Revath S kumar

How to use sendsms gem

2012-02-01T15:11:00.000+05:30

After working on sending SMS in php via way2sms.com, recently I thought of writing the same in ruby. That resulted in the creation of sendsms gem. Even though I wrote enough code for the functionality, currently it lacks a proper documentation. So I thought of writing a "How to use sendsms gem". I am planning to do a better document and mean while I hope this will help you to use this gem. There are lot more work to do in the gem for easy use. Currently this gem can be used to send sms in India only. The code is open at github. You can report the issue and feature requests also on github issues page.

The Flow
The simple steps to use this gem is

Install the gem
Require sendsms class
Instantiate sendsms class
call the login instance method
call send or send_to_many instance method to send the SMS
call the logout instance method

Installation

The installation of the sendsms gem can gone as simple as the other gems in rubygems.org

Sending individual SMS
The send method is used to send individual SMS.

Sending Group SMS
You need to pass the msisdns as a semicolon seperated string to send group sms. The send_to_many method is used for Group SMS.

Future plans
The current checklist for the future are

Remove the explicit call for login and logout with the use of autologin and auto logout flags.
Proper documentation with yard.

Please drop a word if you think my work worth, and it may help for betterment of gem.

Thank You.

4 useful Sublime Text-2 Plugins

2012-01-05T15:28:00.001+05:30

In one of the previous blog post I already told you how to install sublime Text -2 on ubuntu. Here is another regarding some useful plugins for the same. Here I like to introduce 4 plugins which I feel really good.

1. Sublime Package Control
A full-featured package manager that helps discovering, installing, updating and removing packages for Sublime Text 2. It features an automatic upgrader and supports GitHub, BitBucket and a full channel/repository system. The installation procedure is given here. Find more details on this plugin here.

2. Git plugin
This is a simple Sublime Text-2 plugin for implementing git inside the editor itself. This plugin implements just enough git commands at the moment. Whose who are interested can join the development here in github. The more documentation are available here. This can be easily installed through the package control plugin (which I mentioned just above).

3. Google Search
This plugin help to Search Google for the currently selected text. The installation of this plugin also can be done using the package control. The code is hosted on bitbucket.

4. Bracket Highlighter
Even though Sublime Text have inbuilt bracket highlighter, this plugin will added more visibility and customization for bracket highlighting. The core features are listed below.

Customizable highlighting of brackets (),[],<>,{}
Customizable highlighting of Tags (supports unary tags and supports self closing /> (HTML5 coming))
Customizable highlighting of quotes
Selectively disable or enable specific matching of tags, brackets, or quotes

Find more details and features here. Same as other plugins, you can install this using package manager.

Please let me know whether I have missed any important and sexy plugins. Waiting for your response.

Run RSpec as a Rake task

2011-12-27T13:10:00.000+05:30

This is the first time I tried to run my Rspec tests as a rake task. I found this way after lots of googling since it's most results point to outdated information. I tried this with rspec-2.7.0 gem. Here I assume that you already wrote the rspec tests, now you just need to know how to run those tests as rake tasks.

Here we go.

Create a Rakefile
Copy and paste the code below.
Use task :default => :spec only if you want to run rspec rask as the default task.
execute the rake command. (rake/bundle exec rake)

Vlc : Add to playlist option in context menu [ubuntu]

2011-11-08T01:28:00.001+05:30

If you are using vlc media player on ubuntu, then most probably you will be missing the context menu for "Add to vlc playlist". Here is how you can customize context menu and add the feature.

Switch vlc to "Allow one instance only"
The first thing you have to do is to make sure your vlc player allow only one instance. In order to set this change, goto Tools -> Preferences -> Interface -> Check "Allow only one instance" option.
Install nautilus-actions package.

This package will install "nautilus-actions-config-tool" which will helps you to add and configure new menu in context menu
Add context menu
To Add context menu you need to run "nautilus-actions-config-tool" in terminal.Click on new icon and add caption for the menu.
Configure command to action menu
Now you need to Switch to Command tab and fill the following.
- path : /path/to/vlc (for me it was /usr/bin/vlc). if you are not sure find with which vlc command.
- parameters : --playlist-enqueue %U
- working directory : %d
Now switch to basename tab and add the need file types.

