Category: Framework

Getting rid of Redux Framework annoyances

April 24, 2015 ·

Redux Framework is a nice option framework for WordPress theme and plugin developers, and probably it is one of the most used frameworks out there. However, it comes with a few annoyances that many peoples are complaining of. First one is their dashboard widget. There should be a hook to remove that from my theme. Second, it asks the user to opt-in for tracking usage info. Third, it shows unnecessary admin notices when you’re developing in localhost. These admin notices doesn’t display in production server. But it still annoys me while in development mode because it has no effect on dev_mode value set to true or false. It also adds an extra “Redux Framework” sub menu page under Tools menu which was meant for support options but is not needed when you’re a theme developer and providing support by yourself.

Screen Shot 2015-04-24 at 9.59.11 PM

So here is how you can get rid of these things. Remember, there are no hooks to turn them off easily and you need to modify core files. Fortunately the changes are simple. Let’s do it!

1. Turn off Dashboard Widget and Stop admin notices

Open ReduxCore/framework.php and you will find the following code block around line # 405 (depending on your version of Redux Framework)

[sourcecode language=”php”]
if ( $this->args[‘dev_mode’] == true || Redux_Helpers::isLocalHost() == true ) {
include_once ‘core/dashboard.php’;

if ( ! isset ( $GLOBALS[‘redux_notice_check’] ) ) {
include_once ‘core/newsflash.php’;

$params = array(
‘dir_name’ => ‘notice’,
‘server_file’ => ‘http://www.reduxframework.com/’ . ‘wp-content/uploads/redux/redux_notice.json’,
‘interval’ => 3,
‘cookie_id’ => ‘redux_blast’,
);

new reduxNewsflash( $this, $params );
$GLOBALS[‘redux_notice_check’] = 1;
}
}
[/sourcecode]

Comment out the whole block and you’re done!

2. Turn off opt-in Tracking popup

This one is quite easy. Just add the disable_tracking in your option setting arguments (where you define your opt_name value) and you’re done

[sourcecode language=”php”]
$args = array(
// TYPICAL -> Change these values as you need/desire
‘opt_name’ => $opt_name,
‘disable_tracking’ => true,
…
[/sourcecode]

3. Remove “Redux Framework” sub menu under Tools

To remove that menu, add the following code-block in your functions.php. Remember to set the priority higher than 10 🙂

[sourcecode language=”php”]
/** remove redux menu under the tools **/
add_action( ‘admin_menu’, ‘remove_redux_menu’,12 );
function remove_redux_menu() {
remove_submenu_page(‘tools.php’,’redux-about’);
}
[/sourcecode]

Hope you liked this article. Enjoy!

Running Symfony 2 Applications in OpenShift

October 25, 2013 ·

Openshift is a fantastic Polyglot PaaS from Redhat, and you can do a lot of things with these containers. The good news is that with free accounts, OpenShift gives three gears for free, forever. Today, in this article I will show you how to install and run your Symfony applications in OpenShift.

After you have created your free account in OpenShift, go to the applications page and create a new “Zend Server 5.6” application. You can choose “PHP 5.3” containers as well, but there are many benefits of choosing ZendServer.

Before we dive into the details, please MAKE SURE that you have added your public key in your openshift settings section. This is very important that you do this.

So after creating the new ZendServer 5.6 application and adding our public key in our OpenShift account, this is time to check out from our application’s git repository. OpenShift gives you a private git repository for every application and you can find the url in the right side of your application details.

Now, follow these steps to check out this git repository and create a blank symfony application inside it’s php directory. You should have composer installed in your machine before this step.

[sourcecode language=”shell”]
git clone ssh://[email protected]/~/git/sym.git/
cd sym/php
rm -fr *.php
composer create-project symfony/framework-standard-edition ./
[/sourcecode]

After it runs, you have a blank symfony project installed inside this php directory. Now you need to add these files and commit in the git repository

[sourcecode language=”shell”]
git add -A
git commit -am "Blank Symfony Project"
git push
[/sourcecode]

OpenShift has an auto deployment feature which will deploy your application code after you push it in the git repo. It makes the deployment a lot easier for everyone.

