Programming Resources

It’s my new home

Coder — Wed, 06 May 2009 04:40:24 +0000

Welcome to my new home.

If you realize, it’s not imamkhalid.blogspot.com anymore. It’s shorter now — ik.my/coding.

What do you think about my new home?

Basic AJAX code

Coder — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 01:23:00 +0000

If you want to have an AJAX application, this simple code is what you must have first.

var xml = make_xml();
function make_xml () {
 if (typeof XMLHttpRequest == 'undefined') {
   objects = Array(
     'Microsoft.XMLHTTP',
     'MSXML2.XMLHTTP',
     'MSXML2.XMLHTTP.3.0',
     'MSXML2.XMLHTTP.4.0',
     'MSXML2.XMLHTTP.5.0'
   );
   for (i in objects) {
     try {
       return new ActiveXObject(objects[i]);
     }
 catch (e) {}
   }
 } else {
   return new XMLHttpRequest();
 }
}

Save the code in “ajax.js” and call it in your HTML section like this:

Next, you need to have a handle to handle submitted forms like this:

function handle_submit () {
 xml.open('post', root + '/');
 xml.setRequestHeader('Content-Type', 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded');
 xml.onreadystatechange = function () {
  if (xml.readyState == 4) {
   data = xml.responseText.split ( "[BRK]" );
   get('div1').innerHTML = data[0];
   get('div2').innerHTML = data[1];
  } else {
   get('div1').innerHTML = 'Please wait';
   get('div2').innerHTML = 'Please wait';
  }
 }
 if (window.encodeURI(get('action').value) == 'action1') {
  xml.send('action=' + window.encodeURI(get('action').value) + '&javascript=1&
    field1=' + window.encodeURI(get('field1').value) + '&field2=' +
     window.encodeURI(get('field2').value));
 } else if (window.encodeURI(get('action').value) == 'action2') {
  xml.send('action=' + window.encodeURI(get('action').value) + '&javascript=1');
 } return false;
}

In order to save time, I prefer to replace the long “document.getElementById” with a simple get() function, like this:

function get (id) {
 return document.getElementById(id);}

Next, you need to have a handle to load onsubmit action, like this:

function load_handler () {
 get('action1').onsubmit = handle_submit;}

Don’t forget to call the handle during page load, like this:

window.onload = load_handler;

Using this basic AJAX code, you may do all the web interactivity using AJAX, easily.

All the other codes didn’t change at all, including HTML forms, PHP codes, etc. All you have to do is just synchronize the ID’s of your HTML forms with your “ajax.js” ID’s, otherwise it won’t recognize your request.

Any questions, please write on the comment form. Good luck!

Happy New Year!

Coder — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:54:00 +0000

I’m writing this post to wish my Chinese friends a Gong Xi Fa Chai!

I also wanted to say sorry for not writing new codes to you. This is because I’m currently too busy doing my “Mega Project” for my big client.

I’m hoping to write more tips and tricks in programming more consistently.

Have a good day!

I am still alive

Coder — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 05:52:00 +0000

It has been a while I didn’t update this blog, since I was too busy managing a sports event at my place.

Today I’m not going to post anything about PHP functions. Instead, I would like to give a big thank my loyal readers on being such a concern asking me if I’m still alive.

I’m telling you guys, I’m still alive healthily and happily right now. I won 4 medals in the annual event — gold medals for badminton and rope pulling, silver medals for volleyball and soccer. What a worth busy moments!

After all, thank you for being so patient waiting for my updates. I’ll definitely update this blog soon.

Fortunate vs Unfortunate

Coder — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 14:22:00 +0000

My hard disk crashed, totally damaged. This is real sick.

Fortunately it is still under warranty. Unfortunately it takes too much time to be replaced.

Fortunately not more than a month to wait. Unfortunately I lost all my data.

Fortunately I got backup. Unfortunately the last one was about three months ago.

Fortunately I can get back all my PHP applications. Unfortunately not the latest one.

Fortunately I can get back my MySQL data, too. Unfortunately not the latest one, too.

Fortunately I can set back my work after the new one arrived. Unfortunately I didn’t backup all my software as they eat lots of disk space.

OMG, I don’t know what to do, where to start, how to complete. It’s real hard.

What do you think when fortunate vs unfortunate. Which one wins?

Prevent accidental window closing: alert onbeforeUnLoad

Coder — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 16:00:00 +0000

Today, I’m going to show you how to stop your visitor to close window of your site, using JavaScript.

It’s useful when they have unfinished processes, or unsaved data, in which they whether accidentally or deliberately clicked on the close button of your page.

It’s also useful for your marketing strategy, like one-time offer, final discounts, and so on.

Simple. First, use this following function. Then I’ll show you with 3 situations for example.

