Win a new Mac Book Air laptop

Archive for the ‘PHP’ Category

Two CakePHP behaviours to extend MeioUpload

Monday, June 29th, 2009

I’ve been using the the Meio Upload Behaviour for a while as its a very handy piece of code, but as is so often the case it doesn’t do quite what I need. In the past I’ve got round this by hacking together a kind of supporting framework in app_controller and scattered about in my models. But the other day I came across the newest version of the code by Juan Basso on Github and decided to dump my mess of spaghetti code and start from scratch.

Aims

The idea is that each model can have its own uploads with their own defaults, for example:

  • Products might need to generate images at 3 different sizes with the smallest zoom cropped.
  • News items might have 2 image sizes but also need to upload a PDF press release.

All of the uploaded files can be viewed and managed centrally from the Upload model.

The changes I wanted to make were as follows:

  1. Use a single Uploads table attached to multiple models (using the Polymorphic behaviour)
  2. The ability to do multiple uploads at once
  3. Rename my uploaded files
  4. Have an UploadVariants model / table with meta information about the thumbnails
  5. Be able to use more of the PHPThumb image options and use them on a per thumbnail basis.

Rather than just take the behaviour and start writing on top of it, I decided to extend the original behaviour (yes you can do this in CakePHP - its just easy to get absorbed in the framework and forget it) and then create an additional behaviour that manages the multiple uploads.

The underlying requirements are quite simple:

And my two new behaviours:

At the end of the article is a link to let you download a zipped working CakePHP app with everything in place

The models

First things first. The database tables on which my models are based.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
/*
MySQL Backup
Source Host:           localhost
Source Server Version: 5.0.51b-community-nt
Source Database:       je_meio
Date:                  2009/06/29 15:39:15
*/
 
SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0;
#----------------------------
# Table structure for products
#----------------------------
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS products;
CREATE TABLE `products` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `title` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  `created` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `modified` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `created_by` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `modified_by` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `created_name` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  `modified_name` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=1 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
 
#----------------------------
# Table structure for upload_variants
#----------------------------
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS upload_variants;
CREATE TABLE `upload_variants` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `upload_id` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `variant` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  `filename` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  `quick_type` varchar(50) DEFAULT NULL,
  `width` int(4) DEFAULT NULL,
  `height` int(4) DEFAULT NULL,
  `created` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `modified` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `created_by` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `modified_by` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `created_name` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  `modified_name` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=1 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
 
#----------------------------
# Table structure for uploads
#----------------------------
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS uploads;
CREATE TABLE `uploads` (
  `id` int(8) UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `class` varchar(255) DEFAULT 'Upload',
  `foreign_id` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `alt` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  `filename` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  `dir` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  `mimetype` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  `quick_type` varchar(50) DEFAULT NULL,
  `filesize` int(11) UNSIGNED DEFAULT NULL,
  `position` int(11) DEFAULT '0',
  `height` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `width` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `created` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `processed` tinyint(1) DEFAULT '0',
  `modified` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `created_by` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `modified_by` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `created_name` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  `modified_name` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`id`),
  KEY `class` (`class`,`foreign_id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=1 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
 class Upload extends AppModel {
 
  var $name = 'Upload';
 
  //The Associations below have been created with all possible keys, those that are not needed can be removed
  var $hasMany = array(
    'UploadVariant' => array(
      'className' => 'UploadVariant',
      'foreignKey' => 'upload_id',
      'dependent' => true,
      'conditions' => '',
      'fields' => '',
      'order' => '',
      'limit' => '',
      'offset' => '',
      'exclusive' => '',
      'finderQuery' => '',
      'counterQuery' => ''
    )
  );
 
  var $actsAs = array(
    'Polymorphic',
     'JeMeioUpload' => array(
         'filename' => array(
          'dir' => 'files/uploads',
           'create_directory' => true,
           'max_size' => 2097152,
           'max_dimension' => 'w',
           'thumbnailQuality' => 90,
           'useImageMagick' => false,
           'imageMagickPath' => '/usr/bin/convert',
           'allowed_mime' => array( 'image/gif', 'image/jpeg', 'image/pjpeg', 'image/png'),
           'allowed_ext' => array('.jpg', '.jpeg', '.png', '.gif'),
           'thumbsizes' => array(
             'small'  => array('width' => 90, 'height' => 90),
             'medium' => array('width' => 220, 'height' => 220),
             'large'  => array('width' => 800, 'height' => 600)
           ),
           'default_class' => 'Upload',
           'random_filename' => true
         )
       )
     );
 