Save the menu using save Icon (marked in red ellipse).
Restart nautilus
Resart nautilus using the command

Now check the the menu by right click on any file with configured extension in basename tab.Restart nautilus each time when you made any changes on the context menu.You can also select multiple files and give add to vlc playlist.

If you like the post please drop your suggestions and doubts as comments.

python : list all packages installed

2011-10-28T01:38:00.000+05:30

If you have some background on ruby then surely, you have been used gem list to get the list of installed modules. In this blog post we will see how to list all the modules installed in python. There are two ways you can get the list of installed packages on python.

Using help function
You can use help function in python to get the list of modules installed. Get into python prompt and type the following command.This will list all the modules installed in the system.You don't need to install any additional package for listing it, but you need to manually search or filter the required module from the list.
using python-pipEven though you need to install additional package for using this, you can easily search or filter the result with grep command. Eg : pip freeze | grep feed

You can use any of this method which you think it is convenient for you.Thanks

python : merge dictionaries

2011-10-25T14:35:00.000+05:30

Here is the two simple ways to merge dictionaries in python.

Using update method
By using this method the second dictionary(new_adm) will be merged to the first one(default) and the update method will return None.
Using dict constructor
By using this method both first dictionary and second will be merged and stored in a third dictionary(resultant) and default and new_adm will remain unchanged.

Python : colorful print in terminal

2011-10-24T17:43:00.000+05:30

If you like to print some colourful text in terminal you probably need the termcolor library, which I think easiest one.

You can download from here (download).
Unzip the downloaded library.
Install it.

Change directory to the source directory (cd termcolor-1.1.0/)
Run command sudo python setup.py install

Now try

python : url encoding and decoding

2011-10-24T16:12:00.000+05:30

Url Encoding
Url Decoding

Rake migration in production

2011-10-18T20:30:00.000+05:30

By default rake will run the migrations in development environment. So when we try to run migration on the production server it will throw error, since the database credentials for production and development environment is different. In order to run migration on production server, we need to manually ask the rake to use the database credentials of production environment. Here is how we will force rake to use production environment.

Hope it helped you.:)

Install firefox beta on ubuntu

2011-09-28T16:24:00.000+05:30

I hope this post will help you to try out firefox beta on your ubuntu. You just need to add the firefox beta repository in ubuntu. Just follow the three command to get it done. To work on this you need privileges of root user. Make sure you have it.

Add firefox beta repository to ubuntu
Retrieve new lists of packages
Install firefox

If you are new to firefox thenIf you already an firefox user then you just need to upgrade firefox

Check into Google plus from desktop browser

2011-08-21T19:38:00.000+05:30

If you like to use Google Plus Check-In from your Home/Office PC/laptop here is the way you can do it easily.I recommend to use latest Google Chrome to work this tric perfectly.You won't need to install any extension for this.

Goto Google Plus mobile and Login.

Click on the Button

Allow Google chrome to find location

Search for a nearby location to check in (Your Office,Your apartment,...etc)

Click on the Suggested places to check in

Yes now you are checked in from the desktop browser

Rack OpenID : forcing for new session in google authentication

2011-08-20T18:26:00.000+05:30

Currently Rack::OpenID didn't support for forcing a new session in Google authentication. So if you need that functionality, you can easily add via Monkey patching/Duck punching. By monkey patching we are going to pass PAPE (Provider Authentication Policy Extension) as a parameter. For further information you can get the Google documentation.
If you wonder what I meant by Monkey patching/Duck punching, then you have to read wikipedia first. The best definition I heard about Monkey patching/Duck punching is by Patrick Ewing in RailsConf 2007.

...if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it’s a duck, right? So if this duck is not giving you the noise that you want, you’ve got to just punch that duck until it returns what you expect.