Situation 1, if you want to prevent window closing from the beginning, you may want to use the body tag, like this:

Situation 2, if you want to prevent window closing when your visitor enter something in a form, use it like this:

Situation 3, if you want to prevent window closing before reached an amount of time (i.e: 20 seconds), you may add this one to the script above:

function setTimer() {
preventerOn();
setTimeout(”clear();”,20000); // 1000 is for 1 second, so 20000 is for 20 seconds
}
function clear() {
preventerOff();
}

You may need to change in the body tag, from this:

to this:

That’s all.

If you have any questions regarding this, please feel free and don’t hesitate to ask me through the comment form.

Thank you.

More elaboration on ’signed-by’ and ‘mailed-by’

Coder — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:09:00 +0000

A friend of mine, Tim recently asked me about the mail function in PHP programming which I wrote on how to edit or remove the default ’signed-by’ or ‘mailed-by’ label during the sending activity.

His question is, where to put the code? As far as I’m concerned, I was not talking about the code, or even code positioning.

I’m talking about a particular technique that we would use in order to edit or to remove the distracting label when we use mail() function in our code (programming).

The real situation yet to be explained
The default value for the labels is usually the domain name of the server hosting company we run from.

In example, let say you use a web hosting from the well-known BlueHost company. Then you planned to send mass email to your friends about your new site, without revealing your friends’ details among them.

So all you need to do is having your list in a database, and then use loop function to send mail to them, one by one, using the php mail() function. Perhaps, you’ll use a fake email, or your self-hosted email, or even your true email from Google mail or Yahoo! mail.

Unfortunately, when using this method, recipients will see the header (if they checked on it) of the email, stated that the mail you sent was mailed by (in example) mailserver#.bluehost.com.

This is what we don’t like to see. It’ll tell the recipients what hosting service we are using.

So, in order to remove or edit the default value, we need to do those things that I explained earlier. To see the post, click here.

I hope my friend Tim will get what I was actually saying. What say you?

Edit or remove ’signed-by’ or ‘mailed-by’

Coder — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 01:46:00 +0000

Recently I was trying to remove the labels ’signed-by’ or ‘mailed-by’ which displayed the server name of my web hosting company when I do mailing activities from PHP script.

I was actually wanted to have my domain or perhaps my ‘fake’ domain address to be there. I don’t want to display the web hosting company.

The labels are like distracting me as a mailer, because I don’t really need that to be displayed. They’re like disturbing my privacy.

After having some research, I finally found the answer. There’s actually five arguments in the mail() function, instead of just four like this:

mail($mailto,$subject,$message,$header);

The fifth argument is the answer to my question. I believe some of you might get in the same situation.

So lets get straight to the point. Choose one of these below:

You want your domain to be displayed; or
You want nothing to be displayed.

You can’t have them to display other than that. I.e: You want it to display ’signed-by: google.com’ or ‘mailed-by: yahoo.com’. No you can’t have it. Just choose one of the stated above.

If you want the first choice, do this:

Create an email address from your domain, or take one you’ve had, like admin@yourdomain.com.
Set your code like this:
mail($mailto,$subject,$message,$header,’-f admin@yourdomain.com’);
There’s no number 3, you’re done!

If you want the second choice, you only have to do the second one in the first choice. You may change the ‘admin@yourdomain.com’ to any email you’d like, i.e: myself@yahoo.com.

Easy, huh?

I’ll be continuing from now on…

Coder — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:52:00 +0000

I’ve paused my blogging activity for such a long period. I think I have to go back to work, from now on.

Recently, I signed up for EntreCard. I wanted to see how exactly this program works. If I find this social networking tool helping me much i building my personal ranking, I would stay. Otherwise, I’m moving away.

So let’s give it some time. Maybe I should try this for about a month or two. What say you?

Save Time on Submitting Forms

Coder — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:34:00 +0000

I always involved in making applications that submit forms to databases. In order to save time, I just copy this function to all my applications - because they’re a great time saving function that suits all my applications. Here I’ll show you step by step on how I made the function:

(This is the form example)

Note two important things in the form above:

action value; and

form action

The action value will ensure the form to be submitted the right way whereas the form action will lead itself to index.php.

In the index.php, I set a condition - switch ( portion(1) ) case “process”;.

The "process" condition goes like this:

if ( isset($_POST['action']) && $_POST['action'] == “submitForm1″ ) {
if ( submitForm($_POST) ) echo “Successful!”;
else echo “Failed!”;
}
?>

Do you realize - I sent the data using array - $_POST array! This is what I’m talking about. Sorry for the long intro…

Ok now let’s see what is inside the submitForm() function. In brief, the function must contain:

key assigning process for each input value;

character control using str_replace function;

additional controls and conditions; and

SQL statement structures;

I set the head like this:

function submitForm($post,$additional_input=”,$unwanted_input=”)

Now we’ve covered the main concept and some code go through. I think I’ve to stop here for now. See you in Part II!