}

In the Upload model, just include the Polymorphic behaviour and JeMeioUpload instead of MeioUpload. You could actually use the same defaults as the MeioUpload behaviour itself but there are two additional defaults ‘default_class’ => ‘Upload’, and ‘random_filename’ => true. These both refer to renaming files. As the behaviour can be used to manage uploads from multiple models in a single table it allows you to set the default Upload model. You can also set whether or not you want the files to have the meaningful part replaced with a random string.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
class UploadVariant extends AppModel {
 
  var $name = 'UploadVariant';
 
  //The Associations below have been created with all possible keys, those that are not needed can be removed
  var $belongsTo = array(
    'Upload' => array(
      'className' => 'Upload',
      'foreignKey' => 'upload_id',
      'conditions' => '',
      'fields' => '',
      'order' => ''
    )
  );
 
}

The UploadVariant Model is just as it was baked.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
class Product extends AppModel {
 
  var $name = 'Product';
 
  var $validate = array(
    'title' => array('notempty')
  );
 
  var $hasMany = array(
        'Upload' => array(
            'className' => 'Upload',    
            'foreignKey' => 'foreign_id',
            'conditions' => array('Upload.class' => 'Product'),
            'dependent' => true,
      'order' => 'Upload.position ASC'
        ),
 
    );
 
    var $actsAs = array(
     'JeMeioUploadPolymorphic'
   );
 
 
 
   var $jeMeioUploadParams = array(
      'filename' => array(
        'dir' => 'files/uploads/',
        'create_directory' => true,
        'allowed_mime' => array('image/jpeg', 'image/pjpeg', 'image/png', 'image/gif'),
        'allowed_ext' => array('.jpg', '.jpeg', '.png', '.gif'),
        'thumbsizes' => array(
          'small'  => array('width'=>60, 'height'=>60, 'image_options' => array('zc' => 1)),
           'large'  => array('width'=>800, 'height'=>400, 'image_options' => array('zc' => 0)),
           'shop'  => array('width'=>265, 'height'=>265, 'image_options' => array('zc' => 0))
        ),
        'random_filename' => false
      )
    );
 
}

Product is a test model set up to demonstrate the multiple uploads and the Polymorphic association to the Upload model. In this case the meaningful part of the filenames will not be replaced with a random string and the ’small’ thumbnail will be zoom cropped. To find out more about image_options you will need to check the PHPThumb component and the documentation PHPThumb itself (play about and experiment) - what you can and can’t do will also be effected by whether or not you have ImageMagick on your server.

The Controllers

You don’t need to make any changes to your controllers at all.

The Views

There is nothing complicated in the views at all. Just remember to set them up properly for uploads.

The uploads/add.ctp

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
<?php echo $form->create('Upload', array('type' => 'file'));?>
	<fieldset>
 		<legend><?php __('Add Upload');?></legend>
	<?php
 
		echo $form->input('alt');
		echo $form->input('filename', array('type' => 'file'));
 
	?>
	</fieldset>
<?php echo $form->end('Submit');?>

The products/add.ctp

This view allows up to 3 uploads to be stored in the associated Upload model.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
<?php echo $form->create('Product', array('type' => 'file'));?>
	<fieldset>
 		<legend><?php __('Add Product');?></legend>
	<?php
		echo $form->input('title');
		echo $form->input('Upload.0.filename', array('type' => 'file'));
		echo $form->input('Upload.1.filename', array('type' => 'file'));
		echo $form->input('Upload.3.filename', array('type' => 'file'));
	?>
	</fieldset>
<?php echo $form->end('Submit');?>

Summary

The one part I’m not terribly happy with at the moment is error messages returning to the views in the Polymorphic associations (e.g. Product example). At the moment if an image or upload can’t be processed then there is no warning or error message. At the moment this is compromise I’m willing to live with.

I could certainly build some kind of component scaffold or something to go in the controllers to return an error message but I think the gain in responsiveness would probably be outweighed by the added complexity. Right now I can’t figure out an elegant way to get error messages from back to the views - if anybody has any suggestions please let me know.
(Note if you are uploading straight into the Upload model then the error messages are unaffected)

There is also the problem of what do you do when in a situation like the following: If you add a new Product successfully but the associated upload has problems? Ideally you would want to redirect to the edit view for that Product but there seems to be no easy way of doing this from a Model / Behaviour.

