Brandon Beasley» Blog

Codeigniter Reactor: Quick and Dirty

Brandon Beasley — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 01:41:44 +0000

This entire Codeigniter Reactor example was created in about 1hr using version 2.0.1. Although quick and dirty, the result is a very effective web application that is stupidly simple. I don’t suggest taking this code and creating a similar site unless you own the domain names my.ip or myip.is as the niche is already over-crowded. Nevertheless you can check out YourIP4.com – A Codeigniter Reactor Example Web Application and have a look at the example controller, view, and css style:

The Controller

class Home extends CI_Controller {
    function __construct()
	{
            parent::__construct();
	}
	function index()
        {
            if(isset($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'])) {
                $referer =  $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
            } else {
                $referer = 'No Referer';
            }
 
            $data = array(
                'ip_address'  => $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'],
                'remote_host' => gethostbyaddr($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']),
                'browser'     => $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],
                'referer'     => $referer,
            );
            $this->load->view('home_view', $data);
	}
}

The View



    
        
        YourIP4 © 2011
        
    
    
        
            
                
                yourIP4.com
            
            
                
                    Your IP Address is:
                    
                
                
                    
                    The last site you visited was:
                    
                    
                    Your browser type is:
                    
                    
                    Your hostname is:
                    
                
            
            
            
            
                
                    
                            Codigniter
                            FuelPHP
                            jQuery
                            PHP
                            Apache SF
                        
                    
                    
                        
                            Codigniter
                            FuelPHP
                            jQuery
                            PHP
                            Apache SF
                        
                    
                    
                        
                            Codigniter
                            FuelPHP
                            jQuery
                            PHP
                            Apache SF
 
                        
                    
                    
                        
                            Codigniter
                            FuelPHP
                            jQuery
                            PHP
                            Apache SF

The Style

/* 
    Document   : style.css
    Created on : Jan 19, 2011, 10:14:46 AM
    Author     : Brandon Beasley
    Description: yourip4.com
*/
/* The Basics */
root { 
    display: block;
}
body {
    font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
    font-size: 10pt;
    background-color:#142D58;
}
h1, h2, h3 {
    font-weight: bold;
}
h1 {
    font-size: 24pt;
}
h2 {
    font-size: 18pt;
}
h3 {
    font-size: 12pt;
}
h4 {
    font-size: 36pt;
}
img {
    border-style: none;
}
/* End Basics */
 
#wrapper {
    margin: 0 auto;
    width: 922px;
}
#header {
    color: #333;
    width: 900px;
    height: auto;
    float: left;
    padding: 0px 10px 0px 0px;
    margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
}
#header h1 {
    font-size: 32pt;
    margin: 0 0 10px 40px;
}
#header a {
    text-decoration: none;
    color: #FFFFFF;
}
#header a:visited {
    color: #FFFFFF;
}
#content {
    width: 900px;
    float: left;
    padding: 10px 10px 10px 10px;
    height: auto;
    margin: 0 0 5px 0;
    background: #BBBBBB;
    border: 1px solid #000000;
    -moz-border-radius:4px;
    -webkit-border-radius: 4px;
    border-radius: 4px;
}
#dashboard {
    width: 900px;
    clear: both;
    background: #0e203e;
    margin-bottom: 5px;
    padding: 10px 5px 10px 18px;
    border: 1px solid #000000;
    -moz-border-radius:4px;
    -webkit-border-radius: 4px;
    border-radius: 4px;
    color: #fff;
    font-size: 10pt;
    font-weight: bold;
    text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px #333;
    text-decoration: none;
}
#dashboard ul {
    list-style-type: none;
}
#dashboard td {
    text-align: center;
    color: #BBB;
}
#dashboard a{
    color: #EEEEEE;
    text-decoration: none;
}
#dashboard a:visited {
    color: #999999;
}
#dashboard a:hover {
    color: #FFFFFF;
    font-weight: bold;
}
#footer {
    width: 900px;
    clear: both;
    background: #9E3E17;
    margin: 0px 0px 10px 0px;
    padding: 5px 5px 20px 18px;
    border: 1px solid #000000;
    -moz-border-radius:4px;
    -webkit-border-radius: 4px;
    border-radius: 4px;
    color: #fff;
    font-size: 10pt;
    font-weight: bold;
    text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px #333;
    text-decoration: none;
}
#footer_stats {
    text-align: right;
    margin: -15px  0 0 0;
}
#liftbox {
    background: #EEEEEE;
    border: 1px solid #0e203e;
    -moz-border-radius:4px;
    -moz-box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #888;
    -webkit-border-radius: 4px;
    -webkit-box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #888;
    border-radius: 4px;
    margin: 10px;
    padding: 10px;
    text-align: center;
}

The Site

YourIP4.com – A Codeigniter Reactor Example Web Application

Questions?