Now you can visit your openshift container’s url but hey, why there is a blank screen? To find the answer of this question you need to open the .gitignore file. By default it’s content is like this

[sourcecode language=”shell”]
/web/bundles/
/app/bootstrap.php.cache
/app/config/parameters.yml
/app/cache/*
/app/logs/*
/vendor/
!app/cache/.gitkeep
!app/logs/.gitkeep
/build/
/bin/
/composer.phar
[/sourcecode]

Notice those lines “/app/config/parameters.yml” and “/vendor/”? These lines mean that parameters.yml file and everything in the vendor folder will be excluded from your commit. For now, just remove the line where it says about parameters.yml and keep the vendor line as is. So your final .gitignore file will look like this

[sourcecode language=”shell”]
/web/bundles/
/app/bootstrap.php.cache
/app/cache/*
/app/logs/*
/vendor/
!app/cache/.gitkeep
!app/logs/.gitkeep
/build/
/bin/
/composer.phar
[/sourcecode]

Now come to the root of your openshift repo and give this commands in the terminal

[sourcecode language=”shell”]
git add -A
git commit -am "Parameters.yml"
git push
[/sourcecode]

Now we need to setup the database details. To get those credentials, you need to log into your openshift gear. You can find the ssh login details in the right side of your app settings. In the following screenshot, you can get the mysql details (username and password) and ssh login details from the right side “Remote Access” section. Just click on the “Show Password” and “Want to login” links.

After you get the Remote Access , log into your openshift gear from your terminal. Once you are logged in, type the following commands in the terminal.

Copy the values of mysql db host and port. Now we have all the data for our symfony app. Open your parameters.yml file and put all the essential data. For my one, it looks like this

[sourcecode language=”shell”]
parameters:
database_driver: pdo_mysql
database_host: 127.7.119.2
database_port: 3306
database_name: symfony
database_user: MuHaHaHa
database_password: "4s89-vh55G6q"
mailer_transport: smtp
mailer_host: 127.0.0.1
mailer_user: null
mailer_password: null
locale: en
secret: WhateverYouLikeTo
[/sourcecode]

Now commit this file and push

[sourcecode language=”shell”]
git commit -am "Parameters"
git push
[/sourcecode]

At this point, we need to write a deploy hook which will do the following things everytime you push your code.

It checks if composer is installed in our openshift gear. If not, it installs it
It then go to $OPENSHIFT_REOP_DIR/php folder and run composer install command
Then it gives write permission to app/cache and app/logs folder

Open your openshift repo, go to the .openshift folder, then go to the action_hooks folder and create a new file named deploy. Inside that file, put the following content

[sourcecode language=”shell”]
#!/bin/bash
# .openshift/action_hooks/deploy

export COMPOSER_HOME="$OPENSHIFT_DATA_DIR/.composer"

if [ ! -f "$OPENSHIFT_DATA_DIR/composer.phar" ]; then
curl -s https://getcomposer.org/installer | /usr/local/zend/bin/php — –install-dir=$OPENSHIFT_DATA_DIR
else
/usr/local/zend/bin/php $OPENSHIFT_DATA_DIR/composer.phar self-update
fi

unset GIT_DIR
cd $OPENSHIFT_REPO_DIR/php
/usr/local/zend/bin/php $OPENSHIFT_DATA_DIR/composer.phar install

chmod -R 0777 $OPENSHIFT_REPO_DIR/php/app/cache
chmod -R 0777 $OPENSHIFT_REPO_DIR/php/app/logs
[/sourcecode]

As a sidenote, if you are using regular PHP 5.3 containers instead of ZendServer 5.6, then replace “/usr/local/zend/bin/php” with “/usr/bin/php” in the deploy script above.

Save this file and give it executable permission by following command from your terminal

[sourcecode language=”shell”]
chmod +x deploy
[/sourcecode]

Now come to the root of your openshift repo and commit this deploy file. OpenShift supports different git hooks and you can check out https://www.openshift.com/developers/deploying-and-building-applications to know more about those.

[sourcecode language=”shell”]
git add -A
git commit -am "Deploy Hook"
git push
[/sourcecode]

You will notice some magical things happening at this point. After you push, you will notice in your terminal that composer is being installed in your openshift gear, and then it runs the composer install in appropriate directory.

