In this short tutorial, I will tell about creating elements and using it differently on different places. Elements are special files that generally adds value to parameters. For this tutorial, I will create a color element that  can be used in different components, modules, plugins where color selection is done through a color picker. I will use moorainbow as web color picker.
Also note, I am creating this element for my adsensebingo module. Hence this code has been tested and used.

Creating Color Element File

Element file are generally single php file that has element class that extends JElement base class. The class overrides fetchElement method of JElement Base class to provide color picker.
Let us create a folder that will hold all files necessary for color element.  Let us call this folder “element”. Download the latest moorainbow library and place it in a subfolder directly below the elements folder. Now create a color.php file . This file is the element file and has a class JElementColor that extends JElement base class.
Now override fetchElement method of JElement base class. The important part of element is the fetchElement method. This method actually returns data that can be used by parameters.

A little explanation about fetchElement is necessary. method fetchElement requires 4 arguments namely
$name – is the unique name of the parameter, from the name argument.
$value – is the current value of the parameter.
$node – is a JSimpleXMLElement object representing the <param> element.
$control_name – is the parameter type from the type argument (eg. ‘category’ or ‘color’).

The fetchElement method for Color element is as below

function fetchElement($name, $value, &$node, $control_name)
{
        ob_start();
        $img=JUri::root()."modules/mod_adsensebingo/elements/moorainbow/images/rainbow.png";
        $imgx=JUri::root()."modules/mod_adsensebingo/elements/moorainbow/images/";
        static $embedded;
                if(!$embedded)
        {
            $css2=JUri::root()."modules/mod_adsensebingo/elements/moorainbow/css/mooRainbow.css";
            $jspath=JUri::root()."modules/mod_adsensebingo/elements/moorainbow/js/mooRainbow.js";
             ?>
<link
    href="<?php echo $css2;?>" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" />
<script src="<?php echo $jspath;?>"></script>

            <?php
            $embedded=true;

        ?>
<script>

            window.addEvent('domready',function(){
//Get sibling function from http://www.sanjeevshrestha.com.np
                Element.extend({
                    getSiblings: function() {
                        return this.getParent().getChildren().remove(this);
                    }
                });
            $('.rainbowbtn').each(function(item){

         item.color=new MooRainbow(item.id, {
                    startColor: [58, 142, 246],
                    wheel: true,
                    id:item.id+'x',
                    onChange: function(color) {

                    item.getSiblings()[0].value = color.hex;
                    },
                    onComplete: function(color) {

                    item.getSiblings()[0].value = color.hex;
                    },

                    imgPath: '<?php echo $imgx;?>'

                });

                });
            });
            </script>
            <?php
        }
            ?>
            <label>
<input
    name="<?php echo $control_name;?////>[<?php echo $name;?>]" type="text"
    class="inputbox" id="<?php echo  $control_name.$name ?>"
    value="<?php echo $value;?>" size="10" />
<img
    src="<?php echo $img;? />" id="img<?php echo $name; ?>" alt="[r]"
    class="rainbowbtn" width="16" height="16" /></label>
        <?php

        $content=ob_get_contents();

        ob_end_clean();
        return $content;

    }

That is it.

Using it in Module Parameters.

Now let us use this in module parameter. Parameters are generally written in
element block. For these params block to render our color element we need to specify path to our elements folder in this params element node as below

<params addpath="[path]/elements"> </param>
--- list of <param> elements ---
</params>

In our case this is written as

<params addpath="/modules/mod_adsensebingo/elements"> </param>
<param name="foreground" type="color" default="#CC0000" label="Foreground Color" description="Select foreground color for your google ad" > </param>
-- other <param> elements
</params>

Now this block is aware of new elment type and knows where to find the element rendering code. The parameter section of module setting page now correctly shows a color picker.
You can create any kind of elments, from a simple integer list to a complex color element or elements that shows records from your component. The usage is limitless.

