IntelliJ Ant build.xml

My previous method had me setting up various properties, determining the OS being used and then targeting the compression of the javascript in the ant build.xml file. The process worked, but it was ugly and every OS had a different target for calling closure-compiler.

After several hours of reading the closure-compiler documentation, I happened to come across just what I was looking for (by accident). Closure-compiler now has a class for compiling in Ant [com.google.javascript.jscomp.ant.CompileTask]. What a find for me.

So here is how it works.

First you need to define the jscomp task-

<taskdef name="jscomp" classname="com.google.javascript.jscomp.ant.CompileTask"
classpath="${basedir}/closure-compiler/build/compiler.jar"/>

This creates a task named jscomp using compiler jar and class named CompileTask located in the Closure-Compiler directory.

Next we need to create our target. I simply named mine “compile”. Nested inside the target I call the jscomp task passing it the attributes. This is simple, but was tricky as some of the values passed to the attributes differ from the documented values.

For example, the compilation level will accept the following values “WHITESPACE_ONLY”,”SIMPLE_OPTIMIZATIONS”,”ADVANCED_OPTIMIZATIONS” via command line, but with the class the attribute values are “whitespace”,”simple”,”advanced”.

Finally nested inside of the jscomp task, we define our “externs” and “source” files. In my case I didn’t really need to define any externs, but for a demonstration purposes, I have provided it the code.

<target name="compile">

    <jscomp compilationLevel="simple" warning="verbose" debug="false"
            output="${assetsPath}/myfile.min.js">

        <externs dir="${basedir}/closure-compiler/contrib/externs">
            <file name="jquery-1.7.js"/>
        </externs>

        <sources dir="${assetsPath}">
            <file name="myfile.js"/>
        </sources>

    </jscomp>

</target>

That should be all you need inside your ant build file to create your compressed/minified javascript code.

One particular item that has always flustered me in the realm of report generating is the dreaded “divide by zero” error. I have been using ColdFusion for handling this through a method I call isZero(value, return_if_zero_value) where I pass it a value and a value I want returned if value is zero. This has never really been a good solution as the divide value is often something it should not be (should be zero).

I was frustrated with my inability to resolve this correctly and decided to spend some time trying to solve this.

I know that my select statement below will fail when t1.IMPRESSIONS == 0

SELECT (CONVERT(DECIMAL(10,5), t1.CLICKS) / CONVERT(DECIMAL(10,5), t1.IMPRESSIONS)) * 100 AS CLICK_RATE

I scoured through the SQL documentation and after about 20-30 minutes, I had one of those ‘Eureka!’ moments. What if I could use IsNULL() method in SQL? If I could return null for a value, then maybe I could use IsNULL() to return zero when the divisor is zero. The only way I could do this is to return a null value when the divisor is zero, then correct? Enter the NULLIf() method.

IsNULL( DIVIDEND / NULLIf(DIVISOR, 0), 0)

I thought I just created something ground breaking, but in fact another few google searches and I found that this is really the most common way for most experienced developers to write out the SQL. Here is the end result of the SELECT statement.

SELECT (IsNULL(CONVERT(DECIMAL(10,5), t1.CLICKS) / NULLIf(CONVERT(DECIMAL(10,5), t1.IMPRESSIONS), 0), 0)
* 100 AS CLICK_RATE

I hope that this will help someone in the future. I know I could have used it about a year ago.

The issue of privacy has come up often lately in the media. Privacy advocates have concerns about the amount of personal information aggregated by companies like Facebook and Google and shared with third parties.

The concerns are legitimate and although I am not as concerned as much as the advocates, it is always on the back of my mind when I provide personal information online. So why this rant?

I think that these companies have VERY BAD PRIVACY policy. To many companies make you Opt-Out of their sharing of your personal data. Many companies require that you give them a reasonable amount of personal information in order to conduct business. The problem is that they often will turn around and monetize this data by selling your personal information to third party affiliates and non-affiliates.

One example of a company and this process is MLB.com. I am a big baseball fan and I have purchased several products through the MLB.com site. What does MLB.com do to such a great customer? They provide my information to third parties. I was somewhat tolerant of this process until recently when I received an email from Bank of America via MLB.com. I have a justifiable intense animosity for Bank of America and their egregious business practices. I immediately clicked the link provided in the email to opt-out of the Bank of America email list. Low and behold the process was broken and I was given an error every time I tried to opt-out. I don’t believe that it was intentional by either MLB.com or Bank of America, but I can tell you it is indicative of Bank of America and their customer service.

Another example of this was a recent letter I received from Santander Consumer USA for a loan that was transferred to them from CitiFinancial Auto. I don’t have much control of this process so unless I just pay off the loan ahead of schedule, I am forced to abide by their business policy and privacy policy. Now what Santander Consumer USA is doing is perfectly legal, but that does not make it ‘good business’. Santander will (unless you are a resident of California and or Vermont) automatically Opt-in your account. You are required to mail in a form to Santander Consumer USA to opt-out. There is no option via the telephone or online.

