A long time ago (computer-wise), iconv was created to handle just this situation. the only problem is that it’s only a library.

PHP has an Iconv interface. and so does Ruby.

Here is an example of using the latter; I will read in a file (hardcoded, in this case), convert the codepage, change the encoding specified (well, it could be more sophisticated), and write the result out to disk.

require 'iconv'
input = ""
File.open("C:/2879.html","r") { |file| input << file.read }
r = Iconv.new("UTF-8","euc-jp").iconv(input)
r.gsub!("EUC-JP", "UTF-8")
outfile = File.new("C:/2879.1.html","w")
outfile.print r

Note that I’m using one of those unusual windows paths that ruby allows. I could have also used “C:\\2879.html” instead; but I hate having to do escaping on paths.

Problem is, how do you correctly format (aka normalize) people’s input? People will enter phone numbers with whatever format they feel is appropriate.

First, lets show them the preferred format.

app/views/yourmodel/new.rb && app/views/yourmodel/edit.rb
<dl class="form">
<dt><%= f.label :phone %></dt>
<dd><%= f.text_field :phone, :value => number_to_phone(@yourmodel.phone, :area_code => true) %></dd>
</dl>

Now, We need to intercept it at some point before it gets into the database (See Graeme Mathieson’s writup for the other possible way to do this)

app/models/yourmodel.rb
before_validation :normalise
 
def normalise
phone.gsub!(/[^\d]/, “”) if !phone.nil?
end
 
validates_format_of :phone,
:with => /^1?(?:\([2-9]\d{2}\)\ ?|[2-9]\d{2}(?:\-?|\ ?))[2-9]\d{2}[- ]?\d{4}$/i,
:message => “Invalid Phone number”,
:if => :phone?

As both of these have only one active option… well, I wanted to hide all other options.

The following code (dependent on prototype 1.6.x) does just this. Hopefully I’ll be able to explain it better soon.

$(document).observe("dom:loaded", function() {
/* generic show/hide section function */
activate_display_switch();
}
 
 
/* a select/input with class of display-switch will show() all classes with currently selected value (select_name)_(value), and hide() others */
function activate_display_switch() {
var signal = Prototype.Browser.IE ? 'focus' : 'change';
$$('select.display-switch').invoke('observe','change', function(){
var x = this;
x.childElements().each(function(y){ x.up('form').select("." + x.id + "_" + y.value).invoke('hide'); });
x.up('form').select("." + x.id + "_" + x.value).invoke('show');
});
$$('input.display-switch').invoke('observe',signal, function(){
var x = this;
switch(x.type.toUpperCase()) {
case "RADIO":
x.up('form').descendants().collect( function(s) { if (s.tagName.toUpperCase() == "INPUT" && s.type.toUpperCase() == "RADIO" && s.name == x.name ) return s; }).compact().each(function(y){ x.up('form').select('.' + y.id + "_" + y.value).invoke('hide'); });
x.up('form').select("." + x.id + "_" + x.value).invoke('show');
break;
default:
alert("Display Switch unimplemented for " + x.tagName + "[" + x.type.toUpperCase() + "], ” + x.id);
break;
}
});
}

…Because I am waiting for Kubuntu 8.10 to stabilize. Because the Alpha I installed definitely was not stable.

However, I do want the two to play nice; And by play nice, I mean “have windows act less stupid about it”. So here’s what I did.

Let windows see my Ext2 Partitions
…Previously, I was using a FAT32 partition for sharing files between OSes, as Linux has supported it for a long time. However, certian things convinced me I needed a more capable format.

Let Windows use my Linux Swap partition
If I already have gigabytes reserved for swap, why am I not using it? I mean, for a good while, I intentionally was not using swap with Linux, and it was awesome - until my box outright crashed under heavy load. Of course, after you install this diver under windows, you still have to edit your system properties to use the newly mounted drive, but information on how to do that is readily available.

Use Windows Boot Manager to boot to Linux
This goes back to the fact that Windows does not play nice with others - and the fact that I seem to have a non-booting somthing under GRUB rather frequently. During the Ubuntu setup, there is a point where you are asked to confirm the details of your installation - and an “Advanced” button. THis button gives you an option to install GRUB somewhere other than the MBR - so, as I had just specified Linux be installed on SDA1, I used (hd0,0) for GRUB - specifying a partition, not a disk. Windows Boot Manager is pointed to that disk, and you have a solution that keeps getting you into windows no matter how many times you “broke” Linux.

… So that’s my setup as of now. Because of it, thankfully I no longer have to rely on a networked SANE setup for my scanner - or a samba-mounted cdrom drive for copy protection purposes. ^_^; But that’s beside the point.

I still want the best page possible, so most of my Add-ons are web development tools. Most.

This is as much a reference list for when I have a new setup as a pat on the back for developers of these add-ons. Thanks!

Firebug

The de-facto web development tool. Highlights include; Dom inspection(for catching what Firefox is interpreting you page as, updates with ajax calls), rendered style information (including whwere the css is), and network transfer info (is that generated image a 500 Server error? or a 404 Not Found?)