That is all for color element. More to come on element tutorials till then happy reading.

Recently I created a donation module for joomla that collects donations on Joomla sites. This module uses Paypal to collect donations and is simple to setup and you can get it up and running within a minute. This module is free to use and is released under GNU/GPL. You can see live demo of the module at www.joomlaguru.com.np.

Features

Version 1.0 has following features. You can view the parameters for this module. This module has rich set of configuration options as explained below.

Select Server - This has two options and lets user to select between live and sandbox environment on paypal.

Paypal Merchant  Email/ID - Paypal Email. You can also enter paypal merchant ID instead of paypal email. This increases security without exposing your email address.

Donate To Text - Configure text that is displayed on invoice and paypal donation collecting form.

Fixed Donation – You can choose to accept fixed donations or Donation through input box or a drop down box. If you select fixed donations, please enter donation amount in next field too. If you select “Show amount in select box” user is presented a drop down box with different denominations. These denominations can be configured from a file that is under modules->mod_osdonate->data->amounts.dat

Fixed Amount Donation – Fixed donation amount. This is used only when fixed_donation is active.

Your locale currency - Select currency in which you want to accept donation. Be advised this currency should be active in your paypal. If not this may cause error. You can add currencies in your paypal account. Please refer to paypal help on more about this.

Your Country locale - Select your country. This should be from your paypal account.

Thank you page – Select article that will be displayed when user makes a successful payment through paypal donation form.

Cancel Page – Select article that will be displayed when user cancels the payment.

Donation Intro Text - Text that will be displayed before paypal donate button. Be expressive and a little funny to your viewers.

Donation Post Text – Text that will appear after the donation button.

This is all you need to collect donations from your joomla site.

You can view more details about this module here. Also you can download the module here.

If you like this module consider contributing at Joomlaguru.com.np. Your small contribution can make a difference.

Happy reading!!

Features

1. Two modes

User can select to replace mootools with jQuery completely or use jQuery in conjunction with mootools. Using jQuery with mootools introduces noConflict features of jQuery and replaces ‘$’ operator with jquery. This allows other libraries to use ‘$’ operator without conflict.

2. Where to use selection

Use can select where to use jQuery. User can choose to use jQuery in frontend and/ or in administrator.

3. Allows other application to check if jquery is loaded.

This plugin also introduces a variable in application session that allows others to check if jquery is loaded or not. The illustration of use is as below\

    $app =& JFactory::getApplication();

        //Check to see if jquery is already included
        if( $app->get('jquery') === true ) {

            //Code here

        }
    else
    {

    //Code here

    }

Here is the screenshot of plugin parameters

License

The module is released under GNU/GPL license and hence users are allowed distribute and modify the module without warranty what so ever. The developer does not bear any liability for the extension.

Download

Download the latest release from the download section of joomlaguru.com.np or you can click here to download the plugin.

Send in your comments and feedbacks on the plugin. Hope you will like the plugin. Happy reading.

Features

Website ID – Website ID from Google Analytics. These website ID are unique to each website profile.index.php?option=com_content

Domain – Enter domain without http://www e.g. joomlaguru.com.np

Track – Select tracker type. User can select from tracker type. There are 3 types of tracker available.

1. Single Domain Tracker
   Tracker Tracks single domain only.
2. One Domain With Multiple Subdomains
   Tracker tracks multiple subdomains under single domain
3. Multiple Top Level Domains
   Tracker tracks multiple top level domains.

Download the plugin from the joomlaguru.com.np download page.

If you find this plugin useful please consider contributing. Your contribution can make a difference

Hope you like this plugin. Happy reading!!

The media manager is cool with multiple upload and that too with ajax but I could not get it running. Another inspiration for me

This is an opportunity and challenge for component developers like me to upgrade and update. I am getting my hands dirty on the new arrived code, better get yours too.

Download the latest release of joomla from here
http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/frs/?action=FrsReleaseBrowse&frs_package_id=3585

Happy coding with joomla.