One solution that I have implemented in the past is to create dedicated views for uploading - so if you do hack your hacks are easy to manage.

I’ve baked a quick and dirty demo that you can download here. Its so basic that it doesn’t even show the uploaded images!

Todo List

  • A helper to generate things like uploads fields complete with delete checkboxes and thumbnail images.
  • Deleting the via the Polymorphic association (don’t think this works right now)

Overload $this->tags & $this->map in Apphelper

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009

CakePHP is full of amazingly handy little bits and pieces, the trick is discovering them by exploring the API or paying attention to people who know Cake inside out.

AppHelper sits there begging to be filled, the idea being that you can overload core helper methods here; however there is a lot of debate as to whether or not this is actually a good approach and whether it is infact better (safer?) to overload helpers on a case by case basis (e.g. MyFormhelper extends FormHelper). (Personally I think it would be great to have the core helpers moved into base helpers so you can overload the core methods and still refer to them easily (e.g. HtmlHelper extends BaseHtmlhelper extends AppHelper, where HtmlHelper becomes an empty Class)

Two of the things I always have set in AppHelper are as follows:

1. Setup $this->map how I like it. $map defined in the Formhelper (cake/libs/views/helpers/form.php) is part of the auto magic behind forms. When you create a form in a view, Cake queries the model schema and figures out what sort of field it should generate for each database field.

Whilst I can see the reasoning behind the way Cake generates all the <select> fields, I would much rather have Cake genearte a simple <text> field and then use a JavaScript date picker to populate the field.

If you take a morning or a day to mess about and customise your bake templates then you can save vast amounts of time - if you want a date field why not just have it come to life with all the hooks for your Javascript there already? (A good introduction for custom baking is ad7six’s post.)

2. Redefine Tags. One of my real annoyances (and I know this is silly) is the fact that when Cake creates hidden fields it does not flag them with any specific class. This means that styles applied to other <input> fields can easily cascade down and cause odd little lines to appear all over your forms. Often you wouldn’t even notice this, but once you change the background colour of your form… all hell can break loose.

Tags are defined in /cake/libs/view/helpers/html.php so a quick and dirty solution is just to wrap a div with class around the hidden inputs so they can easily be distinguised css wise from all the other tags.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
 
class AppHelper extends Helper {
 
  /*
   * overload the default type mappings is /cake/libs/views/helpers/form.php FormHelper
   */
 
  var $map = array(
          'string'  => 'text',    
          'datetime'  => 'text',
          'boolean'  => 'checkbox',  
          'timestamp' => 'text',
          'text'    => 'textarea',  
          'time'    => 'time',
          'date'    => 'text', 
          'float' => 'text'
        );
 
 
   function __construct() {
        parent::__construct();
 
        /*
        * overload the default html tags /cake/libs/view/helpers/html.php
        */
        $this->tags['hidden'] = '<div class="hidden-input"><input type="hidden" name="%s" %s/></div>';
 
   }
}

If you are looking for other things to stick in your AppHelper then try Matt Curry’s app_helper url caching.

At last the CakePHP books have arrived

Monday, August 4th, 2008

I’d like to say it never rains but it pours, but that would be entirely the wrong sentiment, I need something more like good things come to those who wait

Anyway after an epic wait a flurry of CakePHP books have arrived.

I haven’t read any of these books yet, but I from personal experience I would say the Apress books are bound to be good. I have no idea what the books from Packt are like. I have one Manning book which is good but is unfortunately a PDF (and I hate reading PDFs).

XAMPP and the PHP CLI

Sunday, July 27th, 2008

Like a lot of people I do most of my development work on windows PC and locally run a web a server and database. Like a a lot of people I just downloaded and installed a server bundle. For the last few years I have used Apache2triad and it has generally been pretty painless, but I’ve recently been forced to abandon it. Unfortunately the development seems to have been abandoned about 2 years ago.

The reason I abandoned Apache2triad was PHP versions - I wanted to do some work with Google Base using the Zend Google Data Library which required PHP 5.1.4+.

Looking around at the various bundles I decided to go with XAMPP - a lot of people seem to use it and it seems to get pretty good feedback. I won’t say the process was entirely painless (it took a couple of goes to get everything up and running) but eventually it all seemed OK.