YSlow

Developing on your own workstation is not a good testing environment - in terms of users’ speed. Yahoo’s Yslow gives ratings and tips of how your page could be improved in this aspect. Requires Firebug.

Adblock Plus

Of course I don’t want to deal with ads. However, there is always the option to temporarily disable ad blocking, if there is an actual problem.

AVG Safe Search

Disabled. Enough said.

No, wait - why can’t I uninstall this?

Web Developer Toolbar

I always end up dragging the the contents to the Bookmarks toolbar to save screen space. Highlights include: Disable cache, Display Form Details (on same page), View form Information (in a new tab), Replace images with ALT attributes, presets for window sizing, shortcuts for html validation (Ctrl+Shift+A is the best)

Abduction!

Better than “Print Screen”, because it will take a shot of the whole webpage (no scrolling issues). Only problem is that it does not seem to work on embedded items (like Adobe Flash) - but as I no longer have to deal with flash, this is not my issue. (this statement was true as of version 2.026)

Foxmarks

A centralized server to keep your bookmarks on, and an add-on to integrate it with Firefox. The only plugin that is worth a login (hey, you want your bookmarks behind a password, right?)

Video DownloadHelper

Detects those FLVs with pesky dynamically generated names and allows you to save with somthing more sane. Hey, if there is no way to protect my content on the Internet, why should they get to protect theirs?

Google Reader Notifier

I was using Firefox’s built-in “live bookmark” functionality when I had only a dozen rss feeds to check. This is obviously a step up.

app/
views/
layouts/
wow.html.erb
that.html.erb
is.html.erb
a.html.erb
lot.html.erb
of.html.erb
layouts.html.erb

… when it could be

app/
views/
layouts/
application.html.erb

… without any other code modification; it results in a lot less markup to update if you have regular features.

But I want different CSS for different controllers, too. So I’ll add in some attributes to the body tag:

<body
id='<%= controller.class.controller_name %>_<%= controller.action_name %>'
class='<%= controller.class.controller_name %> <%= controller.action_name %>'>

If I was getting really specific, I’d add some prefixes; but this is enough for rules like:

#sidebar { background: blue; }
body.index #sidebar { background: red; }
body.customer #sidebar { background: green; }
body#customer_index #sidebar { display: none; }

Prototype.js, trying to cover these browsers, has some solid detects in it.

Here is a snippet from Version 1.6.0.2:

Browser: {
IE: !!(window.attachEvent && !window.opera),
Opera: !!window.opera,
WebKit: navigator.userAgent.indexOf('AppleWebKit/') > -1,
Gecko: navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Gecko') > -1 && navigator.userAgent.indexOf('KHTML') == -1,
MobileSafari: !!navigator.userAgent.match(/Apple.*Mobile.*Safari/)
}

If you need a browser detect for some reason, you can access the result from your own scripts. For example: I needed a radio button that reacted to selection by triggering another function,and IE triggers the ‘onChange’ event at a later point than all the other browsers:

<input type='radio' id='my_radio' />
...
<script type='text/javascript'>
//<![CDATA[
var signal = Prototype.Browser.IE ? 'focus' : 'change';
Event.observe('my_radio',signal,function(){
react();
});
//]]>
</script>

I’ve frequently run into cases between these diffrenet languages and document encodings that utf-8 will not do the whole job. So I’ve made the following set of php functions to convert a utf-8 sting into an (ASCII? ISO-8859-1?) hex-escaped string that I don’t have to worry about displaying.

function _utf8_to_html ($data) {
$ret = 0;
foreach((str_split(strrev(chr((ord($data{0}) % 252 % 248 % 240 % 224 % 192) + 128) . substr($data, 1)))) as $k => $v)
$ret += (ord($v) % 128) * pow(64, $k);
return "&#x" . base_convert($ret,10,16) . ";";
}
 
 
function cleanstring($string) {
return stripslashes(preg_replace("/([\\xC0-\\xF7]{1,1}[\\x80-\\xBF]+)/e”, ‘_utf8_to_html(”\\1″)’, $string));
}

runes.sudrien.net

It still needs work - it does not handle, dashes, the letter “i”, and so many other things.

-Sud.

So, I saw This code. And it was a lot of code for a simple problem.

So I wrote somthing shorter.

echo " the {$count}";
 
switch ( $count ) {
case ($count % 10 == 1 && $count % 100 != 11 ): echo "st"; break;
case ($count % 10 == 2 && $count % 100 != 12 ): echo "nd"; break;
case ($count % 10 == 3 && $count % 100 != 13 ): echo "rd"; break;
case "0":
case 0: echo " lack"; break;
default: echo "th"; break;
}
 
echo " of whatever";

Most of the time in PHP, I’ve used the case statement for simple comparison; if $count = 1, do this, if $count = 2, do that, and so on. Here I am using its full capacity for logic; all this can be written as if..else statements. If not for the option of zero, I could have used switch(true).

-Sud.

You can, of course, put this in a function.