Web Development | 0 articles | Tech News, Tutorials & Expert Insights

article-image-feeds-facebook-applications

16 Oct 2009

7 min read

Feeds in Facebook Applications

16 Oct 2009

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article-image-add-tools-and-theming-tips-plone-3

Packt

16 Oct 2009

10 min read

Add-on Tools and Theming Tips for Plone 3

Packt

16 Oct 2009

10 min read

(For more resources on Plone, see here.) Popular add-on Plone products One of the best things about open source development is the proliferation of products to solve common use cases. Plone themers are fortunate to have a solid set of tools available to them to solve these use cases. Enabling drop downs using webcouturier.dropdownmenu As most themers know, a lot of clients desire drop-down menus. In the past, this required coding HTML strings and the use of a product by Quintagroup named qPloneDropDownMenu. This product is still the recommended drop-down menu product for Plone 2.5x, but for 3.x, the real star is Denys Mishunov's product, webcouturier.dropdownmenu. The joy of this product is that you install it, and it works instantly. The product works by subclassing the globalsections viewlet via the following code, found in the browser/configure.zcml file of the webcouturier.dropdownmenu product:  <browser:viewlet name="plone.global_sections" manager="plone.app.layout.viewlets.interfaces.IPortalHeader" class=".dropdown.DropdownMenuViewlet" layer=".interfaces.IDropdownSpecific" permission="zope2.View" /> In the event that you've already customized your globalsections viewlet, you will have to subclass the DropdownMenuViewlet class in the webcouturier.dropdownmenu product. Unlike older drop-down menu products, webcouturier.dropdownmenu does not require any ongoing maintenance or manual adjustment of URLs. It is controlled by the navigation settings found in the Site Setup area, so you can control what types of items display in the navigation. The product also provides some basic CSS styling that can be easily adjusted in your own theme product, if desired. It can be downloaded here: http://plone.org/products/webcouturier-dropdownmenu/ Collage Another helpful Plone product is Malthe Borch's Collage. Collage allows you to create a grid containing rows and columns, and within those columns you can pull in the contents of other objects—a folder, a page, a collection, or even an image. Using this mechanism, you can create a complex page layout without knowing any programming. Until very recently, Collage did not have hooks that allowed it to be styled using CSS, and it did not respect different views. For example, if you created a special mysection_view.pt (same as a homepage_view), and you assigned that view to your page, Collage would default to the original document_view. This behavior has now been altered so that CSS hooks are available and different views are respected. This is a huge win for sites that are heavily styled and need to maintain consistency. It's suggested that when using Collage, you do not create your objects within the Collage itself; you should instead create the objects in your normal Plone content tree, and pull those items in as aliases. The reason for suggesting this is that it is not possible to access the contents of a Collage via the standard folder_contents view that is normally possible in a folder. Hence, if you need to move that content to another area of your site, you cannot. This also invites some jeopardy when migrating to a new version of Plone. It's worth mentioning that Collage will not become part of core Plone in the future, as the mechanism for organizing blocks of content on a page in the future will be accomplished via a new drag-and-drop mechanism. The lead programmer for Collage has stated, however, that there will be a migration path, but the reality of this is unknown. Finally, the usability of the Collage product is a bit clunky, but with some common sense, it's easy to use and can be a quite powerful layout tool for Plone 3. It can be downloaded here: http://plone.org/products/collage. Tableless styling using Plone Tableless A popular product for CSS purists is Simon Kaeser's plone.tableless. Plone's default main_template is created using tables, which many themers do not wish to use. To get a tableless version of Plone's main_template, simply install this product; make sure your site's portal_css is in debug mode, and test the following code: #portal-column-one {float:right;}#portal-column-two {float:left;} If you're able to switch the position of these two columns, the product works and you can style in full tableless mode. There are a few issues with Plone and tableless layouts that are unrelated to this product, but in general it works. As of this writing, the product was not tested against some of the newer browsers. It can be downloaded here: http://plone.org/products/plone-tableless/. CSSManager End users often want to have some control over basic modifications to their site—background color, link colors, and so on. The WebLion Group from Penn State University created CSSManager, a product that gives a simple, through the web interface to let users change the colors, borders, site logo, and other visual characteristics of their Plone site. Essentially, it uses the DTML variables defined in the base_properties.props file available within Plone. The product can be downloaded here: http://plone.org/products/cssmanager. To use it, install the product, go to your site's Site Setup area, and find the configlet for this tool, and try changing a few options. The CSSManager tool will supersede a theme product's base_properties if the CSSManager skin layer is above the theme product's skin layers in portal_skins/properties in the ZMI. If uninstalled, your settings can still be found in the custom folder for your Plone site via this URL: http://localhost:8080/mysite/portal_skins/custom/base_properties/manage_propertiesForm. So you can feel confident removing it if you no longer need it. Products.EasyAsPiIE Until IE7, there was no fully native support for PNG alpha channel transparency in Internet Explorer. However, since IE5.5, there has been some support in the form of a proprietary filter called AlphaImageLoader. Internet Explorer filters can be applied directly in your CSS (for both inline and background images), or by setting the same CSS property with JavaScript. Unfortunately, there's no CSS property called filter in the W3C CSS spec. It's a proprietary extension added by Microsoft that could potentially cause other browsers to reject your entire CSS rule. Also, AlphaImageLoader does not magically add full PNG transparency support so that a PNG in the page will just start working. Instead, when applied to an element in the page, it draws a new rendering surface in the same space that element occupies and loads a PNG into it. If that sounds weird, it is. However, by and large the result is that PNGs with an alpha channel can be accommodated. The WebLion Group's Products.EasyAsPiIE product uses this filter approach to handle transparent PNGs with IE6. All it does is enable JavaScript written by Angus Turnbull: http://www.twinhelix.com. You can download it from here: http://plone.org/products/productseasyaspiie/ and follow the installation instructions. Optionally, if you choose not to use this product, you can also just export to PNG8 format, instead of PNG24, to get around IE6 problems, and of course there are a lot of alternative solutions out there as well. You can read more about PNGs here: http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2007/09/18/png8-the-clear-winner/. Both Photoshop and Fireworks can export to PNG8, though other graphical programs may not. collective.skinny Another Plone product that has surfaced is Daniel Nouri's collective.skinny, which can be downloaded from http://plone.org/products/collectiveskinny/. This product is an example implementation of a separate, public-facing skin that abstracts away some of the complexity of the theming process. According to the product page, it's been described as being vastly easier than skinning Plone the conventional way, but it also has a few drawbacks. For example, you can't use it for community sites where people other than your site editors log in and modify content. It's also a little confusing from my perspective, but it's a product adventurous themers might pay attention to. It's probable that Deliverance and collective.xdv (the future of theming for Plone) will make this product obsolete, as Deliverance removes a lot of complexity and makes theming accessible to individuals who don't even know what Plone is. FS Dump For themers who started their skin creation through the web or who have content they wish to extract from the ZMI, FS Dump is an excellent tool. To use it, download the product from http://www.plone.org/products/fsdump and follow the installation instructions. This is a product that lives in the Products namespace, so it is not installed like egg-based products. Once installed, use the Add drop-down menu, found at http://www.mysite.com/manage_main, and create a Dumper instance in a folder (or product) that contains the TTW code to be dumped. This tool appears to work best when trying to dump items from the custom/ folder, though, hypothetically, it should work for any other folder in the ZMI. Next, supply an absolute path to a directory on the filesystem in which the dumper is to create the files, for example /opt. (Note that the user for whom Zope is running needs write access to this directory.) Click the Change and Dump button to do the dump to the indicated directory, and then copy the dumped files into your theme product's skins/ folder in the appropriate locations. qPloneSkinDump Another popular dumper product is known as Plone Skin Dump (qPloneSkinDump) by Quintagroup. Plone Skin Dump allows users to create a Plone product in the Products namespace by exporting the custom/ folder. It creates an old-school Plone theme product for you, but it does not provide the plonetheme-type of product. The product has not been tested against Plone 3, so it may not be the best option. Moreover, at the time this article was written, it was not possible to download the product from its SourceForge repository. In the event you wish to try this product, you can find it here: http://plone.org/products/plone-skin-dump. Again, it is in the Products namespace, so all you need to do is drop it in your buildout's products/ folder. You can then follow the directions posted on the product page. It's a bit more complicated than FS Dump, but obviously it does a bit more. Collection and static portlets While portlets are not add-on products, they are tools that can greatly enhance the impact of your site and worth mentioning. Default Plone provides collection and static portlets that can be added on any page by clicking on the Manage Portlets link on your site. These portlets provide great power and can be styled using CSS. A collection portlet, for example, can be set to display random contents fitting certain criteria—maybe a randomized spotlight content type tagged with a special keyword. This keeps the look and feel of a site fresh and gives some power to the end user. These portlets have the same structure as other portlets, so they will use any default styling that may be applied.

