Matt Williams
Tech, Gaming and Food Enthusiast
Codeigniter Database session fix
Aug 23rd
For weeks I tolerated the annoyance of CodeIgniter’s Session library logging my out continuously, saying to myself “I works…kind of… ill fix it later”. Eventually the problem started affecting AJAX method calls, large file uploads and simple CRUD operation forms so I began trawling the internet for a fix.
After hours and hours, I found that there was no _reliable_ fix to the database sessions library and that the answer was, DON’T USE DATABASES.
I found this extremely helpful library fix: CI_Native_Session.
Integrating PayPal with PHP and IPN
Apr 13th
PayPal has a huge API reference to integrate it’s services into any website. But from personal experience I found that the theory is far more simple than the practice. There are various methods to implement PayPal’s services including Soap webservices with ‘Express Checkout’ and ‘Website Payment Pro’. This tutorial will focus on ‘Website Payment Pro’ and the ‘IPN’ event listener.
IPN Services use an HTTP _POST or _GET conversation method. Your application sends a form request to PayPal’s web services which then send an HTTP request to an event handler. The event handler must then re-send the same post request back to authenticate the transaction as valid. Once returned and verified we can then process the transactions.
Top 5 must have WordPress plugins
Mar 23rd
I thought it was high time I released a list of the best plugins that I use with my WordPress installation. So here goes…
1. All in one webmaster
This plugin thanks to ArpitShah is a bundle of all the best tracking and analytics solutions available to the web and I would highly recommend it. Here is the description provided by ArpitShah:
If you are a webmaster you probably heard of “Google Webmaster Tool“. Both Yahoo and Bing have their own versions called “Yahoo SiteExplorer” and “Bing Webmaster Central“. All in One Webmaster has option to add Google, Bing, Yahoo Webmaster Meta-Tags. Single click sitemap submission to Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask. Add tracking code for Google, Clicky, 103Bees analytics. It uses the wphead() and wpfooter() hooks built in to WordPress to add content to your header and/or footer.
Ajax callback validation routines with CodeIgniter
Mar 21st
The CodeIgniter Form_Validation library is an extremely useful tool especially the ability to extend all core routines. Some validation requires real time PHP & MySQL processing, for example checking an email against those already registered with your site.
To use a PHP function to return values to the jQuery validate function, the only important theory to understand is that the function needs to echo, not return. Returning values will not send the output to the DOM and so the validation routines will not know what to do with it.
Client side searching with jQuery
Mar 20th
In my previous post about sorting data I explained the brilliance of client side sorting using jQuery. When researching various other jQuery plugins I discovered tablesearch which can be invaluable when searching smaller data sets.
As in my previous jQuery post we will start with a standard HTML table, giving it an id of “myTable” of course if you wish to use multiple instances on the same page a class is a far more elegant solution.
