from a cat named Evan.
Is there any way out there in the universe to add database support for, oh, say Oracle to PHP *without* having to recompile the farking thing?
scripted
sometimes you need to collaborate
By Evan - July 26th, 2007
After a nice vacation and an awesome wedding (now hitched folks!) I am back.
It is kind of amusing when you discover that a technique that you were using in 2003/04 now has a name and is "buzz capable". It is even more amusing to consider the fact that I thought I was using something else entirely.
What is this about? Well, AHAH a newly named subset of AJAX. When I was at Epic Data (see the resume for more info) I was happily playing with AJAX (there weren't so many solid libraries back then and I was fairly new to all this stuff) and the page I linked to above looks almost word for word like the code I was using to pull information from our server to the browser front-end.
Here I thought I was using AJAX, which in essence I was, but it turns out that I was actually using the as then unnamed subset of AJAX - AHAH. I loved pulling down information into the innerHTML. It made the experience a little more "magic" and required *much* fewer full page refreshes. As I was totally new to the concepts at the time it also involved a lot of hair pulling.
One could easily argue that the need for AHAH is a bit of an exercise in splitting hairs - AHAH is a complete subset of AJAX...
So, what about collaborating? Well, maybe perhaps if I had gone to more developer meet-ups and participated more frequently in online communities I could have been more aware of what I was actually doing and shortened the gap between the unnamed thing I was doing and AHAH. Sometimes it is hard to get your head out of the work mindset and find time to go talk with fellow imagineers about what "the next big thing" looks like...
Over a beer....
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mercurial is nice and drupal 4.7 spam module is coming along
By Evan - April 24th, 2006
A follow up to my previous post: getting mercurial 0.8.1 up and going on your intel mac
But I need a better interface than command-line: I use a Mac; I love my mouse; gimme a freakin' GUI with nice shading ...
That aside, I have successfully ported about 70% of the Spam module UI to Drupal 4.7. I punted the .diff off to Jermey Andrews at kerneltrap.org (the fellow who maintains the module) and am awaiting comments on my patch. The remaining screens are Custom Filters and URL Filters. They are going to be annoying. I may have to redesign them to make them work in the 4.7 Forms API world and they do scream for some AJAX-y goodness in some regards. One step at a time however...
Notes on the Forms API in Drupal 4.7:
Very clean design. I like it a lot. The separation of validation from submit is a nice touch that does a lot of magic for you (just call form_set_error and the validation returns to your errored form!). Additionally, the weighting of the form elements in a nice touch to control their position. Congrats to the Forms API crew.
This is more or less my first attempt at making a real Drupal contribution that will see the light of day. I feel giddy and tired. Still have to sleep don't I ...
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getting mercurial 0.8.1 up and going on your intel mac
By Evan - April 22nd, 2006
Tagged:
I finally got Mercurial 0.8.1 (a distributed SCM) up and running on my intelMac. It is not difficult but requires some additional steps that don't seem to be noted anywhere obvious that I could see.
The issue is that Mercurial will not work on a standard 10.4.6 install. Everything compiles, installs and kinda runs but every time I went to clone a remote repository the app would blow up.
So here is quick little how to:
- Acquire Mercurial 0.8.1
- Acquire the most recent Python build. I used the Universal Python 2.4.3 package from the folks at Pythonmac.org
- Install the Python 2.4.3 package and ensure you are using version 2.4.3 (type python in a Terminal.app window)
- Follow the instructions on the Mercurial site, they will work now
I hope this saves you the time it took me to fiddle around with things.
To make a wild stab in the dark guess as to why things didn't work I would say it's to do with the use of GCC 3.3 on the standard OS X Python distribution and GCC 4.0.1 in the above linked Python package.
The reason for all this is that I am trying to see if the Spam module is ready for Drupal 4.7 (Spam is the only module that I will delay upgrading for).
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drupal hacking : adding Atom support to the 4.6.x series (UPDATED to 4.6.6)
I received a nice email from a person asking if I had updated the ATOM support I welded into the Aggregator (version 1) for the latest release of Drupal (4.6.6). I wanted to say "Thanks" to the person (Tom) for contacting me and also to let him know the response I sent got eaten by some email forwarding rules on his end.
Since Tom seemed to enjoy the functionality and the fix is quite simple I have patched the 4.6.6 Aggregator (version 1) to support ATOM feeds for those that do not wish to move to Aggregator2. I am confident this works with 4.6.5 as well since there are no differences between the 4.6.5 and 4.6.6 Aggregator (version 1) releases.
I have again gone with a drag and drop replacement method so if you grab the attached file below in your modules directory, overwriting your current Aggregator.module (that you make a back up of first!).
You can now subscribe to Atom feeds as you would subscribe to any RSS/RDF feed in Drupal!
Note: if you download the file and it is named aggregator.module.html then rename it to aggregator.module before copying into your modules folder.
suggestions for a python framework
By Evan - February 21st, 2006
Tagged:
Hey all out there in reader land. Does anyone have a preferred framework for doing Python development on the web?
Key pieces I am looking for:
- Templating and standards compliance
- DB abstraction layer or better yet an ORM layer that is DB agnostic
- Fairly mature
- Good documentation and user community
- More advanced buzz features: RSS, AJAX support, fast
- Easy to install on the *AMP platform
I am asking because I am looking and right now Django has lots of buzz and I like what I have seen.
Anyone have an opinion here?
great way to learn Python
By Evan - November 10th, 2005
Tagged:
I have been recently pointed to the Python Challenge when I mentioned I was wanting to learn Python. Watch out for your eyes, nasty UI ahead...
What a great site! The game is fun, challenging, and educational! You "simply" have to solve the riddle posed on each screen (preferrably using Python, but any language/tool will suffice) and then put the answer into the URL to move on to the next question.
So far, the questions haven't been that difficult except for the time it takes to read through the Python Tutorial to get the skills/method names necessary to answer the next question.
drupal hacking : adding Atom support to the 4.6.x series
The current released version of Drupal 4.6.x does not support Atom feeds. The attached module is a back-port of the CVS HEAD version of the Aggregator.module.
Note : this fix is tested on 4.6.3 only.
Just drop the attached file below in your modules directory, overwriting your current Aggregator.module (that you back up of course!).
You can now subscribe to Atom feeds as you would subscribe to any RSS/RDF feed in Drupal!
n-joy.
fixed the duplicated link bug in the article.module
I have just fixed a bug that I noticed in the Article.module that was annoying me.
The latest articles box to the right lists updates to the site; however, it would list an article many times if you assigned more than one tag to it and fill up the list with duplicate links to the same article. This, obviously, is not happening anymore.
I simply put a DISTINCT in the SQL query that pulls the items. This keyword prevents duplication of articles and links.
A quick and dirty fix.
making drupal more usable
In the process of getting Drupal up and running I have come across some usability quirks that I have slowly been correcting. This is part 1 of an N part series on how I view Drupal should be corrected to be more usuable.