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article-image-joomla-15-template-reference-part-1

Packt

16 Oct 2009

2 min read

Joomla! 1.5 Template Reference: Part 1

Packt

16 Oct 2009

2 min read

Take note that we'll see how these Joomla! 1.5 items differ in use from a Joomla! 1.0 template, so that those of you looking to update a Joomla! 1.0 template to 1.5 can quickly get a handle on what to update in your templates and what new features to add. Consider this article your "cheat sheet". Jdoc include tags The jdoc include tags are new to Joomla! 1.5 templates. Previously in Joomla! 1.0, more complicated, abstract PHP code, originally created for Mambo, was used. The jdoc tags are much cleaner, visually make sense (no more guessing what attribute values like "-3" mean), and, thus, are much easier to remember. Site header information tag This is pretty simple: the tag outputs all the appropriate meta tags and header information that corresponds to your site and each individual page: <jdoc:include type="head" /> Joomla! 1.0 to 1.5 conversion If you're converting a 1.0 template to 1.5, you'll replace this PHP function in your 1.0 template's header with the above jdoc tag: <head>...<?php mosShowHead(); ?>... The component include tag Wherever you place this include, all component content will appear (from articles to poll results to contact forms, and so on): <jdoc:include type="component" /> Joomla! 1.0 to 1.5 conversion The 1.0 equivalent of this tag is the mosMainBody function. You'll replace this PHP function with the above jdoc include: <?php mosMainBody(); ?> Module position tags With module tags, we have a few options to work with. So, we can control what modules load into the area, thus assigning their positions as well as what style to output the module content with: <jdoc:include type="modules" name="position" style="styleName" /> Module position styles In the jdoc include example above, within the style attribute, you can place one of the following six style names to various effect:

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1673

article-image-joomla-15-template-reference-part-2

Packt

16 Oct 2009

4 min read

Joomla! 1.5 Template Reference: Part 2

Packt

16 Oct 2009

4 min read

0
0
1784

article-image-managing-and-enhancing-multi-author-blogs-wordpress-27part-1

Packt

16 Oct 2009

18 min read

Managing and Enhancing Multi-Author Blogs with WordPress 2.7(Part 1)