Now the patch.
For rails :
Copy the following code to a file and save it in config/initializers/ directory. Eg: config/initializers/rack_openid_patch.rb

Now you need to add the pape option to the Rack::OpenID.build_header

Now You can force for new session in google authentication with Rack::OpenID.But make sure you set max_auth_age = 0

Firefox : open search in new tab

2011-08-17T15:12:00.000+05:30

Here I comes with new Firefox tip to Open your search in a new tab if you are searching from Firefox Search tab.

1. type about:config in addressbar and hit Enter.

2. Click on I'll be careful, I promise!

3. Search for Openintab

4. Double click on false to make it true.

Yes, you have done it. Now close the current tab and try for a new search from search box.

Copy gems in rvm from one ruby to another

2011-08-06T20:09:00.000+05:30

If you are a ruby programmer you were definitely using rvm (Ruby Version Manager),if not I recommend to get start from here. But in rvm after installation of new version ruby the gems set will be empty. Installing all the gemset used in the previous version is really time consuming. So here is the easy way to copy gems from one version of ruby to another.

Here is the syntax for the command to use

Here is an example to copy all gems you used in ruby 1.8.7 to ruby 1.9.2

Some gems may have compatibility with the ruby versions. So such gems should be updated or reinstalled manually.

Now what you do if you want to copy a single gems from one version to another? Here is the tip for it.

This will copy only rails3 gem from ruby 1.8.7 to ruby 1.9.2.

upgrade to Apache Ant 1.8.2 on ubuntu natty

2011-08-03T01:09:00.000+05:30

            Ubuntu natty is packaged with Apache Ant 1.8.1. So if you need to update the Ant to 1.8.2 just apt-get upgrade ant won't work. So you need to add other PPA which provides Ant 1.8.2. Here is a PPA provided by the Eclipse Team.

Disclaimer :
            This PPA is not Official and use at your own risk. (I just installed Ant 1.8.2 with this PPA and so far no issues for me.)

How to use :
   It can be used just in two steps

now you can use sudo apt-get upgrade ant for upgrade Apache ant.

You can test whether the installation yield what you expected using ant -version command

invoke web service request with ruby

2011-07-16T16:34:00.000+05:30

Here is the simple example to invoke a web service request from ruby and get its response in the json format. Here Ian getting the public timeline from twitter with its api.

zero setup syntax highlighter for bloggers

2011-07-15T01:27:00.000+05:30

It was two days back I used gist for the first time. Before that I used syntax highlighter . It was a nice once but setting up this was a nightmare.So googled for the some another syntax highlighter. There I got gist. I really amazed with its zero setup feature. From the first try itself i got the desired output.

Here is the steps I done to show my code in syntax highlighting.

Copied the source code and created new gist.
Copied the embed code from the gist and paste it in content editor right here.yes right here in the content editor (after switching to html) of blogger (where i need to show the source code) itself.

Yes, its done. The code is showing in my blog with perfect syntax highlighting. :D.

Pros

Zero setup
code is well source controlled and head version is available here.
more languages are supported
Languages are automatically selected.
Better performance.
Source code is centralized. When you need any corrections you just need to update only the gist, all the blogs will be updated.

Cons

Showing raw data make the whole web page refresh.

The Pros and cons are my own opinions. There is a chance for your opinion to be different ;). I am waiting for it. :D

Happy blogging.

Simple mailer on ruby

2011-07-15T00:51:00.000+05:30

Here is the really simple script to mail from ruby. Here i assumed that your system is configured with ruby, all need gems and SMTP.

Substitute the Sender's email and recipient's email.
Don't put any space or other character at the begining of the line inside message heredoc (ie., don't use indentation in that)
Save the script in a file for Eg:rubymailer.rb and run ruby rubymailer.rb

Happy mailing

install sublime editor on ubuntu

2011-07-12T11:28:00.000+05:30

The easy way to install the sublime editor is use the following commands

This command will add the sublime source to Ubuntu apt repository so that you can install as well as you can get the updates in the Ubuntu update Manager.Make sure that you either logged in as root user or you should know the root password since the installation requires root privileges .

sudo -i; add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/sublime-text-2; apt-get update;

Now You can give the command for installation

sudo apt-get install sublime-text-2

Turn your laptop into wi-fi hot spot

2011-06-08T19:14:00.000+05:30

Yes, now you can turn your laptop (windows only) into a WiFi hot spot and share internet with your friends. You just need to download and install connectify.Its free. You can download it from here.

