Selecting a <option> in a <select> with a given value.
Have you ever needed to auto-select a specific <option> in a <select> with PHP but didn’t want to generate the whole <select> or go through a complex selecting process?
Here is some Javascript code that will set the first <option> of a <select> with a given value to selected.
function selectItem(name, value) {
if(value == "") {
return;
}
var selectElement = document.getElementById(name);
var options = selectElement.getElementsByTagName('option');
for(var i = 0; i < options.length; i++) {
if(options[i].value == value) {
options[i].selected = true;
return;
}
}
return;
}
Say you had the following select, and you wanted to select a certain element say if the something went wrong when the user submited the form. You could call the above function to select the state of Texas like so: selectItem("states", "TX"). The first argument is the id of the select, and the second is the value you want to select.
<select name="State" id="states">
<option value="" selected="selected">Select a State</option>
<option value="AL">Alabama</option>
<option value="AK">Alaska</option>
<option value="AZ">Arizona</option>
<option value="AR">Arkansas</option>
<option value="CA">California</option>
<option value="CO">Colorado</option>
<option value="CT">Connecticut</option>
<option value="DE">Delaware</option>
<option value="DC">District Of Columbia</option>
<option value="FL">Florida</option>
<option value="GA">Georgia</option>
<option value="HI">Hawaii</option>
<option value="ID">Idaho</option>
<option value="IL">Illinois</option>
<option value="IN">Indiana</option>
<option value="IA">Iowa</option>
<option value="KS">Kansas</option>
<option value="KY">Kentucky</option>
<option value="LA">Louisiana</option>
<option value="ME">Maine</option>
<option value="MD">Maryland</option>
<option value="MA">Massachusetts</option>
<option value="MI">Michigan</option>
<option value="MN">Minnesota</option>
<option value="MS">Mississippi</option>
<option value="MO">Missouri</option>
<option value="MT">Montana</option>
<option value="NE">Nebraska</option>
<option value="NV">Nevada</option>
<option value="NH">New Hampshire</option>
<option value="NJ">New Jersey</option>
<option value="NM">New Mexico</option>
<option value="NY">New York</option>
<option value="NC">North Carolina</option>
<option value="ND">North Dakota</option>
<option value="OH">Ohio</option>
<option value="OK">Oklahoma</option>
<option value="OR">Oregon</option>
<option value="PA">Pennsylvania</option>
<option value="RI">Rhode Island</option>
<option value="SC">South Carolina</option>
<option value="SD">South Dakota</option>
<option value="TN">Tennessee</option>
<option value="TX">Texas</option>
<option value="UT">Utah</option>
<option value="VT">Vermont</option>
<option value="VA">Virginia</option>
<option value="WA">Washington</option>
<option value="WV">West Virginia</option>
<option value="WI">Wisconsin</option>
<option value="WY">Wyoming</option>
</select>
Hope this helps! 
How to format PHP date() for MySQL’s DateTime DataType
This is a simple call to a function like so:
Get the current time:
$time = date("y-m-d H\:i\:s");
Or get the current time from a timestamp, set to one week from the current time:
$nextWeek = time() + (7 * 24 * 60 * 60);
$time = date("y-m-d H\:i\:s", $nextWeek);
Installing MySQL Workbench from Source on Fedora 12
Here is a quick tutorial on how to install MySQL Workbench on Fedora 12, as there are some unique things you need before it will install correctly.
First, download the source code tar ball from dev.mysql.com here: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/workbench
Next, unpack the tarball into a directory of your choice, open a terminal, and cd into that directory where you unpacked the source.
You will need root priviliges for the install so you can do so by running either su or sudo -s.
You will need to run the following command to install the librarys required by MySQL Workbench.
yum install libtool
libzip libzip-devel glib2 glib-devel2 libxml2 libxml2-devel libsigc++20 libsigc++20-devel libglade2 libglade2-devel gtkmm24 gtkmm24-devel libgnome libgnome-devel boost boost-devel libuuid libuuid-devel lua lua-devel pcre pcre-devel mysql mysql-devel
Next run sh autogen.sh
Then make
And then finally make install
If the whole process succeeded, the MySQL Workbench binary should be /usr/local/bin/mysql-workbench
Significant Figure Calculator
Here is a little calculator I wrote while I was at a conference this week. Nothin fancy but it will calculate a mathematical equation while taking into account the significant figures and precision of each number in the equation, rounding the final answer to the same precision as the number with the least precision in the equation.
http://mphwebsystems.com/SignificantFigureCalc/index.php
Enjoy!