Now visit your optnshift url (url/web/app_dev.php). Strange! now it is showing a strange error that we don’t have access to this app_dev.php. To fix this, open our app_dev.php (openshift repo/php/web/app_dev.php) and comment out line #12 to #18, I mean comment the following lines in your app_dev.php.

[sourcecode language=”php”]
//php/web/app_dev.php
if (isset($_SERVER[‘HTTP_CLIENT_IP’])
|| isset($_SERVER[‘HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR’])
|| !in_array(@$_SERVER[‘REMOTE_ADDR’], array(‘127.0.0.1’, ‘fe80::1’, ‘::1’))
) {
header(‘HTTP/1.0 403 Forbidden’);
exit(‘You are not allowed to access this file. Check ‘.basename(__FILE__).’ for more information.’);
}
[/sourcecode]

Sweet, now visit your openshift gear’s url (url/web/app_dev.php) and you can see that symfony is running smoothly :). But wait a minute – the URL contains the “web” part which looks ugly. All openshift PHP gear’s document root is set to $OPENSHIFT_REPO_DIR/php folder, which is in this case the root of our symfony application. But we don’t want this “web” in the URL. To do that, just create a .htaccess file in the “php” directory in our local openshift repo and put the following content

[sourcecode language=”shell”]
#php/.htaccess
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^your-openshift-domain$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !web/
RewriteRule (.*) /web/$1 [L]
[/sourcecode]

And we are done, visit your openshift URL (url/app_dev.php) and it will working like a charm. So what if we want to set this app_dev.php as the default endpoint for our application? which means that we don’t even need to put “app-dev.php” in our url. To do that, open the .htaccess file from your “web” folder and replace all instance or “app.php” and “app\.php” to “app_dev.php” and “app_dev\.php” respectively. Then save your repo and make a git push and you are done! Tada!!!!

Hope you’ve enjoyed this long article. 🙂

Followup: I have automated the whole process and created a boilerplate Symfony 2.3.0 repository. Now you can get up and running in just one minute. Check out http://hasin.me/2013/10/27/install-and-run-symfony-2-3-0-in-openshift-instances-in-just-one-minute-with-this-boilerplate-repository/

Shameless Plug
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Utopia – our new admin panel theme is ready to grab

June 27, 2012 ·

Last week, we have released a new admin panel theme from themio. This new theme, “Utopia” comes packed with lots of beautifully crafted UI elements and it is built on top of popular twitter bootstrap framework. So you will be getting all the features of twitter bootstrap plus the extras.

Check Utopia in Themeforest: Click here

Utopia comes with two themes white and dark which will suit your need in different situations. The collapsible sidebar and widgets, data tables, conversations tables, pricing tables and numbers of galleries with image effect will make it a perfect choice for the backend of your web applications

Screenshots

Dashoboard comes with a glimpse of beautifully crafted UI elements that comes with Utopia. The collapsible and
responsive
sidebar, data tables, legends, weather controls, data tables, news feed ticker and many more

Dashboard

(more…)

Which framework is best?

November 2, 2011 ·

When I started learning programming for internet in 2001, I started with perl. It was a fantastic language and everything was fine. There was absolutely no problem with it. But then, when I tried to host my tiny application in free hosts available that time, I understood that finding a free host for perl was not as easy as finding one for PHP. Though some hosts were offering free perl hosting that time, but there were problems with available modules etc. And I was a noob with very limited resources around me (even I couldn’t access internet all the time, it was costly like hell for me in those days). I started learning PHP. It’s syntax was similar to perl and there was even the friendly “$” sign present, it didn’t take me too much of time to change my application into php. I choose one from the many free PHP hosting providers and my application went live immediately.

Is perl a bad language? Was it a bad language? NO!

But at the end of the day, PHP turns into the best thing for me because there were plenty of resources available, there was a “HELL OF A MANUAL” with user comments and what not.

These days, beginners and fresher asks a common question all the time – “Which framework is best?” . My answer remains simple for them, “none”. If you are planning to learn a new PHP framework or want to choose a PHP framework for your web application, there are some small points you need to consider first.

1. What is my applications going to do?
2. Which framework has a stable community
3. Which framework has good resources available
4. Which framework is under solid development phase and not in a “discontinued” mode?

