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Archive for the ‘General Programming’ Category
PIL 1.1.7, Python 2.6 and Mac 10.5
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010Extending the Django User model
Wednesday, May 5th, 2010There appears to be 3 ways to extend the functionality of the Django User model:
- Through sub-classing
- With a profile class
- By monkey-patching
A case for Test Driven Development
Thursday, March 25th, 2010What is good software?
Thursday, January 21st, 2010I have been going through some change. Good change. The kind of change which makes a professional question the merit and quality of their work. It’s the kind of change which leaves the inquisitive pondering for days. Am I writing good software? What is good software, anyway?
Uploaded Excel mime type
Thursday, November 5th, 2009I’ve been strugling to find the reason behind a malfunctioning Excel upload feature. The problem was that some times, the file would not have the application/vnd.ms-excel mime type. This was a bit of an issue, it was required for invaliding the type of the file.
By luck, a coworker discovered that the Excel file would return a different mime type if the Excel file was open in Excel when it was uploaded. Under these conditions, the mime type is application/octet-stream. In other words, when uploading an open Excel doc, Internet Explorer would have trouble identifying the file type and send along the generic mime-type application/octet-stream.
Bellow is a quick fix that should take care of future problems:
if ( $_FILES['excel_file']['type'] == 'application/vnd.ms-excel' || preg_match('/\\.xls$/', $_FILES['excel_file']['name']) ) { // continue working on the uploaded file... }
PHP isset()
Sunday, September 20th, 2009The PHP function isset() is often used to determine the presence of a variable. When the variable is not defined, false is returned. Using isset() is also an easy way to determine whether an array has a given key.
$assoc = array('key' => 'value'); echo isset($assoc['key']) ? 'true' : 'false'; // true echo isset($assoc['missing']) ? 'true' : 'false'; // false
There is a catch: isset() called on a null variable will return false.
$var = null; echo isset($var) ? 'true' : 'false'; // false $array = array('key' => null); echo isset($array['key']) ? 'true' : 'false'; // false
For checking the presence of a key in an array, use the PHP function array_key_exists() instead.
echo array_key_exists('key', $array) ? 'true' : 'false'; // true function has_empty($key, &$array) { return array_key_exists($key, $array) && !$array[$key]; } echo has_empty('key', $array) ? 'true' : 'false'; // true
To determine the presence of a null variable, a custom function is required.
function isvar($var) { return isset($var) || @is_null($var); } $null = null; echo isvar($null) ? 'true' : 'false'; // true
On Website Depreciation
Thursday, February 26th, 2009Is a site ever finished? In a limited way, yes. As the months pass, however, the value of a site degrades. Worse still, with enough time, a site may drive your audience away with it’s dated look, old-style functionality or lack of modern features. How do we handle this depreciation? The key is to become ‘light-weight’: not bogged down with tools and structure, but remain open and flexible to change.
On Programming Alone
Friday, February 20th, 2009
Often we developers find ourselves working on projects as the only programmers. It may be a personal project or a company with enough work for only one. Such work often present challenges in way of responsibility and advantages like control and intimate knowledge of the system. In response to the challenges of programming alone, I have come up with the 5 rules that keep me and my work sane:
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