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Javascript in Drupal 7

Roger Saner — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:55:22 +0000

Kat Bailey has posted an excellent overview of the changes in javascript usage between Drupal 6 and 7. Particularly relevant is AHAH usage, which she sums up in Drupal 6 as follows: “AHAH forms make people want to jump out of the window of very tall buildings”!!! which is SOOOO true (I struggled for about a month to get an AHAH for working earlier this year…then figured out that AHAH doesn’t play nicely with CCK).

Also new: merlinofchaos has implemented an AJAX framework, and jQuery UI is in core. Plus there is the ability to use other libraries too, not just jQuery. Drupal 7 is gonna rock!

JavaScript in Drupal 7: What developers need to know

View more presentations from katbailey.

Snow Leopard, Drupal, Macports and php

Roger Saner — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:36:52 +0000

The short story is this: Snow Leopard has php 5.3.0 in, and although Drupal 6.14 now runs on that version, all previous drupal versions run on 5.2. [Solution? Manual compile - instructions below]

Mark Liyange’s php package has all of the nice stuff (like GD and mysql support) built into it, but it just doesn’t run with apache on Snow Leopard (white screen).

There’s no simple way to install php 5.2 without compiling it from source. Macports has a php52 package, but
sudo port install php52 yeilded a nasty error:

Undefined symbols:
“_res_9_dn_expand”, referenced from:
_zif_dns_get_mx in dns.o
“_res_9_search”, referenced from:
_zif_dns_get_mx in dns.o
_zif_dns_check_record in dns.o
“_res_9_dn_skipname”, referenced from:
_zif_dns_get_mx in dns.o
_zif_dns_get_mx in dns.o

Solution? Compile it manually and then run EXTRA_CFLAGS="-lresolv" make -j2

I did that, waited an hour, and it worked (hooray) except I had no mysql support. *sigh* I had to recompile with mysql, so…

Steps to compile php 5.2 on Snow Leopard with mysql support

Download php 5.2.11 source code or do it via macports by sudo port -v fetch php52

Uncompress it, open terminal and go to the uncompressed folder (macports stores the download in /opt/local/var/macports/distfiles/php5 (if you’ve already tried compiling with Macports, that’s where your download will be).

Configure the build by typing:

./configure '--prefix=/opt/local' '--mandir=/opt/local/share/man' '--infodir=/opt/local/share/info' '--with-config-file-path=/opt/local/etc/php5' '--with-config-file-scan-dir=/opt/local/var/db/php5' '--enable-calendar' '--with-iconv=/opt/local' '--enable-exif' '--enable-ftp' '--enable-wddx' '--with-zlib=/opt/local' '--with-bz2=/opt/local' '--with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql' '--with-mysql-sock=/tmp/mysql.sock' '--with-sqlite' '--without-pdo-sqlite' '--with-libxml-dir=/opt/local' '--with-gettext=/opt/local' '--with-libexpat-dir=/opt/local' '--with-xmlrpc' '--enable-soap' '--enable-bcmath' '--enable-mbstring' '--enable-dba' '--enable-zip' '--with-openssl=/opt/local' '--with-mhash=/opt/local' '--with-mcrypt=/opt/local' '--with-mime-magic' '--with-xsl=/opt/local' '--with-curl=/opt/local' '--with-pcre-regex=/opt/local' '--with-gd' '--with-jpeg-dir=/opt/local' '--with-png-dir=/opt/local' '--enable-gd-native-ttf' '--without-pear' '--with-freetype-dir=/opt/local' '--with-ldap=/usr' '--with-kerberos=/usr' '--with-iodbc=/usr' '--with-apxs2=/usr/sbin/apxs' '--with-mysqli=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config'

Notice the –with-mysql option, and the path to your mysql install (I used the binary from mysql.com so it’s in /usr/local/mysql – your folder will be different if you installed mysql with macports – same with –with-mysql-sock – mysql.com binary sticks it into /tmp/mysql.sock whereas macports puts it elsewhere – somewhere I can’t remember, but locate can help).

I also changed the –with-apxs2 option as it was pointing to my macports compile of apache2 which I’d decided not to use.

[You might wander, how did I get all of these options? After my first (successful) php 5.2 build (the one which didn't have mysql support), a phpinfo() shows the Configure Command used to configure from source. I copied that, and changed the relevant bits. And alas, found out too late I should've added mysqli support in, which is there now.]

Make the binaries with EXTRA_CFLAGS="-lresolv" make -j2
Copy to the right locations with a make install

If all goes well, your last step is to hook the php module into apache (php tries to do this itself, so just verify it worked). Open /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf and search for “php”. That line should say:
LoadModule php5_module /usr/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

Now just restart apache and you’re all done! No more drupal white screens, and now you can actually access your database. Whohoo.

Drupal meetup on Saturday in Cape Town

Roger Saner — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:55:51 +0000

After chatting with Max_headroom on irc I decided to organise a drupal meetup in Cape Town. Adrian Rossouw will be demoing Aegir (a hosting system for drupal) – and many Capetonian drupallers – and those who’ve only recently heard about drupal – will be there. We are meeting at 1pm this Saturday (May 2nd) at Wembley Square (map) and you can sign up here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/21581

See you there!

Using quickfile.module to sell music

Roger Saner — Thu, 01 May 2008 19:27:16 +0000

quickfile is a module which allows the selling of files quickly and simply. The first time I went through the process I wasn’t emailed my confirmation link, so putting in the correct PayPal settings into the config worked:

1. Login to your paypal account.

2. Click on Profile

3. Click on Website Payment Preferences

4. Under Auto Return for Website Payments switch on auto-return and make sure your IPN Url matches what the quickfile module indicates under ADMIN -> QUICKFILES -> PAYPAL

5. Under Payment Data Transfer (optional) select ON

6. Save those changes. When the confirmation screen appears you shuold see a very long list of letters and numbers. That’s your PDT token that you need to put into the quickfile module settings page

Review of open source content managers

Roger Saner — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:37:58 +0000

More and more people are taking open source content managers and building sites with them. The usual suspects are Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal. Here is an article from the April Adobe newsletter that gives a basic overview of these three (as well as XOOPS and CMS Made Simple) and provides a recommendation for the most flexible, scalable system which also has an “enthusiastic user community” – I leave it to you to read the article and discover which one wins

Technorati Tags: CMS Made Simple, Drupal, Joomla, open source, Wordpress, XOOPS

Securing Drupal’s future

Roger Saner — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 12:35:20 +0000

As you know, I’m a freelance web developer, which means I make websites do cool things (making them look cool is a designer’s job) and to do that, I use the “linux of the internet”, a little piece of software magic called Drupal. Drupal is open source, meaning anyone can poke under the hood and change things, and it has a robust user community around it, constantly improving it.

The big news of the last few days is that Dries Buytaert, Drupal’s founder, has co-founded Acquia, a startup company which will give the financial muscle necessary to keep Drupal at the forefront of the web (especially in implementing open API’s which would allow Drupal to integrate with Facebook, OpenSocial, 2nd Life and others, allowing for some cool mashups). Acquia won’t annex Drupal or fork the code or make it closed-source. It’s intention is to be as what Ubuntu or Red Hat are to Linux. I think this is a great move, especially since Dries (who will retain the Drupal trademark while the Drupal Association continues to operate drupal.org) writes:

Furthermore, I’m expressly permitted to make decisions within the Drupal project that may not always be in Acquia’s best commercial interest.

Overall, this is a Good Thing for Drupal.

Technorati Tags: Drupal, Acquia