMLin($content);

foreach my $result (@{$response->{Details}}){
    #Print out the main bits of each result
    print
    join "\n",
    $result->{ProductName}||"no title",
    "ASIN: " . $result->{Asin} . ", " .
    $result->{OurPrice} . "\n\n";
}

other differences to the original code snippet are:
a) use of the Warning switch -w;
b) use of a code snippet that will allow me to display the details of a possible error 500 message if there is any;
c) inclusion of a link to Amazon's xml document in case of:
ca) no items being displayed;
cb) an error message being displayed;

alright: the script has been uploaded to the cgi-bin folder on the server and we are able to access the script using our preferred browser: http://localhost/cgi-bin/amazon_http_old.pl (i added _old to the file name since i know it's not gonna work and i got a new version ready to go :-) )

running the script will display the following error message:

The Request

Could not retrieve http://xml.amazon.com/onca/xml3?t=downinthefloo-20&dev-t=D23VNPYO8ODZL6&type=lite&f=xml&mode=books&KeywordSearch=Bob%20Dylan at PATH/TO/htdocs/cgi-bin/amazon_http_old.pl line 33.

where The Request is an active link to Amazon's xml document:

once we click on that link to see what went wrong we are being re-directed to an error page:


We're Sorry - Service Gone

Amazon Ecommerce Web Service 3.0 has been deprecated after many years of useful service
on March 31st 2008. Please upgrade to the Amazon Associates Web Service 4.0 as detailed
in the migration guide. Please visit Amazon Associates Web Service Developer Forum for more
information. If you came to this page from an RSS feed, visit Amazon's Product RSS Feeds
page for an upgrade.

visiting the migration guide we can quickly detect a few things that have changed; for instance: the base url:

http://xml.amazon.com/onca/xml3

would now be

http://ecs.amazonaws.com/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService

the Developer Token (dev-t) has now become the AWSAccessKeyId;
the search "mode" would now be a SearchIndex value;
the request "type" has in the past been lite or heavy;
the xml feed result would display more details with the heavy type than with the lite type.
this request parameter is now being named "ResponseGroup" and allows for a number of various feed results.
the main ResponseGroups are Small, Medium and Large.
to be on the safe side when we now alter our request url we are going to use &ResponseGroup=Large.
i should mention here that all those terms are case-sensitive.
when we go back to our migration guide once again for the KeywordSearch paramter we find now that Amazon states two values instead of just one: SearchIndex, Keywords; this means for a KeywordSearch we also require the SearchIndex value; since our mode was books, our SearchIndex should be Books (in this case with a capital 'B'), also the SearchIndex values are case-sensitive. furthermore, these SearchIndices vary from country to country (locale to locale).
our parameters now look like this: &SearchIndex=Books&Keywords=Bob%20Dylan. with ECS 4.0 two further parameters have been introduced, of which the first one (Operation) is required, the second one (Version) is not obligatory.
to lookup the details of a single item we would use the parameter &Operation=ItemLookup; however, we would need the ASIN or ISBN number of that item, but since we do not know such a number yet we will use the &Operation=ItemSearch parameter.

Amazon is continually adding features for making ECS requests. recently, for example, they have added links to add items to a WishList, Baby-, or WeddingRegistry, or to Tell-A-Friend to their xml response documents. sometimes when they have added a new product range to a particular locale it may be added to the list of available SearchIndex values. to use these added features it may be necessary to add the paramter &Version=2008-08-19 to the request url.

here you may find the latest Developer Guide with many more details than i would be able to cover within this article.

it looks like we can now start to assemble our new request url:

well, i forgot about the associate id: in the past that used to be just "t"; that has now become: "AssociateTag".


http://ecs.amazonaws.com/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService
&AssociateTag=downinthefloo-20
&AWSAccessKeyId=1BZ9VRA5AKNBPYJM6YR2
&Operation=ItemSearch
&SearchIndex=Books
&ResponseGroup=Large
&Keywords=Bob%20Dylan

let's see if this request will give us a new xml feed document (try this link): The Request.