You can read all the features and additional information from here. Now this is supported only in windows platform which makes me and other open source lovers feel sad. I have no idea whether any alternative for this is available in Linux. If there please let me know.

Install plugin in ruby on rails 3

2011-06-08T12:10:00.000+05:30

Since ruby on rails 3 replaced script/* by script/rails the command
such as script/plugin install plugin-url won't work any more. you need to use

rails plugin plugin-url

for more help you can try rails --help.
You can have a look at the Release Notes of ruby on rails 3.0 here.

Get MAC address of nokia N97 WLAN

2011-04-29T19:58:00.000+05:30

Getting MAC of Nokia N97 WLAN is very simple. just dial

*#62209526#

Yes. the MAC of WLAN is on your screen.

Simple Css hack for IE 7 and IE 8

2011-04-19T19:40:00.000+05:30

If you ant specify a particular css only for IE 7 and IE 8 then this trick will help you.
For Eg: you have a div with class sample and it needs a width of 100% in all browsers except IE7 and IE 8.
Your usual CSS will look like


.sample{
width:100%;
}

But this will make issue in IE 7 and IE 8 if this div has another parent.So u need only 50% width in IE 7 and IE8.
Here is the way you can achieve it.

IE 7
use "*" before the css property. This will be interpret only by IE 7.

 Eg : .sample{
           width:100%;
           *width:70%;
          }

IE 8
use "\9" after the css property. This will be interpret only by IE 8.

Eg : .sample{
           width:100%;
           *width:70%;
            width:70%\9;
          }

Make sure you given the width for reset of the browsers on the top (before the hacks for IE 7 and IE 8) Since the the browser will interpret the css in the order which they are specified.


Eg: .sample{
      color:#FFF;
      color: #000;
}

In the above piece of code the text color in the sample class will the black since it overwrite the white.

Happy Hacking........

jQuery change event issue in IE

2011-02-19T00:30:00.000+05:30

If you are attempting to do something on the change event of radio button or checkbox. Then u will notice that the change event won't fire in IE but works fine in Firefox and other browsers.

The only solution is that if the browser is IE then u need to use click event instead of change event.But the click event will fire the action if we click on the same radio button which is checked.

You may use this hack to make change event work on IE.

if ($.browser.msie) {
  $("input:radio").click(function() {
    this.blur();
    this.focus();
  });
}

$("input:radio").change(function() {
  // Do sothing
});

Make your facebox draggable

2011-02-07T00:17:00.000+05:30

You can make your facebox into a draggable much easily using jQuery UI draggable. thanks to jQuery UI.

But it will be gud if you make the facebox into a modal window before making it a draggable because else your user will get frustrated when they try to drag it.

  $("#facebox").bind('mouseover',function(){
        $("#facebox").draggable({
            handle:"#facebox",
            cancel : "#facebox .body",
            containment:"parent"
        });
        $("#facebox .b").css('cursor','move');
    })
})

This code will make your facebox draggable  with in the body.

convert facebox into a modal window

2011-01-19T23:02:00.000+05:30

Sometimes i need my facebox should not be closed while i click on the body outside facebox.
This is the post which help me to get it done. and here i am resharing the tip.

I think extending the facebox is much better than editing the facebox core file. So lets extends the facebox and add one more property to its settings named "modal" which is a boolean.

$.extend($.facebox.settings,{modal:true});

So now when the modal settings is true u need to avoid triggering the close event while clicking on the overlay.
So to do this u need to remove the default click event on the overlay by unbinding it.