Packt

16 Oct 2009

18 min read

0
1
2846

article-image-views-urls-and-generic-views-django-10

Packt

16 Oct 2009

19 min read

Views, URLs, and Generic Views in Django 1.0

Packt

16 Oct 2009

19 min read

An overview Views are at the heart of Django and hold most of your application logic. They are nothing more than Python functions that take an HTTP request as input and return an HTTP response or error. A mechanism called the dispatcher identifies an incoming URL against a set of URL patterns and their associated view functions. When a match is found, the associated view is called and the request gets handled. Since many views follow a common strategy of loading an object or list, loading a template, rendering the template, and returning a response, Django offers a way of doing this without writing a view function. These generic views are called from the URL dispatcher and go right to the template. Creating the application Before we start looking at views and URLs, let's create a sample application to experiment with. Since most books and examples use blog models as their demos, let's keep things fresh by making our demo a press release application for a company website. The press release object will have a title, body, published date, and author name. Create the data model In the root directory of your project (in the directory projects/mycompany), create the press application by using the startapp command: $ python manage.py startapp press This will create a press folder in your site. Edit the mycompany/press/models.py file: from django.db import modelsclass PressRelease(models.Model): title = models.CharField(max_length=100) body = models.TextField() pub_date = models.DateTimeField() author = models.CharField(max_length=100) def __unicode__(self): return self.title Create the admin file To take advantage of the automatic admin interface that Django gives us, we need to create a file called an admin file. Create a file called admin.py in the mycompany/press directory, adding these lines: from django.contrib import adminfrom mycompany.press.models import PressReleaseadmin.site.register(PressRelease) If you've used Django before version 1.0, this step is new. The admin configuration directives were taken out of the model and put into their own files starting in version 1.0. Add the press and admin applications to your INSTALLED_APPS variable in the settings.py file: INSTALLED_APPS = ( 'django.contrib.auth', 'django.contrib.admin', 'django.contrib.contenttypes', 'djan?go.contrib.sessions', 'django.contrib.sites', 'mycompany.press',) In the root directory of your project, run the syncdb command to add the new models to the database: $ python manage.py syncdb Because we have Django's authentication system listed as one of our installed applications, the initial syncdb process will ask us if we want to create a superuser. Go ahead and create a superuser account; you will be using it later to access the admin site. Configure the URLs Finally, edit the mycompany/urls.py file: from django.conf.urls.defaults import *from django.contrib import adminadmin.autodiscover()urlpatterns = patterns('', (r'^admin/(.*)', admin.site.root),) Add data in the admin application By adding django.contrib.admin to our INSTALLED_APPS setting and creating a URL mapping for it, we can access the admin site by browsing to http://localhost:8000/admin/. Go into the admin app and add two or three press releases so that we have some sample data to work with: Mapping URLs to views When Django accepts an incoming request, one of the first things it does is that it looks at the URL and tries to match it against a group of URL patterns. In order to identify patterns, Django uses regular expressions to see if the URLs follow a known format. Consider these URLs: http://localhost:8000/press/detail/1/ http://localhost:8000/press/detail/2/ These URLs appear to follow a pattern that they start with press/detail/ and end with a number that represents the ID of a press release. (Recall that we don't work with the domain name portion of the URL. Django takes care of this automatically for us and just sends us everything that follows the domain name.) With this pattern, we can add a new line to our mycompany/urls.py file: from django.conf.urls.defaults import *from django.contrib import adminadmin.autodiscover()urlpatterns = patterns('', (r'^admin/(.*)', admin.site.root), (r'^press/detail/d+/$', 'mycompany.press.views.detail'),) If you're not familiar with Python's regular expressions, this new line may look a bit wonky. This is the most important part: r'^press/detail/d+/$' It reads like this: "A string that starts with press/detail/ and ends with one or more digits followed by a slash". The second segment of the new line is the view function that will get called when an incoming URL matches this pattern. In this case, it will be a function called detail in the mycompany/press/views.py file. There's only one problem with this pattern—it recognizes that a number will be at the end of the URL, but doesn't do anything to pass that number to the view when it's called. We can use a Python regular expression group to capture that number: urlpatterns = patterns('', (r'^admin/', include('django.contrib.admin.urls')), (r'^press/detail/(?P<pid>d+)/$', 'mycompany.press.views.detail'),) This grouping syntax looks really funky, but it's easy to understand once you've seen it a few times. (?P ) is the Python syntax for a named group, which allows the regular expression to save the piece that matched, and put a label on it so that we can call it later. The <pid> part is where we assign the label of pid to the ID of the press release that was sent with the URL. In the case of this URL, the named group pid will be equal to 2: http://localhost:8000/press/detail/2/ Any named groups that we get from a URL are passed as arguments to our view function. In this example, our detail function in press/views.py will have a method signature like this: def detail(request, pid): p = PressRelease.object.get(id=pid) .. There are two keyword arguments to the detail function, request and pid. (Django automatically passes the keyword request, which we'll explore a little later.) Because we used a named group in the URL configuration to capture the press release ID, it's passed to our detail function as pid. You can use multiple named groups in your URL patterns to capture multiple pieces of information and pass them to your functions. Note: URL configurations and patterns are usually referred to as URLConf. Handling unmatched URL patterns URLs are matched up with view functions when they match patterns, but what happens when a match isn't found? This URL wouldn't match the patterns we created because it doesn't end in a number: http://localhost:8000/press/detail/abc/ In this case, the URL dispatcher wouldn't match against our pattern and would keep trying other patterns until a match is found. If no match is found, a 404 error is raised. If you have debug set to true (DEBUG=True) in your settings file, you'll see an error message like this: Splitting up the URL configurations We created the URL configurations for the press application in the mycompany/urls.py file. While this is perfectly acceptable, sticking all the configurations into the main urls.py file can get unwieldy for large projects with many applications. It also isn't very modular if we want to share applications with others or use applications that other people distribute. Instead of writing the press release configuration in our main mycompany/urls.py file, let's create a new file at mycompany/press/urls.py: from django.conf.urls.defaults import *urlpatterns = patterns('', (r'^detail/(?P<pid>d+)/$', 'press.views.detail'),) This looks very similar to what we already have, but note that we've dropped press from the beginning of the regular expression. This line will match URLs that start with detail. Open your mycompany/urls.py file and edit the highlighted line: from django.conf.urls.defaults import *from django.contrib import adminadmin.autodiscover()urlpatterns = patterns('', (r'^admin/(.*)', admin.site.root), (r'^press/', include('mycompany.press.urls')),) We've changed the regular expression portion to match URLs that start with press/. If one is found, Django will hop over to the press/urls.py file to try to match the rest of the URL (without the press/ prefix). With this setup, we are telling Django that any URLs that start with press will be handled in a separate urls.py file in the press directory. Creating views Now that we're matching a URL to a view and passing it information, we can look at how a view is structured. Views have two rules you must follow: The view must accept the request object as its first argument. The view must return an HTTP response or an exception. Beyond this, just remember that a view is a standard Python function and you can do just about anything in it that you can do in a Python program. Accepting the request object Our first rule for views states that a view must accept the request object as its first argument. What is this request object? Django automatically creates the request object when a page is requested. It contains data about the incoming HTTP request such as the requestor's IP address, user agent, request method, cookies, GET parameters, POST parameters, and so on. Everything you should need to know about an incoming request will be found in this object. When you build your view functions, always specify request as the first keyword argument: def detail(request): # Python code here If you forget to add request as the first parameter, you'll know quickly because your view will fail to load with some kind of error message about the arguments (the exact error depends on what other keyword arguments you might be using). Responding with an HTTP response The second rule for views is that a view must return an HTTP response or an exception. Let's start by talking about what an HTTP response is. In order for a browser to understand how to render a web page, it looks at some special hidden information called headers, which is sent by the server along with the content or document being requested. These headers tell the browser information such as what kind of web server is sending the response, which version of the HTTP protocol is being used, how big the content is, and what kind of content is being sent. Luckily, we don't have to worry about most of this because the web server and Django take care of it for us. All we have to do is make sure we send the response out of our view using the HttpResponse method. In your mycompany/press/views.py file, add the following lines: from django.http import HttpResponsedef detail(request, pid): return HttpResponse('This is just a test.') Point your browser to http://localhost:8000/press/detail/1/. Here's what it should look like: Obviously, our views are going to be more complicated than this one, but it illustrates how simple they can be. Responding with an exception The second part of our rule said that the view can respond with an exception instead of an HTTP response. When Django encounters an error during the processing of a view, we usually want to return a friendly error message to the user to let them know something went wrong (as opposed to just sending back a blank screen). Usually, these error messages are in the form of 404 or 500 Error pages. 404 errors are also known as page not found errors. Anyone who has spent time surfing the Web has undoubtedly encountered a 404 Error page when clicking an old link that is no longer valid. In traditional HTML publishing, 404 errors popped up when the user requested a filename that wasn't found on the server (that's where the "page" in "page not found" comes from). With Django, we don't have URLs that represent filenames on the server, but we still return a 404 error when the user is looking for a resource that does not exist. Django makes it easy to return a 404 page by returning the error using the HttpResponseNotFound function: from django.http import HttpResponseNotFounddef detail(request, pid): return HttpResponseNotFound('Page Not Found') Similarly, requests that cause errors on the server are usually referred to as 500 errors. (500 is the standard HTTP response code for a server error.) Django also makes it easy to serve a 500 error: from django.http import HttpResponseServerErrordef detail(request, pid): return HttpResponseServerError('An Error Has Occurred.') Putting the views together Now that we know how a view works and what it needs to do, let's write the real view to work with our sample application. Building the basic view In your mycompany/press/views.py file, replace any contents with the following lines: from django.http import HttpResponsefrom django.http import HttpResponseNotFoundfrom mycompany.press.models import PressReleasedef detail(request, pid): ''' Accepts a press release ID and returns the detail page ''' try: p = PressRelease.objects.get(id=pid) return HttpResponse(p.title) except PressRelease.DoesNotExist: return HttpResponseNotFound('Press Release Not Found') If you'd like to test it out, point your browser to http://localhost:8000/press/detail/1/. You should see the title of your press release. Change the number at the end of the press release to an ID that doesn't exist (such as 99) and you should get a Page Not Found error. This view doesn't return a very pretty output, but it follows the rule that the view must serve an HTTP response or an error/exception. The try/except error handling to make sure the press release exists is kind of ugly. Luckily, Django gives us a more elegant way of handling it. Cleaning up the error handling Instead of putting a try/except block around the object lookup, Django has a get_object_or_404 method that will automatically raise an error if the object is not found. Change the highlighted lines in your mycompany/press/views.py file: from django.http import HttpResponsefrom django.shortcuts import get_object_or_404from mycompany.press.models import PressReleasedef detail(request, pid): ''' Accepts a press release ID and returns the detail page ''' p = get_object_or_404(PressRelease, id=pid) return HttpResponse(p.title) That's a much cleaner way of doing things! Note: If you're getting a list instead of an object, Django has a get_list_or_404 method that you can use. We'll see this in a few pages. Adding the template files The last thing we need to do is add a way to load up the response with the output of a rendered template. We're going to load a template file, replace placeholders in that file with our data (called "rendering" the template), and then return the contents of the template as a string as an HTTP response. We create a templates directory at mycompany/templates, and configured the settings.py file to tell Django where to find it: TEMPLATE_DIRS = ( '/projects/mycompany/templates/',) Verify that you have configured your project this way before continuing. With this setting in place, we can load templates relative to this path. Create a directory under the mycompany/templates directory called press. (It's common practice to use subdirectories to group template files by the application they are associated with.) Create a new file at mycompany/templates/press/detail.html and add these lines: <html><head><title>{{ press.title }}</title></head><body><h1>{{ press.title }}</h1><p>Author: {{ press.author }}<br/>Date: {{ press.pub_date }}<br/></p><p>{{ press.body }}</p></body></html> This simple template file has placeholders for our title, author, pub_date, and body fields. When the template is rendered, these placeholders will be replaced with their respective values. Now that we have a template, we can tell the view to use it. Adding the template to the view In our mycompany/press/views.py file, let's add a few lines to load our template. Replace the contents of your file with these lines: from django.http import HttpResponsefrom django.shortcuts import get_object_or_404from django.template import loader, Contextfrom mycompany.press.models import PressReleasedef detail(request, pid): ''' Accepts a press release ID and returns the detail page ''' p = get_object_or_404(PressRelease, id=1) t = loader.get_template('press/detail.html') c = Context({'press': p}) rendered_template = t.render(c) return HttpResponse(rendered_template) In the function, we're retrieving the press/detail.html template file and creating a special data object called Context. So for now, just understand that it passes data to the template so that it can be rendered. The context object in this example passes our press release object to the template in a variable called press. Our template gets rendered into a string called rendered_template that is sent back to the browser via HttpResponse the same way we sent back simple lines of text in previous examples. The rendered_template variable was used for clarity. You can omit it and just return the response like this: def detail(request, pid): ''' Accepts a press release ID and returns the detail page ''' p = get_object_or_404(PressRelease, id=1) t = loader.get_template('press/detail.html') c = Context({'press': p}) return HttpResponse(t.render(c)) Point your browser to the URL http://localhost:8000/detail/1/. You should see something like this depending on what you entered earlier into the admin site as sample data: Creating the list view and template In addition to displaying the detail for a specific press release, we'll also need a way to display a list of press releases. The steps to add this will be very similar to what we just did to add our detail view. In your mycompany/press/views.py file, add the highlighted lines: from django.http import HttpResponsefrom django.shortcuts import get_object_or_404from django.shortcuts import get_list_or_404from django.template import loader, Contextfrom mycompany.press.models import PressReleasedef detail(request, pid): ''' Accepts a press release ID and returns the detail page ''' p = get_object_or_404(PressRelease, id=1) t = loader.get_template('press/detail.html') c = Context({'press': p}) return HttpResponse(t.render(c))def press_list(request): ''' Returns a list of press releases ''' pl = get_list_or_404(PressRelease) t = loader.get_template('press/list.html') c = Context({'press_list': pl}) return HttpResponse(t.render(c)) In your mycompany/press/urls.py file, add the highlighted line: from django.conf.urls.defaults import *urlpatterns = patterns('', (r'detail/(?P<pid>d+)/$','mycompany.press.views.detail'), (r'list/$', 'mycompany.press.views.press_list'),) Any incoming request starting with press/ will be sent to our press/urls.py file. If the remaining part of the URL is list/, it will be handled by the press_list function in our press/views.py file. If the remaining part is detail/<number> (such as detail/1 or detail/2), it will be handled by the detail function. Finally, create a new file at mycompany/templates/press/list.html: <html><head><title>Press Releases</title></head><body><h1>Press Releases</h1><ul>{% for press in press_list %}<li><a href="/press/detail/{{ press.id }}/">{{ press.title }}</a></li>{% endfor %}</ul></body></html> Point your browser to the URL http://localhost:8000/press/list/. You should see something like this, depending on what you entered earlier into the admin site: Using generic views to shorten development time What we've done so far in this article is pretty standard for web application development: We created a view to load an object by its ID. We created a view to load a list of objects. We retrieved our object using the data sent in from the URL or retrieved a list of objects. We loaded a template file. We rendered the template. We returned an HTTP response. Because these actions are so common, Django has a way to cut out the whole step of writing a view, called generic views. Generic views are called from the URL configuration file, which allows you to go right from the URL pattern to your template. Generic views come in a few types: Simple List/detail Date-based Create/update/delete We won't be covering the date-based or create/update/delete generic views. But after reading this article, you'll be well-prepared to read about them in the online documentation. Simple generic views The two simple generic views that handle loading of a template don't require any data lookup (going directly to a template) and redirecting from one URL to another. Loading a template directly If you just need to load and render a template when a URL is requested, you can use the direct_to_template generic view. For example, let's build a robots exclusion file (aka a robots.txt file) that search engine spiders will request at http://localhost:8000/robots.txt. (Search engines wouldn't index pages on a localhost domain, but pretend for this example that they would.) Since the file is rarely changed after being created, you may not want the overhead of a database lookup to serve it, so you just want to render a template when the URL is requested. Create a new file at mycompany/templates/robots.txt and add these lines: User-agent: *Disallow: /admin This very simple example will prevent spiders from trying to index your admin path (visit robotstxt.org for more info on how exclusion files work). In your mycompany/urls.py file, add the highlighted lines: from django.conf.urls.defaults import *from django.contrib import adminadmin.autodiscover()urlpatterns = patterns('', (r'^admin/(.*)', admin.site.root), (r'^press/', include('mycompany.press.urls')), (r'^robots.txt$', 'django.views.generic.simple.direct_to_template', 'template': 'robots.txt'}), ) Point your browser to the URL http://localhost:8000/robots.txt/. You'll get a response that looks like this:

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0
4948

article-image-building-facebook-application-part-2

Packt

16 Oct 2009

11 min read

Building a Facebook Application: Part 2

Packt

16 Oct 2009

11 min read

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0
2555

article-image-extending-document-management-alfresco-3

Packt

16 Oct 2009

5 min read

Extending Document Management in Alfresco 3

Packt

16 Oct 2009

5 min read

Microsoft Office 2003 add-ins For Microsoft Windows users, a natural way of working with the files is by using the Microsoft Office tools. It would be a tedious job for Content Managers to have to search and locate the documents using an Alfresco web client, copy them onto their local desktop, edit them, upload them to Alfresco, and secure them. How about having all of the features mentioned above in your choice of editor itself? Alfresco provides Office add-ins for MS Word 2003, MS Excel 2003, and MS PowerPoint 2003, to allow them to manage the content directly from those tools. This improves the productivity of Content Managers. Support for Microsoft Office 2007 Although the Alfresco add-ins were developed for Microsoft Office 2003, they are also compatible with Microsoft Office 2007. If you are using Microsoft Office 2007 on Windows Vista, then the add-in is not effective, as it provides read-only access to the repository. Unfortunately, this is a known problem with Vista, as Microsoft has rewritten the WebDAV parts of Vista. You may consider the workarounds that are provided at the following URL: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/10/19/known-issue-office-2007-on-windows-vista-prompts-for-user-credentials-when-opening-documents-in-a-sharepoint-2007-site.aspx Installation Download the Alfresco office add-ins (ZIP file) from the source forge web site, by visiting the following URL: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=143373&package_id=237030 An individual installer (for Microsoft Word, Excel, and Power Point), as well as a combined installer, is available for download. Select an appropriate add-into download. Unzip the ZIP file and run the Setup.exe file contained within it. The set-up program will download the components that are needed, from the Microsoft web site. Once the set-up is complete, you can open the Office tool and use the add-in. For example, for MS Word 2003, you will notice a new button named Alfresco. For MS Word 2007, you will notice the add-in, as shown in the following screenshot: Configuration Click on the Alfresco button to open the add-in window. You need to configure the add-in, by clicking on the link provided at the bottom of the add-in window. Provide the URL details for the web client, WebDAV, and CIFS, as shown in the upcoming screenshot. No matter how you access the repository, you will still have to go through Alfresco's security rules. Provide the Userid and password for the purpose of authentication. The access to the Alfresco repository will be based on the authorization of the user. Click on the Save Settings button to go the main screen. If you have more than one Alfresco server to connect to, then you might have to manually change the settings as needed. Currently, there is no facility for storing the settings for more than one Alfresco server. Features of MS Word add-in The Alfresco add-in allows you to carry out the following activities directly from Microsoft Word. Refer to the following screenshot for more details: My Alfresco: Displays the My Alfresco dashlets Browse Spaces: Browses the entire repository for spaces and files. Search: Searches the repository for keywords. View Details: Views the details of the selected document. Workflow: Starts workflow for the active document. Tags: Allows you to add tags to the document. Transform to PDF: Transforms the selected MS Word document into PDF. Insert into Word: Inserts the selected document into Microsoft Word for editing. Save to Alfresco: Saves the current document to the current space. If the document has not been given a filename yet, then a pop-up panel will prompt you for one. Editing a file in Word To edit a file in Microsoft Word, double-click on the file name. The file is opened directly for editing. The MS Word file is locked for others, while it is being edited by you, as shown in the upcoming screenshot. You can perform all of the Alfresco repository activities, such as adding new tags and initiating a workflow approval process. Saving the file in Microsoft Word will directly save it in the Alfresco repository. If auto version is enabled, then it will be versioned automatically. When you close the file in MS Word, or exit from MS Word, the file will be unlocked in the repository. Recovering deleted content When you delete an item (either content or space) in Alfresco, the item is not deleted from the server, but is moved to a temporary store called Archive Space Store. This gives you a chance to recover items that were deleted. Deleted items will be kept in the temporary store forever, until you decide to either recover or purge them. These features are available to administrators through the Manage Deleted Items action. To test these features, log in as an administrator, create a couple of dummy files in any space, and then delete them. Click on the User Profile Icon option, located above the menu item, and then click on the Manage Deleted Items button. The Manage Deleted Items pane appears, as shown in the following screenshot: You can list all of the deleted content by clicking on the Show All button, as highlighted in the preceding screenshot. You can also search for deleted items by name, by content, by date, or by the person who deleted it, by using the search options provided. Select the item that you previously deleted, and then click on the Recover Listed Items icon, as shown in the preceding screenshot. You will notice that the item is recovered to the original space. When an item is recovered, it is removed from the archive space store and moved to the original space from which it was deleted. Purged items are deleted forever and cannot be recovered. Because the deleted items will otherwise be in the temporary store forever, it is a good practice to purge them periodically. It is also recommended that you take regular backups of your data.

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0
2259

article-image-ajaxdynamic-content-and-interactive-forms-joomla

Packt

16 Oct 2009

13 min read

AJAX/Dynamic Content and Interactive Forms in Joomla!