Place any questions you may have in the comments so everyone can benefit from the discussion.

FuelPHP: Release Candidate 1 (RC1)

Brandon Beasley — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 15:46:57 +0000

After only 4 months, FuelPHP has its first release candidate of the new web framework available for download. Since v1.0.0-beta1 they have changed many different features based on initial feedback from the community of developers associated with FuelPHP. What does this mean to the greater programming audience? According to the FuelPHP blog, RC1 means the framework is ready for end users to begin implementing its code. The authors have frozen all the features and are focusing on finding and fixing any bugs that are found during the release candidate time frame.

Some of the new features of FuelPHP RC1 are:

ORM
Modularity
Unit Testing with PHPUnit
Response Object

I have been following the progress of this project since Nov 2010, and great strides have been made in the areas of usability and documentation since then. I want to applaud the authors of the documentation as it is concise and very straight-forward, unlike many other frameworks such as Symphony, Yii, and CakePHP.

If you would like to know more about FuelPHP: http://fuelphp.com
Want to participate in FuelPHP: https://github.com/fuel
Join the FuelPHP discussion forum: http://fuelphp.com/forums

Here are a few examples of websites using FuelPHP:

cURL: Using PHP and cURL with APIs

Brandon Beasley — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 12:17:28 +0000

cURL is a tool to transfer data from or to a server, using one of the supported protocols (DICT, FILE, FTP, FTPS, GOPHER, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP, IMAPS, LDAP, LDAPS, POP3, POP3S, RTMP, RTSP, SCP, SFTP, SMTP, SMTPS, TELNET and TFTP).

We can use cURL to connect to a web service API and return a response that we can later parse and extract the data we need. Most API’s response data is in the form of XML or JSON and both are quite easy to parse. Let’s take a look at using cURL in a real scenario.

To begin writing a PHP application that connects to an API, cURL will need a few pieces of critical data:

URL of the API used to service requests
GET parameters such as credentials and/or the actual query
Any cURL options that are required

The following is a simple example of how to consume a web service or API using cURL and PHP. We will connect to the Internet.bs API and check to see if “example.com” is an unregistered domain name. You can view the API documentation here. This cURL example uses three data arrays:

$params (GET parts of the URL)
$options (cURL configuration options/constants)
$default (cURL default options/constants for this API).

$url = 'https://testapi.internet.bs/Domain/Check';
 
        $params = array (
            'ApiKey' => 'testapi',
            'Password' => 'testpass',
            'Domain' => 'example.com'
        );
 
        $options = array(
            CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST => 0,
            CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => 0
        );
 
        $defaults = array(
            CURLOPT_URL => $url. (strpos($url, '?') 
               === FALSE ? '?' : ''). http_build_query($params),
            CURLOPT_HEADER => 0,
            CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => TRUE,
            CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 4
        );
 
        $ch = curl_init();
        curl_setopt_array($ch, ($options + $defaults));
        if( ! $result = curl_exec($ch))
        {
            trigger_error(curl_error($ch));
        }
 
        curl_close($ch);

And this is the response from Internet.bs API:

transactid=0462c7eeb2b64583fd273f3469250c26
status=UNAVAILABLE
domain=example.com
minregperiod=1Y
maxregperiod=10Y
registrarlockallowed=YES
privatewhoisallowed=YES
realtimeregistration=YES

Warning! Site Overhaul

Brandon Beasley — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 21:16:12 +0000

I’m going to be changing some things around over the next day or so. You may experience brief periods of downtime but the result will be worth the hassle. Stay tuned!

Programming Fonts

Brandon Beasley — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 14:36:07 +0000

I have compiled a list of fonts commonly used by programmers and coders. All of the examples are 12pt with no user added options such as bold or italics. Those of you who write a lot of code know if you are going to stare at the screen for hours you must use a programming font that works for you.