The strtotime function not only converts the string to timestamp value but can also calculate future and past dates. Lets us see some examples

echo date("d-m-y", strtotime("- 7 days"));

This will print the date 7 days ago from current date. simple, isn’t it? yes we can pass offset values into strtotime. The offset values can be any integer followed by days, weeks, months and years. There are other predefined values like now, today, tomorrow, yesterday, first saturday, last saturday, this saturday, next saturday  and so on.

some more examples to make the concept more clear:

echo date("d-m-y", strtotime("- 7 days"));
echo date("d-m-y", strtotime("+1 weeks"));
echo date("d-m-y", strtotime("- 1 months"));
echo date("d-m-y", strtotime("+ 2 years"));
echo date("d-m-y", strtotime("now"));
echo date("d-m-y", strtotime("yesterday"));
echo date("d-m-y", strtotime("last sunday"));
echo date("d-m-y", strtotime("this monday"));
echo date("d-m-y", strtotime("+2 weeks saturday"));

and in a case where you want to find 10 days from today you can simply use
echo date(“d-m-Y”, strtotime(“+10 days”));

And yes this is that simple. Don’t do it the hard way

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ([^\.]+).domain.(.*)
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^exclude.domain.(.*)
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.domain.(.*)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ user.php?u=%1 [L,NC]

(Use [R=301,NC] if you want to redirect the page instead of rewriting)
Whenever you use mod_rewrite (the part of apache that does the magic), you need to include these 2 lines before any ReWrite rules.
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On

+FollowSymLinks must be enabled for any rules to work (Security requirements)

The third line RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ([^\.]+).domain.(.*) matches the host name (remember %{HTTP_HOST} is an environment variable.) and finds the subdomain (excluding any dot (.) in middle). The fourth and fifth line excludes the domain listed. This is necessary so that you don’t confuse the script to use unwanted subdomain. for e.g. in category.domain.tld the fourth line will exclude this domain. If we don’t exclude this domain it will rewrite to script with category as username.  (pretty neat ). Also add as many subdomains you wish to use that are not users. The fifth line does the same. It excludes www.domain.tld to be redirected.

The sixth line does the magic. it rewrites to correct script with subdomain as parameter. (%1 stores the subdomain).

That is all. It worked for me. let me know if it did for you! Happy .htaccess(ing)!

So how do we do it? This can be implemented with the help of 2 kinds of files. 1) the main file and other 2) the thread file. There can be any number of thread file. The main file calls the thread files and it looks like it is multi-threaded.

Let us look at a code fragment below.

 
$url = $_GET['url'];
$scripts = array(
   “script1.php”,
    “script2.php”,
    “script3.php”,
    “script4.php”,
    “script5.php”,
    “script6.php”);
 
# Set off parallel contacts to each of the scripts
 
for ($p=0; $p
    $fh[$p] = popen(“/usr/bin/php “.
    “/home/yoursite/public_html/” . $scripts[$p] .” ” .
    $url,”r”);
    }
 
/*
*    Do your processing here. The above statements will return the control to this block
*
*    Still Processing other works
*
*    Enough Processing. Now Gather the results
*/
 
for ($p=0; $p
    $st = fgets($fh[$p]);
    $rs .=  $scripts[$p] . ” : ” . $st .”
“;
    }
 
print $rs;
?>

What the above does is fire off the 6 scripts in parallel, passing $url to each script as a command line parameter. It executes each script by executing the php binary itself, so the processes themselves live outside of apache. The instant the scripts are fired, they work in the background whilst control is passed back to PHP to continue.  After we’ve done other intensive processing (whatever code you insert above) we can finally get all the scripts return values. For this example, here is the code for one of the scripts that is called – note how it reads the url we passed from the command line.

$url = $argv[1];
print “this is the returned value”;
 ?>

The above method is best used on very intensive tasks that typically take a long time. This method can increase the performance upto 50% (My personal experience and tests).