Once you have the answer, you need to know that there are basically three types of frameworks in nature. Though most of them offers you an MVC or HMVC work flow, yet, they differ in nature.

Some Frameworks are too Liberal
Some Frameworks are too strict
Some of them are over strict and configuration junky

I started with CodeIgniter. It was extremely liberal, allowed me to write very bad code. In those early days, when I was not pretty much aware of the “MVC” convention, I wrote business logic in the controller, even sometime called model from inside a view. I was like “why not? it works” – but I never understood the philosophy of the true MVC application model and continued to write bad code, until I realized the beauty of coding and the value of that in a team work.

I started learning CakePHP, but well, that time its strict coding style and it’s “convention over configuration” started looking awkward to me. Because I had jumped into CakePHP from a comparatively liberal world of programming, CodeIgniter. I learned CakePHP for a couple of months, even used it in a few applications I was working on that time and I gave it up. It was painful for me.

But then, I realized that to write code that you can really take pride on, you must follow the convention. You can’t simply write business logic inside a controller just because you can do it. You should give up your stubbornness. I started again with Zend Framework. We, a small team in leevio spent a couple of weeks learning Zend Framework together. Though it was a bit painful that time with Rob Allen’s tutorial and very very bad official manual where anyone gets lost in a pile of unnecessary talks, ultimately it started paying off. We learned the ZF and helped other people in our team to learn it in a collaborative effort. Zend Framework is a real gem. It’s strict, but it allows you to write bad code too. However, the strictness is not something that can hurt like a framework which I frequently call a configuration junky, like symfony.

I had a hell of an experience with symfony, oh boy! I wanted to give it a try in 2007/08 and then after spending two days with their configuration system, sandbox, blah blah, this and that, i had been finally able to say hello to this world. I was exhausted, my eyes were almost tearing and it didn’t take much time to change my “hello world” into “bye bye symfony” 😛

Long story short, if you are a beginner with MVC and want to learn a framework from the heart, start with Zend Framework or CakePHP. Soon you will realize that you may not have to move or use any other framework unless the situation requires it. Saying that, there are other very good frameworks out there like Yii, CodeIgniter and Kohana (started as a fork of CodeIgniter and later it became what it is now)

And again I am answering the title question “Which frameworks is best” – there is no such “best” thing to be honest. The one that suits your need is the best framework for you.

We are close to release Orchid, the new Framework

December 24, 2007 ·

orchid framework

Am I talking about another framework? Well yeah. I thought it will be real fun for web application developers to use orchid to build their apps. Orchid is still in preview state and we are planning to release it by the mid of January. But if you are interested you can check the orchid blog and checkout the nightly build version from svn repository. Orchid is very fast and lightweight and really painless to kickstart the development.

URL : http://orchid.phpxperts.net

Some of the core features of Orchid which I think are really helpful to develop real world applications, are listed here

1. Caching Engine with support of Memcache, MySQL and SQLite as Storage
2. MVC
3. RoR like Layout and segregated template components.
4. Partial Caching in Template
5. Very efficient object loading and dispatching
6. DAL for MySQL (Both MySQL and MySQLi), SQLite, PostgreSQL and MSSQL
7. Support for PDO
8. Builtin Unit Testing Library where you can write unit tests inside the controller without extra pain.
9. Internationalization using Language files
10. Session Manager (Regular and DB Based)
11. Bundled Google Map Library
12. Bundled Google Chart Library
13. Bundled JSON Library
14. Bundled Prototype, jQuery, Scriptaculous and SWFObject Scripts with on-demand gzip support
15. On demand gzipping for javascripts
16. Active Record
17. Excellent Benchmarking and Profiling support which you can use to profile your application
18. CSS based Button Manager (What is this???? — checkout)
19. AJAX Library

Beside many other features it also comes with an exceptional feature which is hard to find elsewhere 🙂 which is the following one

20. Bundled “Colorful Moments”

🙂

Orchid is planned to release by mid januray, as I told. Currently some of us are working on documentation. But you can still check out the code and sample controllers.

Ifthese sounds interesting – you can visit the official blog of orchid at http://orchid.phpxperts.net

The Storyteller

Rise Of The Machines