I don’t know that it is necessary for states to pass new laws, but instead the best-practice of companies should be to opt-out your account and make it easy for users to opt-in. They could market the benefits and let consumers opt-in on their own.

I for one will continue to take my business to companies that automatically opt-out your account (like my local bank) and will avoid companies that continue to monetize my personal information.

This year my wife and I have both resolved to return to our healthy dietary and exercise plan of 2009 in hopes to lose weight and feel great. We both use the Weight Watchers® plan. This plan was easy to use and there were a lot of tools we could use to track our meals.

Of great use to us was a body planner that my wife purchased for both of us. The planner allowed us to log meals, activities and exercise. Using this in conjunction with the Weight Watchers® tools (calculators and slide charts), we were able to log our meals and activities with an easy way of monitoring if we were ‘taking in’ more then we were ‘working off’.

November of 2011 Weight Watchers changed their calculations and if we want to both follow the new plan we need to purchase new tools. Me being the curmudgeony ole miser that I am, I didn’t really feel it was necessary to purchase all new tools for both of us, so I decided to let my wife spend the money and I would do something even better. Create a new WordPress plug-in.

So here it is folks. WordPress Plus Points. This plug-in will allow you to log your meals and let you know how many Plus Points you use in relationship to your targeted daily plus points.

In order for this plan to be successful, you still need to go to your Weight Watchers® meetings and use your Weight Watchers® tools. This is just something to assist you in logging your food in a WordPress medium that you might be more familiar with.

You can download the WordPress Plus Points plug-in from the WordPress repository by searching for WordPress Plus Points.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-pluspoints/

Plus Points Setup:
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDkt_kaqU0o

Plus Points short-code use:
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmcFFV4RXLc

SVN Connector Error

I decided to start from scratch and removed the eclipse folder, deleted all cached and preference data and wiped out the workspace/.metadata.

I downloaded the Eclipse IDE for Java Developers (because the Classic version does not have the new Eclipse Marketplace) and started to reinstall some of the most useful plugins.

This is when I ran into the issue with the Subversive Connector. I went to Help > Install New Software and pulled up the ‘Helios – http://download.eclpse.org/releases/helios’. I opened up the Collaboration tree and scrolled down and chose the ‘Subversive SVN Team Provider’ and installed it. After the install you will get a prompt to install the connector (your choice of SVNKit or JavaHL) with the Subversive Connector Discovery window. I chose the connectors I wanted, but when I tried to install, I got an error. The error ‘Cannot complete installation – Problems occurred while performing installation: Operation details’

Install Window

I viewed the error log and was able to find there was a missing dependency. After searching the web using Google, I was able to find a solution.

In order to resolve this you need to enable a subversive repository. Go to Help > Install New Software and then click the “Available Software Sites” link. In the window, you will get a list of available software. Scrolldown the list and look for http://download.eclipse.org/technology/subversive/0.7/update-site/. Select it and then click the ‘Enable’ button and the click ‘OK’.

Subversive Update Site

Back on the install window, click into the ‘Work with:’ field and either type in or select the http://download.eclipse.org/technology/subversive/0.7/update-site/. Here you will find a list of options for install. I unchecked any ‘Optional’ choices and then installed (Next > Next > ‘I Accept…’ > Finish).

Clean Connector Install

I hope this is helpful to anyone with a fresh install.

Now

Please check out the FAQ before you ask for support.

Thanks to some helpful critics and tips from users, we have taken our very first plugin and retooled it to be more flexible and easier to implement into your posts and pages.

If you used our previous plugin (Contestant Rating WordPress Plugin), you will be happy to learn that this new plugin is a great replacement.

1. Use shortcode to display your  ratings. We have incorporated the use of shortcode into the plugin so you are no longer required to edit your template.
   Because it was our first plugin, we did not have the vision to incorporate this in the first iterations. We have done our homework and thanks to the help of other great WordPress users, we have created methods to display the Five Star Rating plugin, ‘Best of the Month’ and ‘Best of the Moment’ using a simple shortcode.
2. You set the cookie.
   We did two bad things with the cookie in the first plugin. First we hardcoded it and second we set the expiration for one year in the future. Of course this worked for us, but we realize now that you might have other uses for the plugin. Therefore we have added the ability for you to set your own cookie expiration for as little as 1 minute to 12 hour to 365 days (or more if you like).
3. Make it your own.
   We originally ported over an existing WordPress plugin and that plugin had more then one look. Unfortunately we did not have the vision to plan for using more then one look. Well not anymore! We have added the ability to theme this plugin as you see fit (more instructions on how to do this will follow). Currently there are two themes, but we have added the flexibility into the plugin to allow you to theme it as you like. It is as simple as adding an attribute to your short code…. like this:

   [five-star-rating star_type="abuse"]

4. Help us keep improving.
   If you run into an issue, would like to request a feature or just want to tell us what a great plugin this is, be sure to post a note to us. Of course if you run into an issue, please don’t just say ‘It doesn’t work!’ or ‘This plugin sucks’ as 9 times out of 10 the plugin is working fine and as we intended, but the plugin is not being implemented correctly. We like criticism, but please make it constructive.