Packt

16 Oct 2009

13 min read

AJAX: an acronym that Jesse James Garret of AdaptivePath.com came up with in 2005. Just a few short years later, it seems like every site has a "taste" of AJAX in it. If you're totally new to AJAX, I'll just point out that, at its core, AJAX is nothing very scary or horrendous. AJAX isn't even a new technology or language. Essentially, AJAX stands for: Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, and it is the technique of using JavaScript and XML to send and receive data between a web browser and a web server. The biggest advantage this technique has is that you can dynamically update a piece of content on your web page or web form with data from the server (preferably formatted in XML), without forcing the entire page to reload. The implementation of this technique has made it obvious to many web developers that they can start making advanced web applications (sometimes called RIAs—Rich Interface Applications) that work and feel more like software applications than web pages. Keep in mind that the word AJAX is starting to have its own meaning (as you'll also note its occasional use here as well as all over the Web as a proper noun rather than an all-cap acronym). For example, a Microsoft web developer may use VBScript instead of JavaScript to serve up Microsoft Access database data that is transformed into JSON (not XML) using a .NET server-side script. Today, that guy's site would still be considered an AJAX site rather than an "AVAJ" site (yep, AJAX just sounds cooler). In fact, it's getting to the point where just about anything on a web site (that isn't in Flash) that slides, moves, fades, or pops up without rendering a new browser window is considered an "Ajaxy" site. In truth, a large portion of these sites don't truly qualify as using AJAX, they're just using straight-up JavaScripting. Generally, if you use cool JavaScripts in your Joomla! site, it will probably be considered Ajaxy, despite not being asynchronous or using any XML. Want more info on this AJAX business? The w3schools site has an excellent introduction to AJAX, explaining it in straightforward simple terms. They even have a couple of great tutorials that are fun and easy to accomplish even if you only have a little HTML, JavaScript and server-side script (PHP or ASP) experience (no XML experience required): http://w3schools.com/ajax/. Preparing for dynamic content and interactive forms Gone are the days of clicking, submitting, and waiting for the next page to load, or manually compiling your own content from all your various online identities to post in your site. A web page using AJAX techniques (if applied properly) will give the user a smoother and leaner experience. Click on a drop-down option and check-box menus underneath are immediately updated with the relevant choices—no submitting, no waiting. Complicated forms that, in the past, took two or three screens to process can be reduced into one convenient screen by implementing the form with AJAX. As wonderful as this all sounds, I must again offer a quick disclaimer: I understand that, like with drop-down menus and Flash, you may want AJAX to be in your site, or your clients are demanding that AJAX be in their sites. Just keep in mind, AJAX techniques are best used in situations where they truly benefit a user's experience of a page; for example, being able to painlessly add relevant content via an extension or cutting a lengthy web process form down from three pages to one. In a nutshell, using an AJAX technique simply to say your site is an AJAX site is probably not a good idea. You should be aware that, if not implemented properly, some uses of AJAX can compromise the security of your site. You may inadvertently end up disabling key web browser features (such as back buttons or the history manager). Then there's all the basic usability and accessibility issues that JavaScript in general can bring to a site. Some screen readers may not be able to read a new screen area that's been generated by JavaScript. If you cater to users who rely on tabbing through content, navigation may be compromised once new content is updated. There are also interface design problems that AJAX brings to the table (and Flash developers can commiserate). Many times, in trying to limit screen real estate and simplify a process, developers actually end up creating a form or interface that is unnecessarily complex and confusing, especially when your user is expecting a web page to, well, act like a normal web page. Remember to check in with Don't Make Me Think: This is the Steve Krug book I recommend for help with any interface usability questions you may run into.Really interested in taking on AJAX? For you programmers, I highly recommend "AJAX and PHP: Building Responsive Web Applications", Cristian Darie, Bogdan Brinzarea, Filip Chereches-Tosa, and Mihai Bucica, Packt Publishing. In it, you'll learn the ins and outs of AJAX development, including handling security issues. You'll also do some very cool stuff, such as make your own Google-style auto-suggest form and a drag-and-drop sortable list (and that's just two of the many fun things to learn in the book). So, that said, you're now all equally warned and armed with all the knowledgeable resources I can think to throw at you. Let's get to it: how exactly do you go about getting something Ajaxy into your Joomla! site? Joomla! extensions Keep in mind, extensions are not part of your template. They are additional files with Joomla!-compatible PHP code, which are installed separately into their own directories in your Joomla! 1.5 installation. Once installed, they are available to be used with any template that is also installed in your Joomla! installation. Even though these are not part of your template, you might have to prepare your template to be fully compatible with them. Some extensions may have their own stylesheets, which are installed in their extension directory. Once you've installed an extension, you may want to go into your own template's stylesheet so that it nicely displays XHTML objects and content that the extension may output into your site. Extensions are any component, module or plugin that you install into your Joomla! 1.5 installation. Components control content that displays in the main type="component" jdoc tag in your template. Note that components may also have module settings and the ability to display content in assigned module positions. The poll component is a good example of a component that also has module settings. Modules are usually smaller and lighter and only display in module positions. Plugins generally help you out more on the backend of your site, say to switch WYSIWYG editors or with enabling OpenID logins, but as we'll see, some plugins can affect the display of your site to users as well. Deciding where AJAX is best used On the whole, we're going to look at the most popular places where AJAX can really aid and enrich your site's user experience. We'll start with users adding comments to articles and pages and streamlining that process. We'll then take a look at a nice plugin that can enhance pagination for people reading long articles on your site. We'll then move on to the RSS Reader module, which can enhance the content in your modules (and even makes your users have fun arranging them). Finally, we'll realize that AJAX isn't just for impressing your site users. You, as an administrator, can (and do) take advantage of AJAX as well. Please note: These extensions were chosen by me based on the following criteria: 1. They provided some useful enhancement to a basic site.2. They, at the time of this writing, were free and received very good feedback on Joomla!.org's extensions site: http://extensions.Joomla.org. In the next few pages, I'll walk you through installing these extensions and discuss any interesting insights for doing so, and benefits of their enhancements (and some drawbacks). But you must use the extension links provided to make sure you download the latest stable versions of these extensions and follow the extension author's installation guides when installing these into your Joomla! site. If you run into any problems installing these extensions, please contact the extension's author for support. Always be sure to take the normal precaution of backing up your site before installation, at least for any non-stable extensions you may decide to try. Installing the Joomla! comment component Chances are, if you've invested in Joomla! 1.5 as your CMS, you need some powerful capabilities. Easy commenting with "captcha" images to reduce spam is always helpful: http://extensions.Joomla.org/extensions/contacts-&-feedback/comments/4389/details To install this extension (and the other few coming up), you have to basically go to Extensions | Install/Uninstall and upload the extension's ZIP file. You'll then proceed to the plugin, component, and/or modules panel and activate the extension so that it is ready to be implemented on your site. Upon installing this comment component, to my surprise, it told me that it was for an older version of Joomla! Everything on the download page seemed to indicate it worked with 1.5. The installation error did mention that I just needed to activate the System Legacy plugin and it would work. So I did, and the comment form appeared on all my article pages. This may seem like a step backward, but for extensions like this, which are very useful, if they work well and stay stable in Legacy Mode, a developer may have made the decision to leave well enough alone. The developer will most likely eventually upgrade the extension (especially if Legacy Mode goes away in future versions of Joomla!). Just be sure to sign up for updates or check back on any extensions you use if you do upgrade your site. You should do this regardless of whether your extensions run natively or in Legacy Mode. The advantage of AJAX in a comment form is that a user isn't distracted and comments post smoothly and right away (a bit of instant gratification for the user, even if you never "confirm" the post and it never gets actually published for other viewers). This extension outputs tables, but for the ease of handling robust comments and having a great admin area to manage them, I'll make do. The following screenshot shows the Joomla! comment component appearing in an article page: As you can see in my previous image, I have some strong styles that are trying to override the component's styles. A closer look at the output HTML will give me some class names and objects that I can target with CSS. The administration panel's Component | Joomla! Comment | Other Component settings page also allows quite a few customization options. The Layout tab also offers several included style sheets to select from as well as the option to copy the CSS sheet out to my template's directory (the component will do this automatically). This way, I can amend it with my own specific CSS, giving my comment form a better fit with my template's design. Installing the core design Ajax Pagebreak plugin If your site has long articles that get broken down regularly in to three or more pages, Pagebreak is a nice plugin that uses Ajax to smoothly load the next page. It's a useful feature that will also leave your site users with a little "oh wow" expression. http://www.greatJoomla.com/news/plugins/demo-core-design-ajaxpagebreak-plugin.html After successfully installing this plugin, I headed over to the Extensions | Plugin Manager and activated it. I then beefed out an article (with Lorem Ipsum) and added page breaks to it on the Home Page. It's hard to see in a screenshot, but it appears below the Prev and Next links without a full browser redraw. I've set my site up with SEO-friendly URLs, and this plugin does amend the URLs with a string; that is, http://yoururl.com/1.5dev/menu-item-4?start=1. I'm not sure how this will really affect the SEO "friendliness" value of my URL, but it does give me a specific URL to give to people if I want to send them to a targeted page, which is very good for accessibility. One thing to note, the first page of the article is the original URL; that is, http://yoururl.com/1.5dev/menu-item-4. The second page then appends ?start=1, the third page becomes ?start=2, and so on. Just be aware that when sending links out to people, it is always best to pull the URL directly from the site so that you know it's correct! Installing the AJAX RSS Reader Version 3 with Draggable Divs module RSS feeds are a great way to bring together a wide variety of content as well as bring all your or your organization's "social network happenings" to one place in your own site. I like to use RSS feeds to get people interested in knowing what an organization is doing (or tweeting), or reading, and so on. Having links and lists of what's currently going on can compel users to link to you, join your group, follow you, and become a friend, a fan, or whatever. This AJAX powered module has the extra feature of being draggable and somewhat editable. This is a nice way to draw a user in to the feeds and let them play with them and arrange the information to their taste. Sometimes, sorting and reorganizing makes you see connections and possibilities that you didn't see before. The next image may seem confusing, but it's a screenshot of the top div box being dragged and dropped: http://extensions.Joomla!.org/extensions/394/details AJAX: It's not just for your site's users I've already mentioned, when applied properly, how AJAX can aid in interface usability. Joomla! attempts to take advantage of this within its Administration panel by enhancing it with relevant information and compressing multiple page forms into one single screen area. Here's a quick look at how Joomla! already uses AJAX to enhance its Administration panel forms: The following image shows how the image uploader uses a "lightbox" div layer effect so that you can keep track of where you are in the content editor. In the next image, you can see how Joomla! helps keep the administration area cleared up by using smooth-sliding accordion panels. This helps you see everything on one page and have access to just what you need, when you need it.

