Traditional and SMTP emails out of php’s main mail() function will often be ignored, it seems, by Hotmail (and sometimes yahoo) if the email contains character without specific mention of the correct character set. It’s irritating as every other carrier seems to just deal with it but Hotmail (and sometimes yahoo) just act like no email ever existed, there’s no bounce-back, no spam folder message – just nothing.

In any case, set the header of your email to contain the character set, and if the email your sending is html then make sure you include that in the email body meta, seems obvious but is annoyingly easy to forget.

e.g. Add this line to whatever headers you are using:

$headers .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8\r\n";

The post Hotmail and Character Sets: Make Sure Your Emails Get There first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

The benefit of using GIT in the way below is that it maintains version history AS WELL as offering a managed host, i.e. it deals with uploading as well as versioning (in 1 git bash push.)

So here’s the scenario – there’s one of you, or maybe a few core founders/dev’s and you want to use GIT to version control your developments of a new web app or site. You already have a shared hosting account with 1and1 which works fine up to 20k hits a day or so, is there really need to have the thing scalable on demand from day one? No? Great, read on. If you REQUIRE scalability off the bat (I bet you don’t, really) then go find a PaaS/jump on AWS, for now here’s how to get GIT versioning (with automatic publication) working on your 1and1 shared hosting.

Firstly go read this, its a great guide that pretty much* got me there (95% of the credit to Abhijit), there’s just a few changes to get it to work on 1and1.

How I did it: GIT on 1and1

Load up your FTP, get to the root of your hosting and make your main site dir, in this case we will call it AppDev1:
/AppDev1
Next make two directories underneath it: “repo” and “live”, I shall explain these after you have made them:
/AppDev1/live
/AppDev1/repo
What these two are going to do is give you a live “root” for your web app/site as well as a GIT repository (which stores all the changes.) By separating them you keep everything simple. [live = web root folder, repo (or whatever you call it) = git bare repository.]

Next locally (on your machine) create a folder which you want to develop in:
C:/EpicNewApp

…And load up GIT BASH (assume you have) and enter the following:
cd "C:/EpicNewApp";
git init;

Next go ahead and load your SSH client (putty) and log into your 1and1 Account (there is guidance on 1and1 under SSH accounts, if you need it.) Once logged in enter the following:

cd "/AppDev1/repo"
git init --bare
cat > hooks/post-receive
#!/bin/sh
GIT_WORK_TREE="../live" git checkout -f
chmod +x hooks/post-receive

*note: This differs from the aforementioned guide in the address entered under GIT_WORK_TREE, this is the only way I could get this setup to work on 1and1.

You can also simply stick these lines into a file called post-receive and upload the file to the “hooks” folder of your new bare repository (repo), if you are so inclined.

That’s it, your done with the SSH, now you can bind a remote location in GIT BASH (replace the obvious:)
$ git remote add web "ssh://u99999999@yourMain1and1Domain.com/~/AppDev1/repo/"
…And go ahead and push to 1and1 (you will need your SSH password to do so.)
$ git push web +master:refs/heads/master
All being well this should have pushed a version to your /AppDev1/repo folder and also updated the live files as per your changes!

Happy Ghetto Versioning!

Note: As per comments, removed .git reference from link, thanks Ano.

The post 1and1 Web Hosting & Git – Installing it for singular dev first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

Javascript – Using JS to find Browser Country / Location not from IP Photo by ToastyKen

Common solutions to identifying a users locale/localizing/localising a web client:

Using PHP / ASP.NET take the users IP and feed into an ip to location service (geo ip) to find a country from ip.
Pro’s: Server-side off the bat, can cache a database of IP’s (although would you?)
Con’s: Adds another 2 hops to at least initial page load, IP location service’s can cost or be faulty

Using the request headers (again server-side) to identify an “accepted language” and then guestimating their location (taking en-US…for example.)
Pro’s: Server-side to start with, no extra hops/calls required, this data is already available whether you use it or not, more useful for language (although limited)
Con’s: Unreliable – mostly because of a few of the BIG browsers default to en-US for all english users, often international users might learn to use a browser in English anyway – defeating the point

Another solution (work in progress:)

A step towards a proper solution, and in my case a solution for MY original problem, is to at least work out their TIMEZONE. What? I hear you say, why the timezone? Well if you know, for example using analytics data, that your user base is 40% US, 50% UK and 10% rest of the world you can at least make a START by dealing with the two major constituents of your audience. I can envisage A more complete solution though, by combining the use of request headers accepted language AND the following Javascript timezone detection:

Searching around a bit I found this which showed a lot of promise. This javascript works out the users Operating System time offset, and from that you can define which timezone they are in. Useful, if like me you know your users in a specific timezone are likely to be in one country, not particularly if they are possibly in multiple countries within a timezone.