Sending POST parameters via HTTP to a server in C#
Here is a C# Method for sending data to a server via POST.
You would call this method like this:
get_post_response("http://somesite/", "email=email&password=password")
If any of the characters in the params contain special characters (Such as $, #, @) you must call HttpUtility.UrlEncode() on each param or on the entire param string. Here is how you do that: http://www.vcskicks.com/encode-url.php
public static string get_post_response(string page_url, string page_params) {
var request = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create(page_url);
request.CookieContainer = new CookieContainer();
request.CookieContainer.Add(session);
request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
request.Method = "POST";
byte[] bytes = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(page_params);
request.ContentLength = bytes.Length;
using (Stream os = request.GetRequestStream()) {
os.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
}
var resp = request.GetResponse();
CookieContainer cookieJar = new CookieContainer();
session = cookieJar.GetCookies(request.RequestUri);
Stream respStream = resp.GetResponseStream();
byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
string text = "";
while (Convert.ToBoolean(respStream.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)))
text += Encoding.ASCII.GetString(buffer).Trim('\0');
return text;
}
Enjoy!
Say thank you to our troops!
How to install Adobe Flash 10 on Slackware 13 for Firefox
The installation of adobe flash on Slackware is quite a simple process actually. It requires 4 steps.
First, open a terminal then type su to get a root shell.
Next run the following command to get the latest version of adobe flash 10 from adobe.
root@paulhenry-laptop:~# wget http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player_10_linux.tar.gz
Next uncompress the file you just downloaded.
root@paulhenry-laptop:~# tar -zxvf install_flash_player_10_linux.tar.gz
Then simply copy the uncompressed library file to the /plugins directory of firefox.
root@paulhenry-laptop:~# cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/
Restart (or start) firefox and look in Tools->Addons->Plugins and Shockwave flash should be installed!
Feel free to email me at paulhenry@mphwebsystems.com if you have any problems.
New forums!
Check out our new forms! Feel free to join up and post!
http://forums.mphwebsystems.com/
Also check out our project management suite: http://project.mphwebsystems.com/
If you would like an account on the project management suite, please email me at paulhenry@mhpwebsystems.com
Scoring?
Alright, so one of the major things that CMS will accomplish is the automatic scoring of a registered competition. How will CMS do this?
First of all, we can lay down some basic rules on how we get the total score for each team.
First: A team’s total score is the sum of all rounds by that team. This tells us that for each team, their competition score is the sum of the total score for all rounds played by that team.
Second: A round has one or more actions.
Third: Every competition has a registered number of actions per round.
Fourth: Each action contributes to each round’s total score.
All we really need to do to find out scores is just to define actions, and those actions will make up rounds, and those rounds will make up a team’s score.
Now we just need to lay down some rules about how special cases, like ties are handled. I am thinking an additional round will be added. Anything you all would suggest?
New Main Website design
Alight, so over the past few weeks, I have been monitoring the bandwidth usage for both blog.mphwebsystems.com and the main site, mphwebsystems.com and noticed one very interesting thing. There have been approximately 1,100 hits on the main site, and there have been 3,000 hits on the blog. Now, the really interesting part is the bandwidth used by both. The main site, with 1,100 hits, used 13 MB. The blog, with 3,000 hits, used 10 MB. The theme I have used for the main site is extremely heavy, with 1600 lines of CSS, and about 20 images. The theme used for the blog is very very light and simple, thus the lower bandwidth usage. Now what this shows, is that it really makes a big difference how your website is designed.
Because of this difference, I went ahead and decided to redesign the main site. The new design has 3 images, and 251 lines of CSS, much lighter and simpler. I think the hardest part of web development is finding the balance between size and “shinyness”.