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0
3125

article-image-maintaining-optimizing-and-upgrading-your-site-drupal-6-part-2

Packt

16 Oct 2009

9 min read

Maintaining, Optimizing and Upgrading Your Site in Drupal 6: Part 2

Packt

16 Oct 2009

9 min read

Maintaining content As you continue to add content to your web site, you will need to ensure that your content is properly moderated, that old content is removed, and that changes to web site content are tracked. Creating content revisions Good Eatin' Goal: Create revisions of content to ensure that you have a complete record of changes to your web site's content. Additional modules needed: None. Basic steps We have simply updated our pages as necessary to add new functionality and content. However, if you have many editors, content that changes frequently, a need to view the history of a page, or need the ability to easily return to an old version of a page, you will want to store multiple revisions of your pages. To do this, carry out the following steps: Edit the content for which you want to create a new revision. Make the changes as needed and, before saving, expand the Revision information section. Select the Create new revision option and enter a message describing the changes that you have made to the node. When you save the content, you will see a new tab called Revisions. Clicking on this tab will show you a list of all of the revisions that have been created for the page. If you would like to return to an older version of the page, you can click the revert link. Or, if you want to remove an older revision, you can click the delete link to get rid of it permanently. You can control which users have access to the revision system by using the Permissions Manager. Drupal allows you to control which users can: view revisions, revert revisions, and delete revisions. If you want to force users to always create new revisions when editing content, edit the content type and then expand the Workflow settings. Change the default options to select the Create new revision option. When editors change content, the Create new revision option will be selected by default, and they will not be able to change the option unless they have the administer nodes permission. If you want to approve all revisions before publication, you can deselect the Published checkbox. Comparing content revisions Good Eatin' Goal: Compare the text of two different revisions of a page. Additional modules needed: Diff (http://drupal.org/project/diff). Basic steps Although the built-in functionality for creating revisions in Drupal works perfectly well, it can be difficult to review the changes that were made in each revision. The Diff module makes comparing revisions very easy. Begin by installing and activating the Diff module. To use the Diff module, simply view the revisions for any page. You will notice that the Revisions list has changed to allow you to select the revisions to be compared. Select the revisions to compare and then click on the Show diff button. Drupal will then display information about the text that has been changed, added, or deleted. Moderate content Good Eatin' Goal: Find questionable or offensive content, and remove it from your site, easily. Additional modules needed: Modr8 (http://drupal.org/project/modr8). Basic steps An unfortunate side effect of having a web site on the Internet is that, at some point, a malicious user will attempt to post inappropriate content on your site. If your site is extremely busy, you may find yourself with a large amount of content to review and approve. The Modr8 module can help you manage the workload and can send emails to users letting them know when their content has been approved or rejected. Begin by installing and activating the Modr8 module. The settings for the Modr8 module can be accessed by selecting Site configuration and then Modr8, from the Administer menu. The basic settings control how often logs are removed. Alternatively, you can choose to keep the logs forever. You can also change the number of items in the moderation queue to be displayed at a time, as well as the default action for the content that requires moderation. You can also configure the email settings for the moderation queue, including the text of the emails, and whether or not emails should be sent to the user who posted the content when their content is approved and/or when their content is rejected. You can also choose to send an email if the moderator does not take action for the item and wants to send a note to the author. If you would like new content to be added to the moderation queue automatically, you can edit the content type and select the In moderation queue setting in the workflow section. To view the moderation queue, select Content management and then Moderated content, from the Administer menu. The moderation queue appears as follows: From this page, you can approve, delete, or defer action on any content that needs moderation. After you make your changes, click Save to complete your selections. You can also display a log of all the moderation actions, by clicking on Reports and then Content moderation log. The moderation log appears as follows: Allowing users to report questionable or offensive content. Good Eatin' Goal: Get feedback from users to learn what they find offensive so the objectionable content can be removed. Additional modules needed: Abuse (http://drupal.org/project/abuse). Basic steps In the last task, we reviewed methods that allowed you to moderate every piece of content that is added to the site. However, this can be a time-intensive task if the proportion of content that you receive that is questionable is low. If this is the case, you can allow your users to help you to moderate the content by using the Abuse module, to let them report items that they find offensive. This strategy has a couple of advantages. Firstly, you are freed from the maintenance of pre-approving all content before it is published. Secondly, it ensures that the content meets community standards, rather than placing you or your editors in charge of defining community standards. The Abuse module also has a Watchlist component that allows you to flag content as suspicious or banned, and automatically move them into a queue for review by an administrator. Begin by downloading and installing the Abuse and Watchlist modules, both of which are included in the Abuse installation. We will begin by editing the Watchlist settings, which can be accessed by selecting Site configuration and then Watchlist settings, from the Administer menu. You can include any words that you want to, in the Watch list and Filtered/banned word list, depending on your target audience and your site's needs; just make sure that you enter one word per line. Items on the Watch list can be viewed while they are in the review queue, and items on the Filtered/banned word list will be hidden until they are reviewed. You can also control which items are automatically added to the Watch list or banned list, based on the Watchlist word settings configured above. You can also force moderation for specific types if they are more prone to abuse. We can now modify the Abuse Moderation settings by selecting Site configuration and then Abuse Moderation settings, from the Administer menu. The first setting controls what content types are subject to abuse reports. The next section of controls how abuse tickets are to be handled by your moderators. If you have multiple moderators for your site, you can select the Abuse Assigned Moderators option. If you use this, you will also need to store the maximum number of items that have been flagged for abuse that are added to the moderator's queue. If moderators live in different time zones, you can set an hour of the day at which all moderation queues are cleared, so that items do not remain in the moderation queue for an overly-long period of time. Finally, you can configure the settings related to all of the items that have been flagged as abusive by a user. The Abuse threshold controls how many complaints must be registered for an item before it is moved into the moderation queue. 3 is a good number to start with, but you may want to increase or decrease the threshold depending on the needs of your site. You can edit the reasons for flagging an item for abuse by selecting Site configuration, then Abuse Moderation settings, and finally Abuse Moderation reasons, from the Administer menu. All available reasons will be listed on the page using a format similar to the example above. You can add new reasons, remove reasons, or change the text for reasons from this page. Before the abuse module is activated, you need to assign permissions to users, so that they can flag content for review. Content that has the abuse module activated will have a new Flag as offensive link added to it, as shown in the following screenshot: When the user clicks on the Flag as offensive link, he or she will be presented with a form where he or she can specify their contact information, and a reason why he or she believes that the content is offensive. Administrators can review content that has been flagged as offensive by clicking on Content management and then Moderate. The administrators can click on the Get More Tickets link to have additional items assigned to them. Once a ticket has been assigned to them, the administrator can view information about the user who submitted the content as well as the user who flagged the content, and choose what action to take for the content. The administrator can either allow the content, or remove the content from the web site. The administrator can also optionally send a warning to the user without further action.

0
0
1795

article-image-adding-interactive-course-material-moodle-19-part-1

Packt

16 Oct 2009

2 min read

Adding Interactive Course Material in Moodle 1.9: Part 1

Packt

16 Oct 2009

2 min read

The following table gives you a brief description of each kind of activity. The sections that follow the table describe how and when to use these activities. Activity Description Assignment An assignment is an activity completed offline, outside of Moodle. When the student completes the assignment, he or she either uploads a file for the instructor's review, or reports to the instructor in some other way. Regardless of whether the assignment requires uploading a file, the student receives a grade for the assignment. Choice A choice is essentially a single, multiple-choice question that the instructor asks the class. The result can either be displayed to the class, or kept between the individual student and the instructor. Choices are a good way to get feedback from the students about the class. You can plant these choices in your course ahead of time, and keep them hidden until you need the students' feedback. You can also add them as needed. Journal You can create an online journal, which will be unique for each student. A journal can be seen only by the student who writes it, and the instructor. Remember that a journal is attached to the course in which it appears. If you want to move a student's journal to another course, you'll need to make creative usage of the backup and restore functions.