A solution / exploration – location detection in javascript

The following Javascript gives you both indicators, using navigator.language/systemlanguage it detects the browser’s language, and then using an expanded upon version of the above script it will provide you with the possible countries from the users OS timezone offset. How useful this is to you is depending on the application, but check it out – build some fantastic solution off of it, then show me, because I probably won’t get round to it!

var langCode = navigator.language || navigator.systemLanguage;
var lang = langCode.toLowerCase(); lang = lang.substr(0,2);

var dateObject = new Date(); //this timezone offset calc taken from http://unmissabletokyo.com/country-detector.html
var timeOffset = - dateObject.getTimezoneOffset() / 60; 
var c = ""; //this will ultimately end up as a country/csv of possible countries
switch (timeOffset) { //I expanded upon this switch, adding all the possible countries
	case 0: 
	 c = 'Algeria, Ascension Island, Burkina Faso, Faeroe Islands, Ghana, Guinea Republic, Iceland, Ireland, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Morocco, Sao Tome & Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, St Helena, The Gambia, Togo, United Kingdom'; break;
	
	case 1: 
	 c = 'Albania, Andorra, Angola, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Benin, Bosnia, Cameroon, Central Africa Republic, Chad, Congo, Croatia, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire), Denmark, Equatorial Guinea, France, Gabon, Germany, Gibraltar, Guam, Hungary, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Macedonia (Fyrom), Malta, Mariana Islands, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Monaco, Netherlands, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Poland, Portugal, San Marino, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunisia'; break;
	 
	case -1: 
	 c = 'Cape Verde Islands, Cook Islands, French Polynesia, Guinea Bissau, USA'; break;
	 
	case 11:	
	 c = 'New Caledonia, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu'; break;
	 
	case -11:
	 c = 'Niue Island, Samoa (American), Samoa (Western), USA'; break;
	 
	case 11.5:
	 c = 'Norfolk Island'; break;
	 
	case 12:	
	 c = 'Fiji Islands, Kiribati, Nauru, New Zealand, Tuvalu, Wallis & Futuna Islands'; break;
	 
	case 13:
	 c = 'Tonga'; break;
	 
	case 2:	
	 c = 'Botswana, Bulgaria, Burundi, Cyprus, Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire), Egypt, Finland, Greece, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Lithuania, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Palestine, Romania, Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Syria, Turkey, Zambia, Zimbabwe'; break;
	 
	case 3:
	 c = 'Bahrain, Belarus, Comoros Island, Djibouti, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Kenya, Kuwait, latvia, Madagascar, Mayotte Islands, Moldova, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, Ukraine, Yemen Arab Republic'; break;
	 
	case -3:
	 c = 'Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Greenland, Guyana, Uruguay'; break;
	
	case 3.5:
	 c = 'Iran'; break;
	
	case -3.5:
	 c = 'Surinam'; break;
	
	case 4:
	 c = 'Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Mauritius, Oman, Reunion Island, Seychelles, United Arab Emirates'; break;
	
	case -4:
	 c = 'Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Barbados, Bermuda, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Dominica Islands, Dominican Republic, Falkland Islands, French Guiana , Grenada, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Montserrat, Netherlands Antilles, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, St Kitts & Nevia, St Lucia, Trinidad & Tobago, Venezuela'; break;
	
	case 5:
	 c = 'Diego Garcia, Maldives Republic, Pakistan, Turkmenistan'; break;
	
	case -5:
	 c = 'Bahamas, Brazil, Canada, Cayman Islands, Columbia, Ecuador, Haiti, Jamaica, Panama, Peru, Turks & Caicos Islands, USA'; break;
	