  $(document).bind('loading.facebox', function() { 
         $("#facebox_overlay").unbind("click").click(function()  { 
                 if (!$.facebox.settings.modal) { 
                         $(document).trigger('close.facebox'); 
                 } 
        }) 
  })

get current month and year in sql server

2011-01-14T23:53:00.000+05:30

Its really easy to find the current month,year and day in SQL server. using its inbuilt functions

Get current month - MONTH(GETDATE())
Get current Year - YEAR(GETDATE())
Get Current Day of month - DAY(GETDATE())

For example to get the Employees whose birthday is today can be easily find using

SELECT
      TblEmployee.empName
FROM
     TblEmployee
WHERE
    DAY(TblEmployee.date_of_birth) = DAY(GETDATE()) and MONTH(TblEmployee.date_of_birth) = MONTH(GETDATE())

Happy coding :)

Header already send error in php not showing

2011-01-12T21:40:00.000+05:30

As i think showing error or notices or warning during the development mode is great. When i installed new wamp server with PHP 5.3 i noticed that the code below is not throwing "header already send error".

<?php
print"Testing";
    if(empty($_GET)){
        header("location:test.php");
        exit;
    }
?>

This made my debugging really difficult. So i searched for a solution. In this first googling it self i got the solution. Thankz google. This topic in wamp server forum given me an hind to the solution for my problem.

The exact solution is

Open php.ini (If you are using wamp server please make sure that you are using the php.ini in the path\to\wamp\bin\apache\Apache2.2.11\bin )
Find the line contains "output_buffering = On".
Change the line to "output_buffering = Off"
Save it and restart your wamp server.

Great you have done it. From now onwards it will show the "header already send error" if you run the above code.

Happy Debugging ;)

send-sms-from-php-using-way2sms-part2

2010-01-22T11:35:00.000+05:30

This post is updated in www.phprepo.in and you can download from Github

How to use sms.zip which i provided in my last blog

In the sms.zip you can see

2 files(classSms.php and sendsms.php)
Folder named nusoap

classSms.php
main class file for sending sms

sendsms.php
demo file

Let me consider you have two files in your application
ie.,

The form to enter the recepiants number and message
The action page of the form

In the action page

Include the sms class

require_once('classSms.php');

Create an object for the kitesSms class in classSms.php

                    The constructor of the kitesSms class takes two argument
                    1. way2sms username
                    2.   way2sms password

$ob = new kitesSms("9895012345","password");

Call the sendSMSToMany function with the object created in the previous step

                 the sendSMSToMany function takes two arguments
                1. The recipients phone number/numbers
                            if more than one recipient seperate each numbers using ;(semicolon)
                2. The message you want to send

$message=$ob->sendSMSToMany("989512345","This is a testing message");

3. The function returns "done" if message send is successfull
the return type will be stored in $message variable

That it you have done it

note:- the username and password is used is for demo purpose only

send-sms-from-php-using-way2sms

2010-01-19T20:19:00.000+05:30

This post is updated in www.phprepo.in and you can download from Github

As for a long time i was using the web service as aswin anand guided in his blog

But now a days some problem occured.

As a php programmer i just edited his code and now its working.
to use it simpler i made the code into class and member functions.

you can download the edited code from here .

the only change this sesction

curl_setopt ($curl, CURLOPT_URL, "http://wwwd.way2sms.com/FirstServletsms?custid=");
                  curl_setopt ($curl, CURLOPT_REFERER, curl_getinfo($curl, CURLINFO_EFFECTIVE_URL));
                  curl_setopt ($curl, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
                  curl_setopt ($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "HiddenAction=instantsms&login=&pass=&custid=undefined&MobNo=" . $p . "&textArea=" . $msg);
                  $text = curl_exec($curl);

the new code is

curl_setopt ($curl, CURLOPT_URL, "http://www1.way2sms.com/FirstServletsms?custid=\"+custid+

\"&sponserid=\"+sponserid+\"");

                  curl_setopt ($curl, CURLOPT_REFERER, curl_getinfo($curl, CURLINFO_EFFECTIVE_URL));
                  curl_setopt ($curl, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
                  curl_setopt ($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "MobNo=$p&textArea=$msg&HiddenAction=instantsms

&login=&pass=&Action=custfrom300000");
$text = curl_exec($curl);

Don't forget to comment on this changes.
Any problems please keep informing
recommended to download and use it

Install Vlc on fedora 8

2009-09-23T14:39:00.000+05:30

This is a tutorial showing how you can install VLC media player on fedora 8 system.

