It’s also quite frustrating, because I had other ideas of a few projects I wanted to take on. Yet most of them are extensions for OpenType Threads. Yet I won’t start talking about it after I finish the prototype of the forum software. One of the things I haven’t taken into account is the upgrade of extensions/forum software and most importantly the import of other bulletin board systems into OpenType Threads. I won’t bother with such thing yet, the design comes first.

Now to get a job or something =/

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I started to enumerate what I needed for my controllers and logic models to work, right now I have these

0. Set default time zone

1. Setting the path of the library
2. Registry to collect all the data I need, but I need to do a ini file reader, shouldn’t be a problem
3.  Set up doctrine in our way.
4. Load Access Lists and Roles and apply exceptions (the whitelist) from the database
5. Register routes.
6. Start localization with GETTEXT (probably won’t be implemented in this prototype)
7. Finally, the dispatcher

Now there was a problem though, I left out Sessions, data filters and some other stuff. but then I started thinking “I don’t need all of them…” Sessions will be called in the instance mainController is called and check for existing sessions and and that voodoo stuff.  That means we will have quite a light dispatch, not with unneeded objects.

I should tag all this project related talk… peace out

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I’m aware I left templates “manipulation” out, and I still won’t care for it yet. It is not the time to bother with such fancy features if I don’t have a solid extension base to work with. I’m seriously hoping to pull this one off. I want to get STARTED to code more, but I can’t code blindfolded with just ideas on mine and no blueprint to guide me, which is why I analyze, design, implement, test (you should know what I’m talking about :) ).

Extensions in a bulletin board is hard to see, I mean, there is so MUCH data to process. So many “events” to place, like on the one I placed “prePostLoop” which if injected, instead of calling my default model, all the raw data will be gone to your extension for you to process. Of course, you don’t have choose “prePostLoop” to just change ONE thing, there will be of course, other events to be placed.

Yet, a bigger problem to overcome is making the extension database layer and choosing the right database user, and also determining the extension’s “templatebits”, “routes”. It all requires a lot of “injections” to routes, doctrine (yes, I chose Doctrine ORM), views. One thing for sure is that, in the end you will have to place your function in the template. That’s a no brainer for many people, but I’m attempting to do something else.

To be honest, while it looks overwhelming for me. I still know I can do it if I keep my mind cool. I mean, it’s not HARD, like it was for me that I had to take a few days off after I designed how ACL (Access lists), ACL_Roles, ACL_Roles_Whitelist, ACL_Items. All I know is that the initialization of the board is going to be quite heavy.

To end this post, talking about events made me think of “Sections” as in “Link sections”. Where everyone want to keep it nice and neat. The problem with link sections is that I have to take care of administration pages and other things. It means, many and “Iterate” object comes to mind, such an eventful semester, I’m hoping it gives good results :)

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Now it bothered me, I don’t like buying things without a purpose so I opened it to apply things I learnt in my project. I did learn a few things about database designers, they are divided in two tasks, one is to design the database and the other is to check engines and worry about all physical files and how they are going to be managed. And so on, since it had this overwhelming history of flat files. And it got me to thinking of PHP and some developers.

While I love so much PHP, it’s disheartening to see many people just to rush over the project start assigning all kind of unneeded data types. Let’s be realistic, many people use Int over Medium Int because they “foresee their application passing over a range of 9 millions”, to actually reach that amount it will take years unless you spend an insane amount of money in promotions to get all kind of traffic. You can’t be a microsoft or a google in a year.

It also makes me glad in a way, this mistakes generate jobs, didn’t  you know? Because the buyers who hired those kind of people and made the database design shaky, don’t know why their page is slow or why their query is so slow. By putting a higher range, it means more work for the database engine.

Don’t go adding all type of indexes, just the ones your APPLICATION use most of the type. Like for example we got our auto-incrementer primary key (id), it is UNIQUE so MySQL will check UNIQUE ones first than non-unique ones. Or if we got lets say (categoryID, attachmentID) we got non-unique IDs, but they are mostly searched in a query statement.

Secondly, while I won’t probably real-world examples. A bad design can lead the web application to become a nightmare to maintain or add new features because you will end up refactoring or worst, re-designing your database.

Read this page, it’s from MySQL’s documentation. It’ll be a guide to you if you are designing the database using that database system.

I was thinking, after I release OpenType Threads, oh boy I should be prepared to receive a rain of complains. And shield myself from patterns fanboys. Oh, and I started to like Ruby and Javascript syntax, it’s quite… fun. And now, making extra code to support other browsers is NOT fun.

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It is exciting in a way to get new concepts, and just yesterday I start to get a new one that I will immediately implement.

The plan is the following, probably nothing new to many seasoned programmers, but on current projects it is rarely seen, especially in PHP. We usually use a database storage, probably MySQL. MySQL provides the feature to allow multiple users to share one database, with different permissions. Quite a nice feature isn’t it? It’s hard to imagine how useful this is in programming, because well, installing PHP scripts just relies on the usual “SELECT, CREATE, INSERT, DELETE, DROP, UPDATE, ALTER”. We don’t usually THINK why MySQL users exists and many installers just tells you “Hey! Just write your database, database user, password, port if there is any and we’ll do the rest!” And that’s the worst mistake and you’ll see why:

I layered OpenType Threads administration concept in two, the master, the user. The master user has the following privileges :

Master user:

• INSERT
• DELETE
• UPDATE
• SELECT
• CREATE
• ALTER
• INDEX
• DROP

The user:

• SELECT
• INSERT
• DELETE
• UPDATE

Now, where do we usually use the “master user”? The answer lies in administration panel, imagine if you use wordpress, wordpress plug-ins usually need to CREATE/DROP/ALTER/INDEX a table, INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE, SELECT data. It’s perfect for the admin section.