	case 5.5:
	 c = 'Bhutan,India,Nepal,Sri Lanka'; break;
	
	case 6:
	 c = 'Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan'; break;
	
	case -6:
	 c = 'Belize, Canada, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, USA'; break;
	
	case 6.5:
	 c = 'Myanmar (Burma)'; break;
	
	case 7:
	 c = 'Australia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam'; break;
	
	case -7:
	 c = 'Canada, Mexico, USA'; break;
	
	case 8:
	 c = 'Australia, Brunei, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Macau, Malaysia, Mongolia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan'; break;
	
	case -8:
	 c = 'Canada, Mexico, USA'; break;
	
	case 9:
	 c = 'Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, North, Korea, South, Palau'; break;
	
	case -9:
	 c = 'USA'; break;
}

//at this point Lang should be a 2 letter language code (e.g. en), timeOffset will be the users hour offset from GMT and c will be the csv of possible countries!
alert('Lang: ' + lang + "\r\n" + 'timeOffset: ' + timeOffset + "\r\n" + 'Possible Countries: ' + "\r\n" + c);

You can get the full source for this zipped here, included is a minified version wrapped in a function, isn’t that nice of me? Use it as you will, and if you create something epic, show me!

Countries/timezones: I built the timezone offset switch based on the wikipedia list of countries and their timezones, so its comprehensive.

The post IP to Location Alternative: Javascript – Using JS to find Browser Country / Location not from IP first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

Get last day of last year – obvious, but still (+1 this for first day):

SELECT DATE(CURDATE()- INTERVAL DAYOFYEAR(CURDATE()) DAY);

And how useful… FROM_UNIXTIME takes a unix timestamp and makes it a friendly datetime, its like they KNOW I am coding for facebook data acquisition…Anyhow…

To make a GMT UNIX time-stamp for the first day of this month:

SELECT UNIX_TIMESTAMP(CONVERT_TZ(DATE(CURDATE()- INTERVAL DAYOFMONTH(CURDATE()) DAY), '+0:00', 'SYSTEM'));

You can switch out the dates obviously, and there are probably other ways, still, mostly pain free.

The post MySQL datetime examples – first/last day of the year – dates and unix-times first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

Using the below you can add/remove items to an input which acts as a csv holder, should be self explanatory, get and set are just shorteners.

function get(a){ //small get
	if (typeof a != "undefined") {
		return document.getElementById(a).value;
	} else { 
		return '';
	}
}

function set(i,v){ //small set
	document.getElementById(i).value = v;	
}

function append(i,v){ //small append
	set(i,get(i) + v);		
}

function appendTocsv(i,v){ //small append csv
	if (get(i).length == 0){
		set(i,v);	
	} else { 
		append(i,', ' + v);
	}
}

function incsv(id,v){ //check a csv (in element with id) for a value (v)
	
	var csv = get(id);
	var csvArray = csv.split(', ');
	var found = false;
	
	if (csvArray.length > 0){
		
		for (i = 0; i <= csvArray.length; i++){
		
			if (csvArray[i] == v){ found = true;  }
			
		}
		
	}
	
	return found;
		
}

function removeFromcsv(id,v){ //removes a val from csv
	
	var csv = get(id);
	var csvArray = csv.split(', ');
	var removed = false;
	var endString = "";
	
	if (csvArray.length > 0){
		
		for (i = 0; i <= csvArray.length-1; i++){
		
				
			if (csvArray[i] == v){ removed = true;  } else { 
			
				if (endString.length > 0){ endString += ', '; } 
				endString += csvArray[i]; 
			
			}
			
		}
		
	}
	
	set(id,endString);
	
	return removed;
	
}

The post Maintain a CSV with Javascript – keep a hidden list first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

The JQuery documentation for this doesn’t account for the reality of the above, its all very well if you want the empty column/div to SHOW all the time as empty, that is remain as some sort of visible placeholder, but if the empty list should show as empty, until an object is ready to be dropped on it then JQuery sortable’s don’t work. It all comes down to dimensions, if an empty list exists without a height value, you can’t drop onto it.

More specifically, if an empty jquery-sortable list exists without a specific height set at the point of [.sortable start] (that is BEFORE the event is fired) then you just cannot drop the sortable.