The fun started when I decided to do a bit of baking (generating scaffolding code for my CakePHP app from a command line interface). Nothing worked.

Looking into it I discovered more than I wanted to know about the PHP Command Line Interface (CLI) which I had happily used for years with no idea it actually existed, having assumed it was just there as part of PHP.

After a lot googleing and a lot of trial and error I got it all working again and this is how I did it.

My environment is Windows XP Pro Service Pack 2 with XAMPP installed on E:/

  1. Downloaded the latest version of PHP and replaced the entire contents of E:\xampp\php\.
  2. Added to the E:\xampp\php to my environment PATH.

At this stage PHP CLI wwas now working but there were nasty errors e.g. I was uanble to connect to MySQL from scripts. I discovered that this is because PHP CLI uses a different php.ini file to regular PHP.

To fix this I copied my php.ini from E:\xampp\apache\bin\php.ini (the default XAMPP ini file) to E:\xampp\php.

I then checked the PHP CLI again using php -v at a command prompt. There were now about 6 errors displayed, concerned with modules that could not be loaded or found. I believe that these concern modules just that aren’t meaningful in CLI mode. So I went through my new php.ini in E:\xampp\php and commented out the directives that were causing the errors until PHP CLI ran without errors.

CakePHP Calendar Helper

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008

About six months ago I wrote a post about a Simple PHP calendar function I had written and how it was also really easy to use as a CakePHP helper.

Calendar Screenshot

I didn’t actually write the calendar specifically with Cake in mind, but I was working on a Cake site at the same time and I had a flash of inspiration. I was working on a project that needed a calendar, so I looked through all my old code but all the Calendars I had were all tied up in a terrible mess with bits of logic and SQL queries and layout all rolled into one. I looked on Google and still couldn’t find anything really easy to use - I wanted something I could just drop into place.

I suddenly realised that the way to do it was to stop trying to put any decision making into the calendar at all. The calendar only needs to display the right layout for the month and manage back and forward links. I decided to just dump the data in an array where the index corresponded to the day number (1 to 31) - the idea being that you can put anything in the array - plain text, html, javascript hooks for ajax etc.

It was in part influenced by some work I was doing using the The Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI)
but I am very dubious about the whole notion of creating embedded calendars solely through Javascript when it could far more easily be done server side. (There is clearly a place for Javascript pop up calendars e.g. date pickers - I’m particularly fond of Marc Grabanski and Keith Woods’ version jQuery UI Datepicker)

At the time I had just moved over to using CakePHP as the main vehicle for my development work and it was clearly a great fit with the MVC setup of CakePHP - the calendar is just a shell that shows whatever you pour into it.

This is the first time I have had to go back and revisit the code, I have fixed the bugs, added some comments and set up a working example. At the moment all the logic is just sitting in the controller - but I am working on a component to tidy everything up and make it nice and portable (watch this space).

Thanks to everybody who commented or emailed me about the first version in September.

Calendar Helper

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
 
<?php	
 
/**
* Calendar Helper for CakePHP
*
* Copyright 2007-2008 John Elliott
* Licensed under The MIT License
* Redistributions of files must retain the above copyright notice.
*
*
* @author John Elliott
* @copyright 2008 John Elliott
* @link http://www.flipflops.org More Information
* @license http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php The MIT License
*
*/
 
class CalendarHelper extends Helper
{
 
	var $helpers = array('Html', 'Form');
 
/**
* Generates a Calendar for the specified by the month and year params and populates it with the content of the data array
*
* @param $year string
* @param $month string
* @param $data array
* @param $base_url
* @return string - HTML code to display calendar in view
*
*/
 
function calendar($year = '', $month = '', $data = '', $base_url ='')
	{
	$str = '';
	$month_list = array('january', 'febuary', 'march', 'april', 'may', 'june', 'july', 'august', 'september', 'october', 'november', 'december');
	$day_list = array('Mon', 'Tue', 'Wed', 'Thu', 'Fri', 'Sat', 'Sun');
	$day = 1;
	$today = 0;
 
	if($year == '' || $month == '') { // just use current yeear & month
		$year = date('Y');
		$month = date('M');
	}
 
 
 
	$flag = 0;
 
	for($i = 0; $i < 12; $i++) {
		if(strtolower($month) == $month_list[$i]) {
			if(intval($year) != 0) {
				$flag = 1;
				$month_num = $i + 1;
				break;
			}
		}
	}
 
 
	if($flag == 0) {
		$year = date('Y');
		$month = date('F');
		$month_num = date('m');
	}
 