it worked: this time we see no error message but the xml feed document we expected and can now analyze the elements we need within the foreach loop of our script in order to display some items in our browser window:

here are the details i have chosen for my short example:


foreach my $result (@{$response->{Items}->{Item}}){
    #Print out the main bits of each result
    print
    join
    "\n",
    "<a href=\"".$result->{LargeImage}->{URL}."\" target=\"image\"><img src=\"".$result->{MediumImage}->{URL},"\" border=\"0\" alt=\"".$result->{ItemAttributes}->{Title}."\"></a>",
    "<br>Title: ".$result->{ItemAttributes}->{Title},
    "<br>Author: ".$result->{ItemAttributes}->{Author},
    "<br>Binding: ".$result->{ItemAttributes}->{Binding},
    "<br>ASIN: ".$result->{ASIN},
    "<br>Price: ".$result->{ItemAttributes}->{ListPrice}->{FormattedPrice} || "price unavailable",
    "<br><a href=\"".$result->{DetailPageURL}."\" target=\"_blank\">buy now</a><hr>",
    "<br>\n\n";
}

my complete code example now looks as follows:


#!/usr/bin/perl
# amazon_http.pl
# A typical Amazon Web API Perl script using the XML/HTTP interface
# Usage: amazon_http.pl <keyword>

#Your Amazon developer's token
my $dev_key='1BZ9VRA5AKNBPYJM6YR2';

#Your Amazon affiliate code
my $af_tag='downinthefloo-20';

#Take the keyword from the command-line
my $keyword = 'Bob%20Dylan';

#Assemble the URL
my $url = "http://ecs.amazonaws.com/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService&AssociateTag=" . $af_tag . "&AWSAccessKeyId=" . $dev_key . "&Operation=ItemSearch&SearchIndex=Books&&Keywords=" . $keyword . "&ResponseGroup=Large";

print "<a href=\"".$url."\" target=\"new\">The Request</a><br> <br>";

use strict;

#Use the XML::Parser  and LWP::Simple Perl modules
use XML::Simple;
use LWP::Simple;

my $content = get($url);
die "Could not retrieve $url" unless $content;

my $xmlsimple = XML::Simple->new(  );
my $response = $xmlsimple->XMLin($content);
foreach my $result (@{$response->{Items}->{Item}}){
    #Print out the main bits of each result
    print
    join
    "\n",
    "<a href=\"".$result->{LargeImage}->{URL}."\" target=\"image\"><img src=\"".$result->{MediumImage}->{URL},"\" border=\"0\" alt=\"".$result->{ItemAttributes}->{Title}."\"></a>",
    "<br>Title: ".$result->{ItemAttributes}->{Title},
    "<br>Author: ".$result->{ItemAttributes}->{Author},
    "<br>Binding: ".$result->{ItemAttributes}->{Binding},
    "<br>ASIN: ".$result->{ASIN},
    "<br>Price: ".$result->{ItemAttributes}->{ListPrice}->{FormattedPrice} || "price unavailable",
    "<br><a href=\"".$result->{DetailPageURL}."\" target=\"_blank\">buy now</a><hr>",
    "<br>\n\n";
}

at last you can see what the result of this short script will look like on the screen:
http://www.downintheflood.com/cgi-bin/amazon_http.pl

hope you enjoyed this rather short example from a long article!

tom.paine

The Wish List Widget

2008-05-08T18:07:00.012+02:00

today the Wish List Widget has officially been published: visit downintheflood.com or outlawblues.de. one issue that wasn't mentioned in the process are the css style details used to display the Wish List on the right side of the screen, so i just decided to write about them here:

first i would like to display the external stylesheet used to display the Wish List as seen at the above two links:

#wishlist_div              {position:absolute; top:0; right:0;}
#wishlist_img              {font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:10px; color:#CC0000;}
#wishlist_price            {font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:10px; color:#0000FF;}
#wishlist_product          {font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:11px; color:#0000FF;}
a#wishlist_ahref:link      {color:#CC0000; font-family:Tahoma, sans-serif, Arial; font-size:11px; text-decoration:none;}
a#wishlist_ahref:hover     {color:#CC0000; font-family:Tahoma, sans-serif, Arial; font-size:11px; text-decoration:underline;}
a#wishlist_ahref:active    {color:#FFFF00; font-family:Tahoma, sans-serif, Arial; font-size:11px; text-decoration:underline;}
a#wishlist_ahref:visited   {color:#FF0000; font-family:Tahoma, sans-serif, Arial; font-size:11px; text-decoration:underline;}

you may notice that the styles all consist of a id for wishlist. this has been done to avoid any conflict with existing CMS styles. in addition to that wishlist links are being referred to with the id wishlist_ahref; similarily the wishlist_div and wishlist_img id's refer to the relevant <div> and <img> elements. there are several more: the following css styles display all the available id's that can be used in conjunction with the Wish List Widget; either from an external css file of from within the html page:

@charset "utf-8";
a#wishlist_ahref:link    { font-weight:bold; text-decoration:none; color:#000066; }
a#wishlist_ahref:visited { font-weight:bold; text-decoration:none; color:#003366; }
a#wishlist_ahref:hover   { text-decoration:underline; color:#AB0000; }
a#wishlist_ahref:active  { text-decoration:underline; color:#CC0000; }
#wishlist_div            { background-color:#339A99; width:355px; font-family:Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size:8pt; position:absolute; top:0px; left:0px; }
#wishlist_img            { background-color:#0000FF; padding-top:5px; padding-bottom:3px; padding-left:8px; padding-right:15px; }
#wishlist_list_price     { color:#990000; }
#wishlist_price          { color:#AB0000; font-size:10pt;}
#wishlist_product        { background-color:#CC0000; color:#F6F6F6; font-size:10pt; font-weight:bold; }
#wishlist_table          { background-color:#FFFF80; width:250px; padding:5px; }
#wishlist_td_img         { background-color:#CC00CC; width:150px; padding:5px; text-align:center; }
#wishlist_td_product     { background-color:#FFFFFF; width:150px; padding:0px; }
#wishlist_your_price     { color:#0000FF; }

to see what the colorful layout looks like when the above styles are being used take a look at Mr Rat's Wishlist; if you think that i may have overdone it somewhat on the colors, it is obvious that this has only been done so for demonstration purposes. take special note of the @charset "utf-8"; on the first line of this css style section!

the JavaScript uses PHP in the background to retrieve the Wish List from Amazon's server by making use of Amazon Associates Web Services features. the XML result returned by Amazon is utf-8 encoded, thus the page needs to be utf-8 encoded in order to display special characters properly.

if you use

#wishlist_div              {position:absolute; top:0; left:0;}

from the first css example, instead of

#wishlist_div              {position:absolute; top:0; right:0;}

it will display the Wish List Widget on the left side of the screen instead of the right side;

from the optical point of view it looks better to have the image to the left side when the Widget is displayed on the left side of the screen, and on the right side should the Widget be displayed on the right side of the screen. that's why there is a choice in the setup file to choose between left and right; two separate PHP files are being used to display it so.

some users may have a question about the slot(s); i called them that for lack of a better explanation. it's a kind of a place to fit in. if a growing number of users should implement the Widget on their websites, the demand on one file could slow down the Widget to show up, especially since the information has first to be gathered from Amazon's servers. that's why i have spread the files over altogether 52 directories, 26 on each site mentioned above so people can choose a different site or directory and it will not all come out of one pot. there's no other purpose than that. besides that: Amazon has made it obligatory that one can make only 1 request to their servers per second; that means the request sleeps for a sec before being processed.

i guess that's all that's gotta be said about this project besides what's already been mentioned elsewhere, if so. ... the story continues ...

tom.paine

AJAX: Online-Editor

2008-04-24T19:35:00.006+02:00

in today's article i would like to introduce the reader to the AJAX: Online-Editor which i mentioned in yesterday's post referring to the book Praxiswissen Ajax.

since the book and the source code are in german i translated it (hopefully all of it) into english and made it available for download at http://www.downintheflood.com/download/ajax-online-editor.zip

you can see it also online at: http://www.downintheflood.com/source/ajax/

however, in order to avoid people entering or deleting any code or files, or adding files with content that i wouldn't want there i have removed the [New File] [Save File] [Save As ...] [Delete File] buttons from my online application. furthermore i have set the textarea field on the right to readonly. just the [update] button works.

but i won't leave you that much in the dark here, i have created a few screenshots so you can roughly see what it looks like. if you are going to use it online you should, however, keep the folder contents in a password protected area where those users whom you'd grant access to the application will have the liberty to create, alter or delete files.

the first screen shot shows the layout of the page as it comes up on the screen the first time, that is, when you load the index.html into your browser (the application requires PHP4).