That is all. In this way we can multithread a PHP script. To be more specifi pseudo multi thread. 

This is the simplest of all. I will write a tutorial on how to multithread php scripts using CURL. Till then Happy reading!

Now back to the topic. jQuery and Mootools are known to produce conflicts when used together. jQuery is more reliable and robust than mootools (It is my personal view)  but it is however not provided with core joomla installation. So how to use jQuery with Mootools without any conflicts. 

To use jQuery with joomla,

• Download the latest jQuery release or any releast the best fit your requirements,
• Save it to an accessible folder (e.g. /media/system/js/)
• Now include the library from within your view. i.e. include the jquery library in layout file (normally default.php) of your view.

$document = &JFactory::getDocument();
$document->addScript(JPATH_SITE.’/media/system/js/jquery.js’ );
$document->addScriptDeclaration ( ‘jQuery.noConflict();’ );

You can use jQuery with jQuery.noConflict() method called right after you include the jQuery library as shown above.

This will allow you to use the jQuery without conflicts. But what if you want to replace all the mootools library with jQuery and don’t want to use mootools at all. But remember the Joomla Administrator section uses mootools heavily so you cannot eliminate mootools from administration panel. So how to use jQuery in frontend. Here is the trick.

Open a file named behavior.php. This is under libraries->joomla->html->html. Now find a method named mootools($debug = null). Create another function named jQuery(debug=null) and paste the code as below in the body of the function.

function jQuery($debug = null)
    {
        static $loaded;

        global $mainframe;
        // Only load once
        if ($loaded) {
            return;
        }

        // If no debugging value is set, use the configuration setting
        if ($debug === null) {
            $config = &JFactory::getConfig();
            $debug = $config->getValue(‘config.debug’);
        }

        $konkcheck = strpos (strtolower($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']), “konqueror”);

        if ($debug || $konkcheck) {
            JHTML::script(‘jquery.js’, ‘media/system/js/’, false);
        } else {
            if($mainframe->isSite()) {

                JHTML::script(‘jquery.min.js’, ‘media/system/js/’, false);
            }
            else
            {
                JHTML::script(‘mootools.js’, ‘media/system/js/’, false);
            }
        }
        $loaded = true;
        return;
    }

Now you can use jQuery in the frontend but the admin still uses the mootools. With this method you will not face any conflicts and use jQuery without mootools.

The jquery.min.js is the minified version of jQuery library whereas the jquery.js is uncompressed version. Remember to put these both files under media->system->js folder.

To use jQuery in your codes just call JHTML::_(‘behavior.jQuery’) to import jquery into your page. isn’t it cool to use jquery with joomla. I dreamt of it for long.

Send me comments and suggestions on this post. Happy reading

Google Chart API is simple and easy to implement and produces nifty chart in your website with the data you supplied to the API. The API generates a PNG-format image in response to a url. The API generates different kinds of Charts like bar, line, pie, 3D pie and that too in different color and sizes. isn’t that cool?

As already mentioned the google chart API is simple and easy to implement. (Read more about the chart API at http://code.google.com/apis/chart/) You just need to form a url in following format and send it to google.

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart? & &

e.g. http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=350x150&chd=t:70,30&cht=p3&chl=Joomla|Drupal

Yes generating chart is that simple. Just copy the above example and see for yourself. Now let me explain the chart parameters.

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart? is the Chart API’s location.
& separates parameters.
chs=350x150 is the chart’s size in pixels.
chd=t:70,30 is the chart’s data.
cht=p3 is the chart’s type.
chl=Joomla|Drupal is the chart’s label.

You must at least provide chs, chd, cht parameters to the API. Now let us discuss some variations of  parameters

To know more about the Google Chart API, refer to google code at http://code.google.com/apis/chart/. The API docs provides all the information on how to use the Chart API in your website.

Happy Reading!