1. For "i386" architecture
Download the following files.

2. For "x86_64" architecture
Download the following files.

Click on the file name to download the files.................

Try to install using rpm command

rpm -Uvh vlc-0.8.7-0.8.fc8.x86_64.rpm

It will show a lot of dependency error.Because there will be a lot of dependencies will be missing. so we want to get each dependency and install manually because rpm command can't resolve dependency.

To find the dependencies goto rpm.pbone.net and then go to advanced search
give your dependency name in the search box.tick on the fedora 8.

At the end check on filename and provide.

If you want to install the vlc without these dependencies just use the command

rpm -Uvh --nodeps

But working will depends on the packages in your system.

No package marked for update

2009-09-10T14:25:00.000+05:30

This was one of the error occoured for me while using fedora 8. once i given yum update command to update the whole system.After that when i try to update any software it shows the error "No package marked for update".After this yum update it stoped showing new update information on the panel.
So i done a lot of googling find the solution.It is because the repolist is not enabled.Then let me show how i enabled it.

1. open the terminal and get into super user mode.
2. run the command yum clean all.
3. run the command yum repolist enabled.

I would like to make get comment to better my blog.
So please leave a comment

on delete cascade v/s on delete restrict

2009-08-27T17:29:00.000+05:30

For setting Foreign key in MySql both the tables should be innoDB.

1.Alter table ENGINE="INNODB"
this query will convert table into innoDB
2. Consider two tables
1.parent

id	name
1	kites

2.child

id	address
1	cochin

3.set the foreign key with on delete cascade

    alter table child add foreign key (id) references parent(id) on delete cascade.
            If you set a foreign key with on delete cascade then
    1.first tou want to insert data into parent then to child.
    2.You can delete record from child independently but you can't insert into child without corresponing record in parent.
    3.If you delete a record from parent table it will delete from both parent and child table without any warning.
Eg: if you try to delete a record from parent with id 1 it will also delete the record from child whose id=1

4.set the foreign key with on delete restrict
    alter table child add foreign key (id) references parent(id) on delete restrict.
   If you set a foreign key with on delete restrict then

    1.first you want to insert data into parent then to child.
    2.You can delete record from child independently but you can't insert into child without corresponing record in parent.
    3.It will restrict deletion from parent tables if a corresponding child record is available.
     4.I f you want to delete from parent table then you want to delete record from child table first

Beginning to Xajax

2009-08-27T13:40:00.000+05:30

Xajax is mainly used to develop ajax application easily with php.
To start with xajax first we want to download the latest xajax.(ie.,xajax 0.5)
you can download it from here

the steps are

1.include the xajax.inc.php in the php file.

eg:require_once("/xajax.inc.php");

2.Create an object for xajax class.

$x1=new xajax();

3.Register the function we want to call.

$x1=registerFunction("getdetails");
//the function be any thing you like . but it should be according to php rules.

4. write the function.

      function getdetails(){
          //code to be executed
         $res= new xajaxResponse();
                //this step is to create a new xajax response object.this line should not be omitted.
        $res->assign("div1","innerHTML","text to be displied");
             //assign function is for xajax 0.5 the function for older version is addAssign() with same                             parameters.
            //the first parameter is the element id where the message to be displayed.
            //The second parameter is the attribute of the object specified in parameter1.
            //The third is the text to be displied. It can be even a php variable.

        return $res;
      }

5.Specify the request handler

        $x1=processRequest();
           //this is specifically for xajax 0.5
            //processRequests() is the function used in older versions

6.You wan to tell xajax to generate the javascript for it. The javascript should be between head tag.so specify the following code between head tags.

eg:<head><?php
         $x1->printJavascript();
          ?>
        </head>

7.Call the function from the html control

eg:<input type="text" onblur="xajax_getdetails()"/>

You can even pass arguments for the function.
good luck