once you have clicked on a file name on the left side of the screen, the content of that file shows up in the textarea element on the right side of the screen as seen below:

if you want to delete a file an alert message asks you if you really want to delete this file:

if you confirm the O.K. the contents will be removed from the screen, the file will be removed from the file list on the left and a message appears in the status bar at the bottom of the editor that the file has been deleted:

with the last screenshot i wanted to display the error message that comes up when the client (browser) is unable to load the list from the server. the browsers behave differently, Firefox pops up an alert window while Internet Explorer will show the yellow warning triangle on the bottom left of the screen. here is the screenshot with the blank editor unable to load the files:

i changed the layout somewhat from the original layout. the original is smaller. i also changed the color setting of the original layout. if you want to use the smaller version you can download the stylesheet at this link.

now i hope you'll enjoy this little toy and learn about AJAX by studying the code in greater detail and using it perhaps in other applications.

until then.

tom.paine

JavaScript ... PHP Array sorting plus ...

2008-04-23T20:54:00.009+02:00

after i've spent several hours last sunday always battling to insert the code snippets into this blog without having a special facility to show code content i decided to upload one of the old source viewer scripts that i had in my archive and use links to the source viewer in future to highlight the code examples ... unless they are less complex.

in today's article i would like to take a brief look at JavaScript examples as well as the various effects of sorting an array with php.

let me start with the php examples, because they are all ready for take off:
the results of this source code can be seen here: http://www.downintheflood.com/source/examples.php5.

at the top you see the example array and below you see the various sort functions to sort the array forwards and backwards and by key forwards and backwards or naturally.

there is another issue i worked on today: one of my bigger projects involves the capturing of the Song Set Lists to all the Bob Dylan Concerts into a MySql Database. i got all the information from PDF files from another site and just needed to copy the set lists into text files for later use, when i want to insert them with the help of php (hopefully) somewhat speedily and automatically into the database.

but to capture them first i had the option of copying and pasting into a text file and save each one using Save As, but i found that to tedious after a while and was scared to make mistakes, which is what happens quickly when you have to perform a repititive function.

i got this book (here he comes with his books again) Praxiswissen Ajax

and in this book there is a chapter about an Ajax Online Editor (short: aoe). i have somewhat re-designed the layout a little to fill the whole screen with it for my purposes. (i will discuss this example in another article.) this editor uses php to read the files of a particular directory on the left part of the screen; one clicks on a filename and the contents of the file appear on the right side of the screen.

i show you a screenshot:

now i wanted all the files to exist already so i wrote myself a little code snippet that would write empty files with the names ready-made from an array in split seconds. and here is the code (the filenames just have reference numbers):

<?php
$id_number = array(
'29930',
'29940',
'29950',
'29960',
'29970',
'29980',
'29990',
'30000',
'30010',
'30020',
'30030',
'30040',
'30050',
'30060',
'30070',
'30080',
);
$inhalt = utf8_encode(" ");
foreach($id_number as $value) {
$filename = $value.".txt";
$fh = fopen($filename, "w+");
fwrite($fh,$inhalt);
fclose($fh);
}
?>

this code snippet enters a blank space (" ") into each of those files.

my next problem came when i wanted to copy those files as a backup from the server, where i will need them, to my computer. as i came back from having a shower an error message awaited me that the server had been reset and the copying had not been completed. so i thought alright, let me create a zip file and download them as a zip file. using the google search engine again i went to look for create zip files using php. i downloaded 4 examples, the last one was in php5 and i decided to try that one first and it didn't work for some reason, so i discarded that one already. then i tested the third one which looked best and easiest for me. it requires PEAR but that wasn't a big problem either. it further requires the PEAR Archive_ZIP Package.

downloaded those, unpacked and copied them to the server. then i got the code working which i took from PHPit. i made a few adjustments to it, like the path to pear and of it went. here is the code snippet i used:

<?php
// Original Source: http://www.phpit.net/article/creating-zip-tar-archives-dynamically-php/
include ('../pear/archive_zip.php');

// Create instance of Archive_Zip class, and pass the name of our zipfile
$zipfile = New Archive_Zip('bdcdb.zip');

// Create a list of files and directories
$list = array(
'00003.txt',
'00005.txt',
'00007.txt',
'......txt',
);

// Create the zip file
$zipfile->create($list);

echo 'Zip file created';
?>

of course my list has over 3.000 items, so the $list array is accordingly much longer. i waited a few seconds and then i was able to download my text files in a zip folder named bdcdb which stands for Bob Dylan Concert Data Base.