Image by Dmitry Baranovskiy

I played with fixing this by adjusting each empty list (in the example belows case #col1,#col2,#col3) to have a defined height (and background, which looks nice) within the sortable “start” option, but this just creates boxes (or landing pads/zones) you can see, but not drop on.

Long and short of it – the solution to being able to drop jquery sortable’s onto invisible empty lists is to bind a function which adds a css class (or sets the height specifically) to the empty (invisible) sortable list when a user clicks one of the goal objects. This is then fired BEFORE the sortable takes hold and so creates drag-droppable landing zones for the users held sortable. It then uses the sortables “stop” property to remove the class it has added to any columns which have it.

function sortAndDrag() {
    
	//show BEFORE sortable starts
     $("#col1, #col2, #col3").bind('click mousedown', function(){
          $(".col").each(function (c) {
                if ($("div", this).size() == 0) {
                    $(this).addClass("colZoneEmpty")
                }
            })
     });
    
	//enable sortable
    $("#col1, #col2, #col3").sortable({
        revert: true,
        connectWith: ".col",
        stop: function (a, d) {
            $(".col").removeClass("colZoneEmpty");
	    //any ajax processing
        }
    });
	
}
//in this example 3 column div's exist with the id's 'col1','col2','col3', all of which have the class 'col' 
//colZoneEmpty is a css class which makes the empty list visible

There are of course improvements you could make here, like checking the users dragging before setting any styling, but this quick hackaround works where it shouldn’t.

The post Unable to drop JQuery sortable onto empty list? Hack solution first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

Do you use Auction2Post [A2P]? If you don’t its a wordpress plugin which automatically implants listings from ebay as wordpress posts, including affiliate links through the ebay partner network from which you earn a commission. Its quite useful. Read my post about it here. Anyhow if you don’t use the plugin you can pretty much skip this post, unless you use a similar thing which is generating all kinds of nasty strings you don’t want in your posts

This post will show you how to sanitise your auction2post posts for annoying (and contract breaking) ebay auction strings, it even has 125 rules already in a file for import!

The problem

Auction2Post is great in lots of respects, its well written and does a prescribed job. Where it caused irritation for me is arguably after its done its job, after the wordpress plugin had created its posts. You see you can create posts via templates, which is great, it allows enough customisation for most, however I wanted a bit of text processing as often you are left with irritating auction footers and garbage text which make the user hit back or close at a displeasing rate (some of these ebay strings might actually make your Auction 2 posts sites break ebay partner network terms of service, its really worth sanitising your posts as I describe below!)

The Solution

This problem with Auction 2 Post and wordpress is one of the reasons Automated Editor was born, to give a bit more freedom in text processing, wordpress filters are great but I don’t think filtering hundreds of ebay phrases like that is effective.

If you want to cleanse your Auction2post posts of dirty ebay auction footers and the like here is how I currently do it:

1. Install Automated Editor plugin on the blog in question. (Get it here and install like a normal plugin.)
2. Go to the plugin (Auto Editor on its plugin menu) and read the disclaimer (big red box) and THEN accept it.
3. Download the rules file I have created (Get it at the bottom of this post) and unzip it somewhere.
   
4. Go to “Import/Export” on the Automated Editor plugin menu.
   
5. Choose the aforementioned rules file and hit import.
   
6. You should now have 125 or so rules in your rules list
7. Now go to Schedules on the plugin menu and then click Add New.
8. Scroll down and hit Select All (under the long list of rule checkboxes ebay1, ebay2 etc.)
   
9. Scroll down again and select Most Recent Post from the Target dropdown.
10. Make sure run option is on “After a post is published”.
    
11. Save it.
12. Turn on schedules.
    
13. Post a test post, either via A2P or manually, it should remove any of the 125 annoying (common) ebay auction strings it finds! Sorted.

Notes on this method:

• You will need the Full version (Ultra Pro) of Automated Editor, the free version is limited to 3 rules and this rules file alone has 125 ebay-string removing rules. It’s cheap though here.
• If you already have Auction2Post auction posts in the system you will have to setup a different schedule to operate on those, I usually set this up before I set any automation (it’s quite easy, just do the same thing and switch out “Most Recent post” for “all posts”, run it once then disable the schedule – you don’t want it operating on them all every time!)
• Currently this removes 125 strings I have found previously, mostly from uk auctions, I am considering writing a simplified version of this whole setup, an “Auction2Post Post Cleaner” which you can just activate and leave, perhaps with cloud rules, so watch this space. Good thing about the above setup though is you can continually improve your own rules file by adding your own strings.

