I haven’t posted much (No, this isn’t a blogpology) lately. Mainly because I haven’t had the passion to write about anything. Secondly because I just don’t want to do the work of messing with the UI and entering one.
Thanks for the tip from my buddy TDavid who pointed me toward Windows Live Writer.
The setup was simple for this machine (Vista Business edition sp1). It’s got some really neat features. First off inserting hyperlinks is a snap. So is adding pictures. Also drag and drop tables, and image resizing.
It also includes preview views, and category selecting, tagging, and you can post date posts.
You can post drafts, post live, and even save drafts locally. I find it much easier to use than the WP UI.
I found myself working with text files a little more recently and was looking for a way to tell if a directory was empty. Why? In my case I wanted to check if a directory was empty. If it wasn’t, to grab the data in those files and put them in a database.
What I didn’t want to do was have the expense of connecting to a database if the directory didn’t have any files in it to begin with. After chatting with my good friend TDavid at php-scripts.com, I decide to run with his suggestion…
Fill (or don’t fill) a variable with information if there were files in the directory. Then test the var to confirm or deny if there are files in the directory. It’s really a small bit of code…
//----- Check if ticket dir has files. If it has files,
// set a variable to hold the list of file names.
$dir = "../path/to/my/textfiles"; // set directory
if($handle = opendir($dir)){ // open directory
while(($file = readdir($handle)) !== false){
if($file != "." && $file != ".."){
$file_list[] = $file; // Set file list variable
}
}
closedir($handle); // Close directory
}
If there are files in this directory, the variable $file_list would not only exist, but also contain files. For example…
Array
(
[0] => 195972.txt
[1] => 196027.txt
[2] => 196053.txt
[3] => 196067.txt...
)
If there aren’t any files in this directory, the variable $file_list would not even exist because no $file would be inserted into it. At this point we can check/ test the variable to output or do further processing…
if(isset($file_list)){
echo "This dir has files!";
// perform further processing
// eg: collect each files contents
} else {
echo "This dir has NO files!";
// stop processing
// Not much do do with this since there are no files
}
Of course there are a few ways of checking to see if a directory is empty, but this way seemed to be the most simplistic to me. If you wanted to you could turn the entire lot into a function for reuse, and less script code clutter.
Comments? Questions?
php, empty directory
I came across a situation where I needed to pull records from 1 db to another on a recurring basis. I read many different ways to do it via searching around the net. Some of the suggestions included creating a temporary table and copying it over. What was lacking was that sometimes the new table also needed to be UPDATED, as the information changed from the original table.
I’ve come up with a dirty little example to show this can be done. There are more keywords that can enhance the ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE function even more. The Example is assuming an “employees” table that looks like so:
| employees |
| id (PK) |
| first_name |
For brevity, I’ve left out connection data etc;
$myArray = array(0 => array('id' => '1', 'fname' => 'Steve'),
array('id' => '2', 'fname' => 'sara'),
array('id' => '3', 'fname' => 'Matt')
);
// Don't forget to validate & clean your data
// Connect to db here
foreach($myArray as $key => $value){
$query = "INSERT INTO employees
(id, first_name) VALUES ('$value[id]', '$value[fname]')
ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE first_name = '$value[fname]'";
$result = mysql_query($query);
if(!$result){
print("Problem: " . mysql_error() . "");
} else {
print("Success !");
}
}
Read the manual on this for more information. This snippet will INSERT if a UNIQUE (in this case ‘id’) does not exist. It will UPDATE any existing unique. In this case any existing ‘id’s, the ‘first_name’ column will get updated.
One could also use the REPLACE function. As I understand the difference, REPLACE will DELETE any matching uniques, and INSERT a new record in it’s place.
Comments? Better ways? I’m always up for learning something new so please chime in ;-)
The rush is just around the corner. I found a bunch of sites that list places and prices of ‘hot’ Black Friday deals. Most of which include links to many major stores:
How much shopping will you be doing online this year?