	$next_year = $year;
	$prev_year = $year;
 
	$next_month = intval($month_num) + 1;
	$prev_month = intval($month_num) - 1;
 
	if($next_month == 13) {
		$next_month = 'january';
		$next_year = intval($year) + 1;
	} else {
		$next_month = $month_list[$next_month -1];
	}
 
	if($prev_month == 0) {
		$prev_month = 'december';
		$prev_year = intval($year) - 1;
	} else {
		$prev_month = $month_list[$prev_month - 1];
	}
 
	if($year == date('Y') && strtolower($month) == strtolower(date('F'))) {	
	// set the flag that shows todays date but only in the current month - not past or future...
		$today = date('j');
	}
 
	$days_in_month = date("t", mktime(0, 0, 0, $month_num, 1, $year));
 
	$first_day_in_month = date('D', mktime(0,0,0, $month_num, 1, $year)); 
 
	$str .= '<table class="calendar">';
 
	$str .= '<thead>';
 
	$str .= '<tr><th class="cell-prev">';
 
	$str .= $this->Html->link(__('prev', true), 'calendar/' . $prev_year . '/' . $prev_month); 
 
	$str .= '</th><th colspan="5">' . ucfirst($month) . ' ' . $year . '</th><th class="cell-next">';
 
	$str .= $this->Html->link(__('next', true), 'calendar/' . $next_year . '/' . $next_month); 
 
	$str .= '</th></tr>';
 
	$str .= '<tr>';
 
		for($i = 0; $i < 7;$i++) {
				$str .= '<th class="cell-header">' . $day_list[$i] . '</th>';
		}
 
	$str .= '</tr>';
 
	$str .= '</thead>';
 
	$str .= '<tbody>';
 
	while($day <= $days_in_month) {
		$str .= '<tr>';
 
		for($i = 0; $i < 7; $i ++) {
 
			$cell = '&nbsp;';
 
			if(isset($data[$day])) {
				$cell = $data[$day];
			}
 
			$class = '';
 
			if($i > 4) {
				$class = ' class="cell-weekend" ';
			}
 
			if($day == $today) {
				$class = ' class="cell-today" ';
			}
 
			if(($first_day_in_month == $day_list[$i] || $day > 1) && ($day <= $days_in_month)) {
				$str .= '<td ' . $class . '><div class="cell-number">' . $day . '</div><div class="cell-data">' . $cell . '</div></td>';
				$day++;
			} else {
				$str .= '<td ' . $class . '>&nbsp;</td>';
			}
		}
		$str .= '</tr>';
		}
 
	$str .= '</tbody>';
 
	$str .= '</table>';
 
	return $str;
	}
}	
 
?>

Calendar Controller

The controller is responsible for creating the data array containing the calendar ‘events’ and then passing this on to the view from where the calendar is called.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
 
<?php
 
/**
* Example controller for the Calendar Helper
*
*	Copyright 2008 John Elliott
* Licensed under The MIT License
* Redistributions of files must retain the above copyright notice.
*
*
* @author John Elliott
* @copyright 2008 John Elliott
* @link http://www.flipflops.org More Information
* @license			http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php The MIT License
*
*/
 
uses('sanitize');
 
class EventsController extends AppController {
 
	var $name = 'Events';
	var $helpers = array('Html', 'Form', 'Calendar');
 
	/**
	* the idea is that the calendar helper itself is purely a shell
	* the calendar will just display whatever is sent to it
	* anything you want to do to it is put togthere here in the controller or in a component when I get around to writing it
	*
	* @param $year string
	* @param $month string
	*
	**/
 
	function calendar($year = null, $month = null) {
 
		$this->Event->recursive = 0;
 
		$month_list = array('january', 'febuary', 'march', 'april', 'may', 'june', 'july', 'august', 'september', 'october', 'november', 'december');
		$day_list = array('Mon', 'Tue', 'Wed', 'Thu', 'Fri', 'Sat', 'Sun');
		$base_url = $this->webroot . 'events/calendar'; // NOT not used in the current helper version but used in the data array
		$view_base_url = $this->webroot. 'events';
 
		$data = null;
 
		if(!$year || !$month) {
			$year = date('Y');
			$month = date('M');
			$month_num = date('n');
			$item = null;
		}
 