End of Project.

now for the JavaScript.

i think it's best to create a JavaScript file (i have JavaScript snippets all over my pages as well as in files). and here is an example.

the first example you can see working on the source.php file if you click into the field with the url. it clears the text in that field.

the second example you can use with a URL like
<a href="http://someurl.com" onClick="MyWindow(this.href,'name','1000','650','yes');return false">some url</a>. it opens the link in a new window at the size of 1000x650.

the third example uses a copy and paste button (also to be seen at the lower section of the source.php file). in Firefox it only highlights the code, but using the Internet Explorer it actually puts the code into the copy and paste cache. i have explained the usage of that code already on the source.php page.

the fourth example you can use with the <select> tag of a drop-down menu as shown in the example in the source.php file.

for all these examples to work you only need one line of code in the <head> section of your .html or .php file, and that is:
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="javascript.code.lib.js"></script>. of course your JavaScript file's name is javascript.code.lib.js :-)

another book i'm learning from at the moment is PHP und MySQL -- Dynamik für Ihre Webseiten

one thing i learnt from it is if i want to use a variable within html and i'm just outside of the php parameters i can use <?=$color;?> instead of <?php echo $color; ?> as i used to in the past.

and that rounds off today's article on code snippets. stay tuned and see you soon.

tom.paine

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

2008-04-20T16:18:00.004+02:00

it's been recommended to me by some friends to start a blog on code snippets since i'm not just into music and literature, but also spend a considerable amount of time on the computer trying to figure out how i can make a script work that i've seen somewhere or whatever the case may be. i guess first i gotta go through a short and sweet amount of history on how i teach myself:

when i started off in 2001 someone showed me how to figure out the source code by clicking view --> view source code on the Netscape 4.7 browser at the time. first i created mostly pages with links of websites i liked and which i'd visit regularly, but which could also be of interested to others on a particular subject. in one such case i created a webpage for a friend of mine and she asked me to insert the right-click JavaScript.

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">

</script>

that was the code i used in my page; i found that code snippet on the internet; she used a different code at the time and i noticed it wasn't working in Netscape, so i asked "what code are you talking about?" well, and that's how i got started using JavaScript.

in one of my more complicated examples i created a page with 4 framesets, whereby if one moves the cursor over a link to a music album, the album cover changes accordingly in the other frame. that was a nightmare which took me about 8 hours to resolve. here again i searched around on the internet to find a suitable code snippet.

<frameset cols="313,*" border="0" framespacing="0" frameborder="0">
<frameset rows="434,*" border="0" framespacing="0" frameborder="0">
<frame src="AppleBobDylan.html" scrolling="auto" name="Think different.">
<frame src="DylanAlbumImages.html" scrolling="auto" name="DylanAlbumImages">
</frameset>
<frameset rows="9%,*" border="0" framespacing="0" frameborder="0">
<frame src="DylanAlbumHeader.html" scrolling="auto" name="DylanAlbumHeader">
<frame src="DylanAlbumLinks.html" scrolling="auto" name="DylanAlbumLinks">
</frameset>
</frameset>
<noframes>
<body>
</body>
</noframes>

the code snippet that would have to be used with the link would be:

onmouseover="parent.DylanAlbumImages.document.albumcover.src='CURRENT_COVER.jpg'"
onmouseout="parent.DylanAlbumImages.document.albumcover.src='DEFAULT_IMAGE.jpg'"

CURRENT_COVER is here only sort of a variable for the image related to the current cover. those have been preloaded at the head of the script in the .html file that contains the links.

but what am i writing about? you thought this article would be about Amazon Web Services; well it is, we're slowly getting there.

before i get into that i should mention a few books that may be essential to the cause:

Programming PHP

Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL

Learning Perl

Programming Perl

and of course my main guide: the AWS Book titled: The Web Developer's Guide To Amazon E-Commerce Service: Developing Web Applications Using Amazon Web Services And PHP

this last book not only helps you to learn php but also apply it already in reallife applications. example scripts can be seen as well as downloaded from www.awsbook.com.

i could go more into details about books, Ajax Hacks, Amazon Hacks (now somewhat outdated due to the termination of Amazon Web Services 3.0) and Google Hacks or any other from the Hacks series.

enough of this! now let me give an example of how i sometimes work. you can find already lots of usable code related to Amazon Web Services on the internet, you don't have to write your own. but you should at least have a fundamental knowledge of how Amazon Web Services works:

Step 1: you formulate your request url
Step 2: you send that request to Amazon's server (using your browser)
Step 3: Amazon returns a document with a XML structure related to your request, if neccessary with an error message which tells you what parameter was wrong.
Step 4: you write some kind of script that can turn the XML document into something more sensible to the visitors of your website.

the start of your url will always look like this:
http://ecs.amazonaws.com/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService&AWSAccessKeyId=[YOUR ID]
http://ecs.amazonaws.co.uk/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService&AWSAccessKeyId=[YOUR ID]
http://ecs.amazonaws.ca/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService&AWSAccessKeyId=[YOUR ID]
http://ecs.amazonaws.de/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService&AWSAccessKeyId=[YOUR ID]
http://ecs.amazonaws.fr/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService&AWSAccessKeyId=[YOUR ID]
http://ecs.amazonaws.jp/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService&AWSAccessKeyId=[YOUR ID]

you obtain the AWSAccessKeyId from Amazon and it's the same for all these locales.

next you need an Operation (no no, don't panik, not at the hospital! you should remember that these terms are case-sensitive!) for instance Operation=ItemSearch. you find those in the documentation from Amazon. i don't want to get into those details too much here.

certain Operations (like ItemSearch) require certain parameters that are a must. in this case for instance a SearchIndex is required. a SearchIndex is something like Books, DVD or VHS. the SearchIndex values vary from country to country (locale to locale); for instance, MusicalInstruments you get only under the US locale whereas Hobbies you will only find under the JP locale (for Japan). apropos Japan: i did not make a mistake with the url above, it is .jp and not .co.jp in this case.

now what are we searching for? one can search for a particular Author under Books, or Artist under Music, Actor or Director among DVD and VHS. the simplest would be the Keywords search (one can also use a BrowseNode, but who knows those offhand?).

we're almost there. we could add a Sort parameter or even which Version of Amazon Web Services we'd prefer to use in our request, but those will be returned as default parameters and we don't have to worry about that for now.

i almost forgot about the ResponseGroup: the information you're about to get depends on the ResponseGroup, Small, Medium or Large are the basic ones.

we got everything? let's give it a try, shall we?

http://ecs.amazonaws.com/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService&AWSAccessKeyId=[where's your id?]&Operation=ItemSearch&SearchIndex=Books&Keywords=Bob%20Dylan&ResponseGroup=Large

O.K. that work's after a number of false starts (i hate links that don't work!)

now that we've had the basics i will show an example i found on the internet and changed it to suit my own purposes. nothing spectacular!

i found this code snippet in the Ajax Community:

<?php
class aws {
    function aws($aki, $asin) {
        $fs=fopen("http://ecs.amazonaws.de/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService&AWSAccessKeyId=". $aki ."&AssociateTag=22&Version=2006-09-11&Operation=ItemLookup&ItemId=". $asin ."&ResponseGroup=Medium,Offers","r");
        $this->responseXML=simplexml_load_string(fgets($fs));
    }

    function getValue($pValue) {
        $myValue = '';
        eval (  '$myValue = $this->responseXML->'.$pValue.';' );
        if(empty($myValue)) $myValue='n.V.' ;
        return $myValue;
    }
}

$produkt = new aws('AccessKeyId', 'Produkt ASIN');
$preis =  $produkt->getValue('Items->Item->Offers->Offer->OfferListing->Price->FormattedPrice');
$bild  =  $produkt->getValue('Items->Item->LargeImage->URL');

echo '<img src="'.$bild.'" />';
echo 'Preis: '. $preis;
?>

and this is what i made of it:

<?php
class aws {
function aws($aki, $affid, $asin) {
        $aki = '1BZ9VRA5AKNBPYJM6YR2';
        $affid = 'downinthefl04-21';
        $asin = '3100744314';
        $fs=fopen("http://ecs.amazonaws.de/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService&AWSAccessKeyId=". $aki ."&AssociateTag=". $affid ."&Version=2006-09-11&Operation=ItemLookup&ItemId=". $asin ."&ResponseGroup=Medium,Offers","r");
        $this->responseXML=simplexml_load_string(fgets($fs));
    }

    function getValue($pValue) {
        $myValue = '';
        eval (  '$myValue = $this->responseXML->'.$pValue.';' );
        if(empty($myValue)) $myValue='n.V.' ;
        return $myValue;
    }
}

