Ping a url or script using IFTTT (with no repercussions)

Update: This actually doesn’t work as I’d hoped. Because flickr reports an error each time, eventually IFTTT disables the recipe after a few hours of calls. Back to the drawing board.

I’ve been trying to get IFTTT (if this then that) to send a call to a php script file when a trigger goes off for months. The problem wasn’t getting it to work in the first place, but for it not to leave any artifacts hanging around, or repercussions as I call them. I wanted the script to be triggered and that to be the end of it, with no files being created or errors being recorded.

An example of the problem would be the IFTTT Google Docs channel. You can upload a file to google docs from a url. You can define that url to be your php script and then tell your script to return a 404 (after it’s done its coding goodness) but when you view Google Docs a new file has still been created. If you want to use this for a large number of pings, you’re going to end up with a folder full of pointless files and a waste of your disc space. The Evernote and WordPress channels are a similar story. Even when you attempt to fail the call to your url (with a 404 or 503) they still create a note or post.

Continue reading “Ping a url or script using IFTTT (with no repercussions)”

Yii (and Yii2) wildcard / catch all url rules

Both Yii and Yii2 have url management and routing built in. They will compare the url of the request to a list of rules you’ve defined.

Sometimes you might want to do various checks of the url in yii config main and then send every other request to a particular controller.

The rule you need to add last to the urlManager is…

'(.*)' => 'controller/action',

… and now any rule that isn’t matched previously will end up being sent to your defined controller and action.

In Yii2 you can also do the same:

'<url:(.*)>' => 'controller/action'

Considering local, dev and live environments

When you develop a website for a client you should usually be considering three or even four (if you also include staging) environments where one code base may be used. Local, development and live.

In this case you may want the code to behave slightly differently depending on where it’s being used.

A good example I regularly come across is when and where to send any emails that a system generates. When you are testing locally or on a development server you certainly don’t want to send out emails to people who have no knowledge of the system.

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Move your Sites folder in OS X with a SymLink NOT an Alias

Two hours of my life were wasted on this one, even though I’ve done it before. So…

If you want to move your ~/Sites folder into say Dropbox or AeroFS or Google Drive or SkyDrive and then you still want to point to it from its default location don’t use an alias.

I know an alias is only a ctrl-click away, but it means all sorts of pain.

Instead, move the folder to dropbox by dragging it (yes you can do this), then open Terminal and type:

ln -s ~/Dropbox/Sites ~/Sites

Replace Dropbox with whatever the folder of your service is called.

Restart Apache either by restarting Web Sharing in System Preference -> Sharing or by using Terminal and typing:

apachectl graceful

Cross your fingers and open a virtual host in your web browser. I fought with an Alias and all sorts of folder settings and httpd.conf lines to try and get it working, and then all I needed was to use a SymLink in its place.

Don’t worry about no longer having a ‘real’ ~/Sites folder. You don’t actually need one.

Cheers to James Galley, my desk neighbour for helping my brain to click on this one.

Reordering Yii Results Without Another Select

In case you weren’t aware, you can reorder the results you already have from a previous Yii call. For example…


$users = User::model()->findByPk(2);
$posts = $user->posts(array('order'=>' created Desc '));

There were just ordered our users posts by created date descending.

We can also do filtering…


$users = User::model()->findByPk(2);
$posts = $user->posts(array('condition'=>' status=1 '));

So now we only have active posts. We could also combine a condition and a status.

You can find out more here: http://www.yiiframework.com/doc/guide/1.1/en/database.arr#dynamic-relational-query-options

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