Now why would I want to use two users, sharing the same database? The answer lies in SQL exploits. I won’t pretend this will take care of all injections, that depends mostly on your sanitation of inputs in your web application. It will certainly stop aggressive ones, like, for example:

- a malicious user attempts to DROP the database, everything will be lost in just one command.
- One of your administrator’s “betrays” you and attempt tries to delete tables, again the DROP command will be unavailable.

Now as we see, using a the “normal user” will certainly be helpful. Yet it leaves kind of a gap, we can’t do much with the “DELETE” command, actually we can if you rethink your application. Lets say that in your articles table you have the usual (artID, artContent, artTitle) lets add one more column (artState(ENUM(‘publish’,'delete’,'draft’))). We have enumerated three options, publish, delete and draft. The usual “publish” will just show the article to the users viewing your site.

Now, instead of using the DELETE command to delete the record, it will hide the record and add it to a “trash can” which will be ONLY be deleted when you access the administration panel so it carries the “master user”.

Issues like “what if I get my admin login stolen?”, “what if the malicious user steals the user, password of the master user?”. Well, those issues depends on the security of your web application, it has nothing to do with the TRANSACTIONS made. And of course, sanitize all inputs.

I don’t believe it hurt to try this because so far it’s just another measure to take. Infact I’m not taking the measure with just using TWO MySQL users. I’m also throwing in Foreign Keys Constraints, to stop any user deleting data that is related in another table. The introduction of Foreign keys constraints, it’s useful, but also can turn into a double edged blade if you overuse it.

Well, there is still a lot to learn :) I’m still lurking in MySQL documentation to get more ideas (but I should stop, implementing all unneeded features will just put a hole in your goal). Yet I’ll just do this one to see how it goes, it’s a gamble after all. I need to see the impact it will cause and what benefits will be gained.

Why did I start re-factoring now? Good question! It had something to do with OpenType Threads, working on my prototype has taught me a lot of things about classes, design patterns and a better problem solving skill. So when I looked at my wrapper class, I said to myself “hmmm… maybe we should do this one more time”. Yet, while this is still a hobby, one of my goal of why to re-factor the code was to allow me a better manipulation with JavaScript. I know I can use XML in JavaScript but well, we’ll see how it goes :)

So it’s time to pay a visit to Bing’s API documentation and delete old code without thinking twice.

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I’ve tried to follow tutorials, but they consume more time than programming problems which is very weird. Maybe because “web designing” is something undeveloped in me that is out of range. It’s something that have become an obsession to obtain, but it comes with a price. I have to decide which one to focus on: Programming? Designing? Both take a good time to craft.

Right now I’m fairly decent, I believe. I also want take on Java and make Android applications where “designing” doesn’t come to play (in graphics terms). And then move to C#, Python and Ruby. There is no decency in my web designing though, it’s from the “scratch”. I do get my visions from time to time, but I can’t say it’s as easy as my programming visions, which if we compare our knowledge. Programming visions seems easier to pull than designing.

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All nice, right? MDC seems like a nice resourceful spot (of course!), now this story will take a plot twist, and it starts when I test my JavaScript code in Internet Explorer, IE yelled errors with nonsense. I took a deep breath, lets do the math! Mozilla: Gecko, Google Chrome: WebKit, IE: well I think it was called “Trident”, and Opera? god knows, I forgot. So these people have different implementations on how to render the web, great! Now, they also have a different way on how to interpret JavaScript, just great! The Internet Explorer team needed to follow Microsoft’s standard, that is, just tweak a few things and claim it. (Like addEventListener converted to attachEvent, extra code is great :) god bless JavaScript libraries for this)

I cried myself to sleep yesterday. I just had one thought in my mind, “why it had to be like this, how about uniting or something… a centralized documentation, SOMETHING!”. I guess that won’t happen, like a fleeting dream :(

Don’t get me wrong, I like some of Microsoft technology (and their C# language). I also secretly like their Bing Search Engine, don’t tell anyone ;)

I’d like to thank Justin Johnson for his great help over StackOverflow, enlightened me :)

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I play Uncharted 2 multiplayer. I connect to have some fun, win some rounds and let some stress out, unless it backfires :P. I’m in this game, using the shotgun since it was the only weapon before me when I got up that could deliver heavy damage, one kill shot. I killed 5 one by one since they walked toward me and b00m! The other team starts yelling, cussing, insulting  your mere life. Thing is they… kept coming at me like a mob with stakes. Thanks to my team they backed me up since their eyes wasn’t to kill the others, but to get revenge!

Exchanging fire, the shotgun spawned again and well I grabbed it again. I killed three in a row, same hurtful, unintended words~! Then below those three there were like 2 more, it started raining-grenades-and well I couldn’t do much, lol. The matches are 50 kills of a team of 5 individuals, quite fast. Well, I grabbed the shotgun again! Killed the same guy twice, nothing personal, he just had the bad luck of re-spawning where I was going. This one was in rage it seems, yelled at me, mentioning my nick, calling my noob and so on. I would put the text but this blog is rated “PG” :P

So yea! Speaking in-game certainly sucks, no one is helpful. They even sing (mostly kids who wanna be “cool”), or try to arm the team, which is often useless (98% of the time). I don’t particularly use the bluetooth myself, don’t really believe in that crappy stuff.

In the end, it’s not so bad, you get the kicks hearing them frustrated. It’s also annoying at the same time, like when one of your teammates has the music on, ugh, awful.

Peace out! more random thoughts later :P

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Anyway, just listen to what you like in the end people. Don’t be a victim of a flame war and choose something popular yet you dislike. There is market in PHP, but so in many languages.

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