Rules File

The link below offers a RAR’d version of my Automated Editor rules file which contains 125 x ebay string removal rules, yours for free Please however do use carefully, as with all automated-editor situations if you don’t understand what you are doing then don’t use it, this is for the people that understand the above problem and have the full version of the plugin.

Download Rules File
[Right click-Save as]

The post Remove unwanted eBay strings from A2P [Auction2post] posts with Automated Editor first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

Scenario’s are either:

• Use facebook like button generator to generate code for a like button (sometimes even this bugs out..)
• Use some service like ShareThis to generate code for a facebook like button

• It shows as Zero – Facebook likes ‘0’ even if you know that URL (that you installed it on, or fb page) has likes
• It occasionally shows correct like count, but most of the time shows Zero [0] like’s

Investigate with:

• Facebook Lint tool (object debugger)

After spending a few hours working out what was causing this 0 like problem on my facebook like button I narrowed it down to two problems people are experiencing:

1. Error in the code you are copying across. It should be an iframe (unless you are using XFBML) like the code shown on the facebook lint tool (object debugger.) In fact the best way I found was to use the object debugger to make the iframe code and then adapt that using parameters from the facebook like button generator as the likebutton generator bugged out for me. MAKE SURE its pointing to the right url, use https if you can and point it to the page which validates in Lint tool.
2. Page Problems. If your page doesn’t validate properly in the Lint tool (object debugger) then this is your issue, this is the likely situation if you are seeing it OCCASIONALLY show the right figure in your likes box, but mostly 0 [zero] likes. Page problems as far as I have experienced boil down to:
1. Facebook soft deleting your page and not telling you. If you are experiencing this ZERO likes situation it might well be that facebook has actually discontinued your page without telling you, leaving it on your admin menu’s and leaving the likes/wall/everything in tact. This is confusing as hell and I wish they would formally tell/make it obvious. Reasons why your page gets deleted? I am sure there are a bunch. I repeat. Your page may look to you to be live, with likes and all – but if you are experiencing zero likes on your like button it might also be deleted. Get your friend to search for it in the search box, if it doesn’t appear, you’ve had it deleted!
2. Restricted Content. We all love fangating, well its a working economy, but I have a sneaking suspicion it may occasionally cause a discrepancy in like button, potentially pointing a like button to an inaccessible page to the potential like’ee would mean facebook wouldn’t be able to access it and therefore show zero (whereas it might be showing you the proper number as you have access..)

Anyway, for a nice combo of a facebook like button and a google + button (are these going to be more and more important?) check the following code, don’t forget to replace your url

<div align="left" style="height:70px">
    <div id="fbbox" style="float:left;height:65px;width:55px;">
    	<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=***YOURURL***&layout=box_count" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="height: 65px; width: 55px" allowTransparency="true"></iframe>
    </div>
    <div id="gbox" style="float:left;height:65px;width:55px;"><g:plusone size="tall" href="***YOURURL***"></g:plusone></div>
</div>

The post Facebook Like button not working or showing 0 likes first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

function get_tag_name( $tag_id ) {

     $tag_id = (int) $tag_id;
     $tag = get_term( $tag_id, 'post_tag'; );

     if ( ! $tag || is_wp_error( $tag ) )

          return '';

     return $tag->name;

}

I am writing Automated Editor, a wordpress plugin which will give you a bunch of pro automation possibilities, in case you were wondering.

The post get_tag_name function for wordpress first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

• Dont try to SET anything, skip them. ANSI_NULLs, ANSI_PADDING
• Replace CURRENT_TIMESTAMP with (getdate()) – easy to forget this but I always seem to use it as a default.
• Keep constraints on line

Of course if you wrote your tables from scratch in T-SQL it probably wont be a problem.

The post From SQL Server 2008 r2 to SQL Compact Edition. Doing things the wrong way. first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.