0
0
1303

article-image-maintaining-optimizing-and-upgrading-your-site-drupal-6-part-1

Packt

16 Oct 2009

7 min read

Maintaining, Optimizing and Upgrading Your Site in Drupal 6: Part 1

Packt

16 Oct 2009

7 min read

0
0
1367

article-image-skinners-toolkit-plone-3-theming-part-1

Packt

16 Oct 2009

13 min read

Skinner's Toolkit for Plone 3 Theming (Part 1)

Packt

16 Oct 2009

13 min read

(For more resources on Plone, see here.) Graphic design tools Any serious skinner needs a graphic design tool with certain capabilities in order to take the design files and assemble them into a finished web site. In particular, layers and the ability to slice pieces of a design and export those pieces are essential. Layers allow a themer to hide pieces not needed in a finished CSS theme, such as text that will eventually become real HTML on a page. Slices, meanwhile, are the pieces of an overall design that are exported during the layer manipulation process. They are the images the end user eventually sees on the rendered page. This is different from cropping, which actually alters the size of the canvas; slices are just pieces of the overall design, cut with precision, exported, and then manipulated with CSS. The most commonly used graphic design tools used for web design are Adobe® Photoshop®, Adobe® Fireworks® (formerly Macromedia) tool, and open source tools such as GIMP. It is not generally recommended to use tools such as Adobe® Illustrator®, Corel Draw and other vector-based packages. Web designs primarily use raster-based media, meaning that raster images are based on pixels and thus scale with loss of clarity. Conversely, vector-based images can be scaled infinitely without degrading, but are typically not appropriate for web design. Adobe Photoshop The most popular tool for processing image files is Adobe Photoshop. The files generated for designs are PSD, or Photoshop Document files. Adobe Photoshop meets the basic requirements of being able to manipulate the vector and raster images, layers, and slices, and offers a lot of additional functionality. The ability to control anti-aliasing and the quality and size of an exported image is essential in web design, and Adobe Photoshop (also, Adobe Fireworks) is quite powerful in this respect. A quick look at the Layers panel illustrates how sections can be grouped together, moved, or be shown or hidden via the "eyeball" icon. This show/hide functionality is very important. One situation where this becomes valuable is when you have a PSD file that indicates graphical buttons with text over them. For accessibility reasons, you may want to render the text as real HTML-rendered text, and not as an image. You need to be able to export the buttons in both their on and off states in order to get a proper rollover effect, and you need to hide the graphical text in order to do this. One site that illustrates this concept is http://greenforall.org. Using Adobe Photoshop, the layers where the text appears on the top navigation were hidden, and just the background on/off images were imported. On the finished web site, the top menu used the background images and real rendered text. The other core functionality that Adobe Photoshop offers is the ability to slice images and export them. The Copper River Watershed Project web site (http://www.copperriver.org) illustrates how slices might be used. The original Adobe Photoshop document is here: If you look closely, you can see a few key slices: the "Go" button next to the search field has been sliced, as has the Tour Our Watershed map and the gradation on the top navigation, which will be tiled horizontally. Below the orange navigation is a long slice that spans from the left-hand shadow over to the right-hand shadow. This image can be used to tile the length of the page. Additionally, the entire Information For... box has been sliced; in this case, for the final implementation, the text overlaying this slice was hidden and replaced with rendered text. If you look at the finished web site, you can see how these slices were applied. Photoshop provides a great deal of power, but in general, you may only use about 20% of the power it offers. You can visit http://adobe.com to see the tutorials on how to use the Adobe Photoshop effectively. Additionally, you may want to investigate Photoshop Elements; it doesn't allow you to slice images for the Web, but for the current price of $139.99, it's still a great tool for many web design activities: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelwin. Adobe Fireworks At the time Macromedia was purchased by Adobe in 2005, the interface was a little clumsy at times, but it did have a basic implementation of layers and slices. Over the past few years, based on the demos available, it appears that the interface has seen some great improvements, though it does not have the same power or market share as Adobe Photoshop has. However, at nearly $400 less than Adobe Photoshop, it's a great option. According to the Adobe web site, "Adobe Fireworks CS4 software is used to rapidly prototype web sites and application interfaces and to create and optimize images for the Web more quickly and accurately. It is ideal for web designers, web developers, and visual designers." It differs from Photoshop in that "Adobe Photoshop software is the industry standard for digital imaging, with a broad array of features and functionality used by photographers, graphic designers, web designers, and many other creative professionals. Fireworks is a much more focused tool, with the features for prototyping vectors and bitmaps for the web and application interfaces." The real selling point here, though, is integration with Adobe Photoshop, as a design may be shared between multiple people, each using different graphical programs. The ability to manipulate the vector and raster images is also important. Additionally, like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Fireworks provides the ability to work with layers and slices, and preserves many of the settings in an Adobe Photoshop PSD file. It's not as good at compositing and photo manipulation as Photoshop, but is a lot stronger with text, shapes, and final optimization. Selective JPEG optimization is also very handy, and allows you to heavily compress the portions of a JPEG while keeping text legible. Additionally, it's great for generating image maps (not often used in Plone), rollovers, and other common tricks. Finally, it allows you to view your work with either Windows or Mac gamma. Gamma correction basically refers to the ability to correct for differences in how computers (and especially computer monitors) interpret color values. There are two factors here: the ability to predict what an image, say a photograph, will look like on another monitor and the ability to match the colors from different sources on a single page—Adobe Fireworks excels at both. While Adobe Fireworks is not as feature-rich as Adobe Photoshop, it is still an extremely competent tool for slicing and exporting design elements at implementation time, not to mention more affordable. GIMP GIMP, also known as the GNU Image Manipulation Program, can be downloaded for free from http://www.gimp.org. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring, and is covered by the GNU GPL license. According to the GIMP's web site, it can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, and more. From the perspective of how it compares to the key aspects of Adobe Photoshop® and Adobe Fireworks®, it has full support of layers and channels, plug-ins that allow for the easy addition of new file formats (that is, it can read Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Fireworks files), and best of all, it is open source. You can visit http://www.gimp.org/docs to download the user manual for the current release. GIMP also lists several user groups and resources at http://www.gimp.org/links that may be helpful. Even so, the latest releases are still quite recent, so development is still happening For a free solution to the image processing needs, GIMP is an excellent choice, but weak in terms of the user interface and layer compatibility with Adobe Photoshop. Browser add-ons and important notes Now that you have sense of the tools that are available for manipulating design files and exporting the necessary images for building your web site, let's look at how browsers affect the web site building process, either through add-on tools or through sheer bugginess. It's also worth mentioning that users should reference the A-List of popular browsers to see which browsers are still considered to be supported by web developers: http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/articles/gbs/index.html. This can help to ease the quality assurance load during web site testing. Many of these A-List browsers come with browser-specific tools that allow you to inspect your web site to descry the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) ID and class selectors, manipulate your CSS on-the-fly, optimize your site, explore color options, and more. We'll look at the available options for three major browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari, but you should always be conscious of general browser penetration statistics so that you know which browsers are still in popular use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers. Now, let's get back to our key browsers. Internet Explorer From a themer's perspective, Internet Explorer is the most finicky browser against which to implement, as older versions of Internet Explorer followed the W3C's (World Wide Web Consortium's) standards differently than many other popular browsers. According to http://positioniseverything.net, a leading collector of browser fixes, "All browsers have CSS bugs, and IE leads the pack in this area, but that is not the end of the story. Microsoft has seen fit to engineer their browser to deliberately violate the standards in several critical ways. It might just be a misguided attempt to 'make it simple' for newbie coders, or it might be a cynical ploy to crush the competition, but in any case it creates huge headaches for those of us who desire to employ CSS positioning on our pages." While this may be true, many fixes for Internet Explorer have been identified, and thankfully, IE6, one of the more problematic browsers in recent years, is finally becoming obsolete. It was replaced by IE7, which was a vast improvement, but still did not implement the W3C conventions for CSS faithfully. As of this writing, Internet Explorer 8 was released and showing signs of having finally made strides toward real compliance to W3C standards. What this equates to is that web developers tend do their initial browser testing in browsers that are more compliant; that means doing most upfront testing in Firebug and Safari, and then rounding out the testing at the end against IE6, IE7, and IE8. Where possible, it's also important to test against other major browsers and handheld media. For testing against Internet Explorer, IE provides a tool called the Web Developer Toolbar for debugging. It is available for both IE6 and IE7 as an add-on and can be downloaded here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E59C3964-672D-4511-BB3E-2D5E1DB91038&displaylang=en. Web Developer Toolbar will no longer be the tool of choice for IE8, however, instead use the developer tools included with IE8. To use the developer tools in IE8, press Shift+F12 or click the "Developer Tools" icon in the command bar to begin using the tool. For IE6 and IE7, Web Developer Toolbar provides several features for exploring and understanding web pages. These features enable you to: Explore and modify the document object model (DOM) of a web page. Locate and select the specific elements on a web page. Selectively disable the Internet Explorer settings. View HTML object class names, IDs, and details such as link paths, tab index values, and access keys. Outline tables, table cells, images, or selected tags. Validate HTML, CSS, WAI, and RSS web feed links. Display image dimensions, file sizes, path information, and alternate (ALT) text. Immediately resize the browser window to a new resolution. Selectively clear the browser cache and saved cookies. Choose from all objects or those associated with a given domain. Display a fully-featured design ruler to help accurately align and measure objects on your pages. Find the style rules used to set specific style values on an element. Right clicking on a style rule will allow you to trace the rules to a specific CSS file, if one is found. View the formatted and syntax colored source of HTML and CSS. The Developer Toolbar can be popped up within the Internet Explorer browser window or opened as a separate window. If you are using a PC to test your sites, VMware, parallels, or a Windows emulator, you should download the Toolbar from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=125120, install it, and restart IE. You can then click the Developer Toolbar icon in the command bar to display or hide the Developer Toolbar. Alternately, you can open the View menu and then use the Explorer Bar menu. In Internet Explorer 7, open the Tools menu and then use Toolbars/Explorer Bars to display or hide the Developer Toolbar. There are a few caveats here: The Developer Toolbar icon may not be visible by default. If you do not see it after restarting Internet Explorer, click the right-facing arrows at the end of the IE7 command bar to view all the available Toolbar buttons. Some menu items are unavailable (grayed out) when running Internet Explorer in Protected Mode on Windows Vista. To use those options, temporarily turn off Protected Mode or right-click the Internet Explorer icon in the Programs menu and choose Run as administrator. In IE6 or in IE7 with tabbed browsing off, using the validation links will navigate the current window to the validation page. To launch the validation links in a new window, open the Tools menu, click Internet Options, and uncheck Reuse windows for launching shortcuts in the Advanced tab, or use IE7 with tabbed browsing enabled. Generally, you can use this tool by expanding the left side of the panel displayed to navigate through your site's structure. It displays CSS IDs and classes in a hierarchical fashion. On the right-hand side, it displays the properties assigned to each of those IDs or classes. You can modify those by using the + icon in the center Attributes section to add a new property and using that to add to or alter the existing CSS. As stated before, the left-hand pane allows you to expand and walk through the structure of your web site. When you refresh, unfortunately, the entire tree closes. To continue troubleshooting a specific element on the page, you must drill down to it again or use the "selector" tool. It's somewhat clumsy, but it works and is invaluable when debugging web pages in Internet Explorer.