Here is the plugin in action. Rate this post!

Here are some stats for the month.

• Five Star Rating WordPress Plugin
  * * * *   1 vote

  powered by Five Star Rating

We have more work to do as far as documentation and such, but this was just so exciting, we had to get it out now. More will follow in the future.

Download the latest version now from wordpress.org

Installation option number one:
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQD-3Gwy2og

Installation option number two:
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBGhxegPm_M

I soon learned that the task would be more difficult then I had anticipated. I started the task by using something similar to this.

jQuery(document).ready( function() {<br />
    jQuery('form').submit(function(){<br />
        // On submit disable its submit button<br />
        jQuery('input:submit', this).attr('disabled', 'disabled');<br />
    });<br />
});

I tested and thought all would be good, only it was not. After some double checking of my spelling, I decided to just output the value of the ‘input:submit’. I was surprised to see that it was returning ‘undefined’ as the value.

A few minutes later I find myself scrambling through Google searches and trying different bits of code, none of which was working for me. The task was only suppose to last a few minutes and now I find myself having spent a few hours trying to figure this out. Time for a lunch break.

While on break I decided, how about just figure this out on your own instead of trying to hack someone other developers code. Off to jQuery documentation I went and the first thing I was reminded of was that .each() returns an index. Assuming all of my forms have some type of element with type=submit, I can use this.

The first step was to loop through each form element on page load:

jQuery('form').each(function(formIndex) {});

Now inside of that each loop, lets add some logic:

jQuery(this).submit(function() {<br />
    jQuery('input:submit').eq(formIndex).attr('disabled', 'disabled');<br />
});

This did the trick. I was now able to disable just the one form. Now if I was using this on AJAX script I would just add a return false. Here is the entire code, assuming we are making this an AJAX call.

jQuery(document).ready(function() {<br />
	//Disable all form submit button on click?<br />
	jQuery('form').each(function(formIndex) {<br />
		jQuery(this).submit(function() {<br />
			jQuery('input:submit').eq(formIndex).attr('disabled', 'disabled');<br />
			return false;<br />
		});<br />
	});<br />
});

The process for the current project is to pull a *.csv file from an email account, parse it into a database query/queries, generate html code and then store the html in a directory structure while also storing the report information in the database.

Unfortunately during testing I have had some typo’s and the generated report stored in the directory structure did not display as intended. The changes needed really didn’t warrant processing the script again and adding more useless entries into the database, so I decided to change the script and then update the html in the report.

Having over 100 reports generated, I needed a simple script to do this. I had done this with bash before, but I thought there had to be an easier way then looping through a for statement, saving the changes to a new file and then moving the new file to replace the old.

In comes Perl. Looking through some posts, I found that you can edit text in the file with Perl. The command goes something like this:

perl -pi -w -e 's/search/replace/g;' *.html

Here is a further explanation of what is going on.

-p assume loop (like -n) but print line also, like sed
-i edit <> files in place (makes backup if extension supplied)
-w enable many useful warnings (RECOMMENDED)
-e execute the follwing line of code

The code referred to after the -e is just a search and replace regular expression.

The ‘s/’ means to search and start your regular expression to search for.

You then enter your expression that you want to search for. You need to make sure you escape out special characters with the back-slash [\]. The forward slash is used to separate what you are searching for and what you want to replace. The replace section is an expression as well and you need to treat special characters the same way.

Finally you have the last forward slash indicates the end of your replace expression and the ‘g’ indicates global.

Here is an example of how I would change the directory used for images from ‘/image/’ to ‘images/’ for all the files in a directory with the extension of .html.

perl -pi -w -e 's/\/image\//images\//g;' *.html

That is how you do it. If you have to go through multiple directories, you could use a bash or perl command to loop through those directories. Hope it didn’t confuse you too much.

This plugin is no longer being developed.

This is our first wordpress plugin and although we did not write this from scratch (we ported over a previous plugin that only worked in FireFox), we did improve upon a previous product and made it our own.

The plugin requires jQuery and if it is not included, it should load it for you. The most recent version is 0.4.

Download contestant-rating ver. 0.4[25 KB zip]

The original upload had the wrong /js/ files in it, so have updated the download here.