First release of ePing.py!

Today, not even 5 minutes ago, I released the first public version of my first Python project. I called it ePing.py, kind of being an 'enhanced' ping-tool written in Python.

The project can be found on code.google.com/p/epingpy.

It basically checks whether a specified URL returns a HTTP-error or gives an timeout within a specified period.

Please download, try and give me feedback. This would also be my first public attempt at OOP (without alot of oopz I hope... :-) )

Userscript to change links

Why I set out to create this very short script doesn't really matter. Sometimes it is just handy to change a link on a website, but you don't have control over the source code. In a broader perspective, this method actually changes a specified attribute for each specified HTML element, and in that perspective is actually more generally useful.

Well okay, this is the situation. Our CMS gives us the option to change the configuration options for systems we sell. However, for certain systems our Sales department asked us to only use options we have in stock, so delivery times can stay as short as possible. Of course this information is not displayed in the page itself. It is however returned from the database. We are not allowed to make changes to the source of our CMS, but what my colleague did, is copy the specific JSP file, and change the output as to show whether a product is a stockproduct or not. This new file we have to access manually for each component change. This is bothersome in my eyes, and that's why I set out to create a small userscript for IE7Pro.

On a side note, we use a lot of different userscripts for both Internet Explorer (through IE7Pro) and FireFox (through GreaseMonkey) to enhance efficiency or fix annoying inefficiencies (small but relevant difference).

So I basically needed to change every link on pageA.jsp that linked to pageB.jsp?value=someID to pageB2.jsp?value=someID.

// ==UserScript==
// @name          Show external status
// @namespace       qrazi.blogspot.com
// @description    Replace an attribute of specified element
// @include        http://pages.where.this.should.apply*
// @exclude        http://pages.where.this.absolutely.shouldnt.apply(optional)
// @version 1.0
// ==/UserScript==

var elm = document.getElementsByTagName("a");//or any other kind of element
for(i = 0; i<elm.length;i++){
    attr = elm[i].getAttribute("href");//or any other kind of attribute
    if(check whether should be changed){
        attr = attr.replace("to be replaced", "with this");
        elm[i].setAttribute("href", attr);//change the href attribute to attr
    }
}

Unbelieveable

At work we use third party content for the products we sell. The match this content to the products, this third party, Icecat, uses XML index files. Our current setup is that a VBScript inserts the complete indexfile (~150MB) into our MS SQL database. Now everytime we put a new product in the CMS and put it online in our webshop (its my job as a content manager, I don't own the company), it queries for the location of the XML file with specs, so the CMS can use this XML to output specs with the product.

So you see, it's quiet vital to have this import working. However, since last Wednesday the import stopped working. According to the IT guys, there was no error, it just stopped. The company who made this specific VBScript and the CMS we use said they would look into it. Today, a week later, they finally got time to do this. What they found is that the indexfile got to big, and then they informed whether there was a daily or weekly indexfile (=smaller and therefore should work).

OMFG! First of all, there is a daily file, so they should have implemented a daily incremental import in the first place. Second, VBScript's default XML parser is DOM based. This means that the XML document will be extracted as a tree-structure into the memory, and for every read or write action, the amount of memory required increases. So before the import quit working, it used to take up to 10 hours to finish.

Look, I don't have a degree in programming, I didn't do any education remotely close to this. I am, by al means, a n00b when it comes to scripting and programming. But if I know all this, why the h*ll can several people who finished college in this field, who have their own company and ask a lot of money to even answer an e-mail to us not figure this out?

An argument given was that it would be too much work to rebuild the script (75 lines long) to use a SAX-kind of solution (which AFAIK isn't available in VBScript). The server in question also supports Asp.net 1.1. So XmlReader is available. Although not the same as SAX (pull instead of push), it is definitely comparable in performance, or faster. In fact, I use this solution to read the same indexfile and match it to our outstanding requests with Icecat in under 7 minutes.

* qrazi is about to get so frustrated for being underpaid, having a job a monkey could do, and the meeting people who pull this crap, but make three times what he makes, that he's thinking seriously about just plain quitting this job....

New videocard

A few months ago, I bought a GeForce 8600GT 256MB GDDR3 from my colleague. Although this type of card never really got recommendations because of the little performance increase over previous generations. However, I went from an integrated X1250 videocard to this GeForce 8600GT and I'm now a happy gamer again... :)

Hide and show contents of a div

One of the websites that I am maintaining during my dayjob was getting quiet cluttered on the right side. So I decided that all the logo's of possible banks should be hidden untill clicked on. I know this is possible, I just didn't know the right code from the top of my head.

However, Dustin Diaz's blog gave me the solution after a quick Google.

This resulted in the following code:

<script type="text/javascript">
    function switchDiv(obj) 
    {
        var el = document.getElementById(obj);
        if ( el.style.display != 'none' ) {
            el.style.display = 'none';
        }
        else 
        {
            el.style.display = '';
        }
    }
</script>
<div id="whatever" style="margin-bottom:2px;"><a onclick="switchDiv('nameofdivtoshowandhide');"><img src="imageonwebsite" </a></div>
<div id="nameofdivtoshowandhide" style="margin-bottom:2px; display: none;"><img src="imagewithalllogos.jpg" </div>

This is definitely repeatable code, which I should save for future use.

Ajax: first experience

I haven't written in a while, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy. Actually I have been improving my knowledge of both PHP and MySQL, picking up additional JavaScript knowledge on the way.

Everybody has heard of Ajax, or Web 2.0, nowadays. So naturally I tried to pick this technology up as well.

Coding everything manually proved to be quiet difficult, especially since my knowledge of JavaScript is so limited. Then I came across Xajax, which is a PHP based framework to create ajax-like webapplications.

I am working on a project right now where I will be using this framework, and hopefully the first version can be released soon.

Good PHP book

I think I should look into buying a good PHP book, since the Java book I bought helped me learn so much quicker then reading tutorials on websites. One book I came across, and am really considering, is: PHP voor het World Wide Web; ISBN10: 9043005452; by Larry Ullman.