$produkt = new aws('AccessKeyId', 'AffiliateId', 'Produkt ASIN');
$preis =  $produkt->getValue('Items->Item->Offers->Offer->OfferListing->Price->FormattedPrice');
$bild  =  $produkt->getValue('Items->Item->LargeImage->URL');
$link  =  $produkt->getValue('Items->Item->DetailPageURL');
$titel =  $produkt->getValue('Items->Item->ItemAttributes->Title');
echo '<img src="'.$bild.'" /><br />'."\n";
echo '<a href="'.$link.'" target="new">'.$titel.'</a><br />'."\n";
echo '<a href="http://ecs.amazonaws.de/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService&AWSAccessKeyId=1BZ9VRA5AKNBPYJM6YR2&AssociateTag=downinthefl04-21&Version=2006-09-11&Operation=ItemLookup&ItemId=3100744314&ResponseGroup=Medium,Offers" target="new">XML Dokument</a><br />'."\n";
echo 'Preis: '. str_replace('EUR','',$preis);
?>

i added my affiliate id and i display a link below the large image, as well as a link to the request i made. i always do this as an easy reference in case nothing shows up. the script is written in php5 which you can easily recognize by the use of the simplexml_load_string function.

writing this all up has now taken me a considerable amount of time; so i'm gonna knock off with a last link to the PHP: Documentation where the reader will find the simplexml_load_string as well as the simplexml_load_file functions explained in greater detail together with examples from other users. for some resource links on Amazon Web Services you can also visit my documentary.

Cheers for now!

tom.paine

2005-07-13T18:01:00.000+02:00

Welcome to the first DownInTheFlood.com Publication

DownInTheFlood.com was established in 2001 as one of many a website featuring news items on Bob Dylan, performing artist, so named by Paul Williams, author of a series of books titled "Bob Dylan: Performing Artist", perhaps the most interesting of biographies ever written about Bob Dylan as an artist by any author. meanwhile, the artist has begun to publish his own account of how life felt "way back when" in his book Chronicles, Volume 1, a book written with as much feeling as we know from songs like "Girl from the North Country", "North Country Blues", "Boots of Spanish Leather", any of these early songs, compassion felt in lots of his early work. ... and in this first autobiography. his other books include "Tarantula", his Lyrics have been published on various occasions; the first volume in 1973, then again in 1985, and at the end of last year covering the words to his music from 1962-2001. also in 1973 a book titled "Writings and Drawings of Bob Dylan" was published by Alfred A. Knopf. latest releases include authors like Greil Marcus & Dave Van Ronk who maintains that Bob Dylan stole the version of "House of the Rising Sun" from him; the song appears on Bob Dylan's self-titled first album. a remastered version of this album has just been released on CD.

the works of the following authors may be equally worthwhile mentioning: Clinton Heylin's "Bob Dylan:Behind the Shades Revisited", Howard Sounes' "Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan" and David Hajdu's "Positively 4th Street", Oliver Trager's "Keys to the Rain" serves as a comprehensive encyclopedia on Bob Dylan.

surely the last words on Bob Dylan have not yet been spoken ... or written.

perhaps the best resource website besides bobdylan.com is expectingrain.com, which recently turned 10 (even Rolling Stone responded to the occasion). the tour aficionados visit Bill Pagel's Pages.

as for DownInTheFlood.com: the site has grown in size and content over the years. the further development of the internet has encouraged experiments with ever new possibilities in the applications of scripts and codes beyond HTML. so this is the first attempt to try out the latest craze named "RSS-Feed".

there is also a wide range of interesting items gathered into a range of stores to support DownInTheFlood.com, the latest being the "Africa Store".

a range of page templates has been developed to support MrRat's "Amazon Products Feed" script, which extracts information through the Amazon.com Webservice, now named "E-Commerce Service", in short, ECS.

however, one of the first and still strong inspirations to the graphical development of DownInTheFlood.com come from artsandmusicpa.com. you may also wish to check some of her other sites: blues101.org, milfordmusic.net, nepablues.org.

until at last you come home to my own blues page.

the idea to start this project off has been inspired by a link in an article published in the New York Times, headlined: "In New Jersey, Blog Carnival Is WWWeird", the site: Carnival of the New Jersey Bloggers.

... and that rounds off this article for today.