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article-image-aspnet-35-cms-adding-security-and-membership-part-2

Packt

16 Oct 2009

8 min read

ASP.NET 3.5 CMS: Adding Security and Membership (Part 2)

Packt

16 Oct 2009

8 min read

Now that you understand the process behind forms authentication, we need to add it to our application. The process will be slightly different because we already have a database to use, but without the ASP.NET membership schema. We'll add that to the database and then create some user accounts and membership roles to handle the security for our application. We'll also secure some of our content and add a menu to our Master Page to navigate between the pages of our Content Management System. Preparing an existing SQL database As we have an existing database, we can't create a new database for our membership and authentication system. Well, actually we could, but using a second database is problematic when we upload the application to a host because many web hosting companies allow only a single database under the hosting plan. Besides, we can easily add the membership schema the same way we did earlier in the article with our empty database, using aspnet_regsql.exe. Previously we used the wizard, this time we'll use the command line. If you take a look at the database in SQL Server Management Studio Express now, before we execute the command to add the schemas, you should see the few tables that were already created, as shown below: The aspnet_regsql.exe tool Using the command line, the executable is simple, as long as you know the command line arguments. The syntax and command arguments for aspnet_regsql.exe are available online at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/x28wfk74.aspx. The following table shows the arguments we will use: Argument Description What we use -S The server name SQLEXPRESS -U The database username sa -P The database password SimpleCMS -d The database name SimpleCMS_Database -A The schema functions to install All functions Our command line will look like this (all one line): aspnet_regsql.exe -S .SQLEXPRESS -U sa -P SimpleCMS -d SimpleCMS_Database -A all To run the command line, go to Start | Run and enter cmd in the Run dialog box. Press Enter and you will be at a command prompt. Type cd C:WINDOWSMicrosoft.NETFrameworkv2.0.50727 and press Enter again, and you will be in the correct folder to find aspnet_regsql.exe. Note that you may need to change the path if your ASP.NET framework files are in a different location. Type the command line above and press Enter, and you should see that the command completed successfully, with a dialog similar to that below: Now that we have executed the aspnet_regsql.exe command line, if you look at the database tables in SQL Server Management Studio Express, you should see the added table for the users, membership, and roles we will use in our application. User accounts Earlier in the article, we created a single user account for accessing protected content. In a real-world environment, we would normally have many user accounts, way too many to add each account to each page we wanted to protect. Fortunately, the ASP.NET framework provides us with membership roles that we can place user accounts in, allowing us to define our access by role, not by user account. But first, we need some user accounts. Let's start by creating three accounts in our application - User1, User2, and Administrator. Open the SimpleCMS web site in Visual Web Developer 2008 Express. Use the downloadable code provided for Chapter 4 of this book, it has the web.config file modified similar to what we did when we walked through the forms authentication demo earlier in the chapter. Open the Web Site Administration Tool by clicking on Website and then ASP.NET Configuration. If you click on the Security tab, you will see that we have no users configured for this application. As you did earlier in the article, click on Create User and create the three users with user names of User1, User2, and Administrator. Use Password! as the password for each, and provide a valid email address for each (they can have the same email for testing). Also, provide a question and answer such as Favorite Color? and Blue. You can use the same question and answer for all three accounts if you wish. Each user entry should look something like the following: If you return to the Security tab, you will notice that we have three user accounts, but no roles for those accounts. Let's add them next. Membership roles ASP.NET membership roles provide the ability to group many individual accounts into a single role to provide access to a resource such as a page or application. Changing access for an individual user then becomes a simple task of assigning them to or removing them from the appropriate role. A single user account can belong to multiple roles to provide extremely granular access to the application resources if your security demands are extensive. To add roles to our application, we first need to enable roles. On the Security tab of the Web Site Administration Tool, under Roles, you should see a link to enable roles. Enabling roles consists of simply adding the following line to the web.config file in the system.web section: <roleManager enabled="true" /> Similar to the membership provider we created earlier, roles require a role provider. We need to add this provider to the role manager, so edit the web.config roleManager section to read: <roleManager enabled="true"><providers><clear/><add name="AspNetSqlRoleProvider"connectionStringName="SimpleCMS_DatabaseConnectionString"applicationName="/"type="System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider, System.Web,Version=2.0.0.0,Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" /></providers></roleManager> This adds an AspNetSqlRoleProvider that uses our connection string to the SimpleCMS database. At this point we have no roles defined, so let's create a few. Open the Web Site Administration Tool. If it's already open, you may need to close and reopen it because we modified the web.config file to add the role provider. Now, open the Security tab. In the Roles section, click on Create or manage roles. Let's create an administration role first. We'll need it to secure areas to just administrative access. Simply enter Administrator, click on Add Role, and you'll see the new role in the list. Add roles for Author, Editor, and Registered User in the same manner. The roles list should look something like the following figure when you finish: Adding users to roles Once we have users and roles created, we need to assign users to roles. To do this, use the Security tab of the Web Site Administration Tool, under the Users section, to manage users. You'll see a list of user accounts, in our case all three of them, along with the ability to edit the user, delete the user, and edit the user's roles. Click on Edit roles next to the Administrator user and you'll see a checkbox list of user roles this account can be added to. Any roles currently assigned to the user will be checked. As there are currently none, check the Administrator role, and the Administrator user will be immediately added to the Administrator role, as shown below: If you were to look at the database tables that hold the user accounts and roles, you would see something like this for the users: Similarly, the roles would look like this: You'll note that both the users and the roles contain an ApplicationID that defines what application these users and roles belong to, and that each user or role is identified by a UserID or RoleID. These are automatically created by the ASP.NET membership framework and are globally unique identifiers (GUIDs), which ensure that the specific user or role is unique across all possible applications and uses of this specific database store. You would also find in the database a table that identifies users in roles, looking something like this: You'll notice that this is a joining table, used in a database when there is a many-to-many relationship. Many users can belong to a role and a user can belong to many roles, thus the use of this table. You'll also notice that the database table uses the UserID and RoleID, making it very hard to simply look at this table directly to find what users are assigned to what roles. Fortunately, with the ASP.NET framework, you're isolated from having to work directly with the database, as well as relieved from having to create it and the code needed to access it.

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2539

article-image-recording-calls-freepbx-25

Packt

16 Oct 2009

2 min read

Recording Calls in FreePBX 2.5

Packt

16 Oct 2009

2 min read

Asterisk has a wonderful, built-in ability to record calls. No additional software is required to make this happen. When Asterisk records a call, both sides of the call are recorded and written out to a file for playback on a computer. Call recording is often performed in call centers to ensure call quality, or to keep calls for later review, should the need arise. Asterisk provides the ability to record all of the calls, or to selectively record calls. In this article, we will look the following: General recording options Recording calls to extensions Recording calls to queues Recording calls to conferences Maintaining call recordings Before enabling call recording for your PBX, make sure that you are aware of the legalities surrounding call recordings and privacy laws. Call recordings are prohibited in certain places, unless the caller is told that the call will be recorded. For example, in the state of California all of the parties on the call must consent to the call being recorded before it begins. Playing back a message stating that the call is being recorded prior to the call being answered is considered a valid form of consent. Recording formats FreePBX allows calls to be recorded in the following formats: WAV WAV49 ULAW ALAW SLN GSM Each format has its own ratio of file size to recording quality, and certain formats will not play on all of the computers. A comparison between all of the available formats is as follows:

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