		$flag = 0;
 
		for($i = 0; $i < 12; $i++) { // check the month is valid if set
			if(strtolower($month) == $month_list[$i]) {
				if(intval($year) != 0) {
					$flag = 1;
					$month_num = $i + 1;
					$month_name = $month_list[$i];
					break;
				}
			}
		}
 
		if($flag == 0) { // if no date set, then use the default values
			$year = date('Y');
			$month = date('M');
			$month_name = date('F');
			$month_num = date('m');
		}
 
		$fields = array('id', 'name', 'DAY(event_date) AS event_day');
 
		$var = $this->Event->findAll('MONTH(Event.event_date) = ' . $month_num . ' AND YEAR(Event.event_date) = ' . $year, $fields, 'Event.event_date ASC');
 
		/**
		* loop through the returned data and build an array of 'events' that is passes to the view
		* array key is the day of month 
		*
		*/
 
		foreach($var as $v) {
 
			if(isset($v[0]['event_day'])) {
 
				$day = $v[0]['event_day'];
 
				if(isset($data[$day])) {
					$data[$day] .= '<br /><a href="' . $view_base_url . '/view/' . $v['Event']['id'] . '">' . $v['Event']['name'] . '</a>';
				} else {
					$data[$day] = '<a href="' . $view_base_url . '/view/' . $v['Event']['id'] . '">' . $v['Event']['name'] . '</a>';
				}
			}
		}
 
		$this->set('year', $year);
		$this->set('month', $month);
		$this->set('base_url', $base_url);
		$this->set('data', $data);
 
	}
}
 
 
?>

Event Model

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
 
<?php
class Event extends AppModel {
 
	var $name = 'Event';
	var $useTable = 'events';
	var $validate = array(
 
		'name' => array(
			'rule' => array('minLength', 2),
			'message' => 'Name must be at least 2 characters long',
			'required' => true 
										),
		'notes' => array(
			'rule' => array('minLength', 2),
			'message' => 'Please add some notes',
			'required' => true 
										),	
	);
 
}
?>

Calendar View

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
 
<h2><?php __('Events');?></h2>
 
 
<?php 
 
	echo $calendar->calendar($year, $month, $data, $base_url);
 
?>

events SQL

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
 
CREATE TABLE `events` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `name` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  `event_date` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `notes` text,
  `created` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `modified` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=15 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

CSS

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
 
/* calendar CSS */
 
table.calendar {width: auto; border: 1px solid #cccccc; border-collapse: collapse; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: #ffffff;}
table.calendar th {background-color: #eeeeee; text-transform: none; color: #444444; padding: 4px; text-align: center; border: 1px solid #eeeeee;}
 
table.calendar th.cell-prev {text-align: left;}
table.calendar th.cell-next {text-align: right;}
table.calendar th.cell-header {width: 70px; border-bottom: 1px solid #cccccc;}
table.calendar td.cell-today {background-color: #e2e8f6;} /* today in the current month */
table.calendar td.cell-weekend {background-color: #F3F5EB;}
table.calendar td {border: 1px solid #cccccc;}
 
table.calendar td div.cell-number {text-align: right; font-size: 8px; color: #444444; display: block;}
table.calendar td div {display: block; font-size: 10px; text-align: left;}
table.calendar thead th {border: 1px solid #cccccc;}

To Do List

I’m feeling a little less time poor at the moment and want to do a bit of work on this. If anybody has any comments or suggestions, please let me know. At the moment my plans are as follows (in no particular order).

  • add support for internationalisation
  • put the checking date checking (and possibly data array construction into a component)
  • add built in AJAX support (haven’t decided on jQuery or Prototype yet though)
  • look at using Cake 1.2 routes as part of date checking using regular expressions (how easy would it be to combine this with the internationalisation?)

Examples & Downloads

Check out the Working Calendar Helper Example

Download all the files calendar-helper.zip - this is a zipped copy of the app directory, just set up you database, edit /app/core/database.php and slot it into place. (Note Cake 1.2 only)

  • cheapest cialis
  • buy cialis us
  • cheap cialis from canada
  • cheapest clomid prices
  • viagra canada
  • cheapest cialis online
  • cheapest generic cialis online
  • order synthroid
  • accutane online cheap
  • buy zithromax
  • cheap cialis overnight delivery
  • online viagra
  • lowest price levitra
  • buy cheapest cialis
  • acomplia without a prescription
  • cheapest viagra prices
  • buy generic clomid