Tildemark blogs

Sending mail via Mercury on localhost using codeigniter and XAMPP

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:14:25 +0800

This is my first time to use Mercury on XAMPP, I never had a mail project before so I guess I'm gonna blog it for future reference. Obviously, we will be using SMTP to send mails and POP3 to receive them. Since we do not have sendmail installed in Windows XP.

Using Mercury bundled witn XAMPP is so straight forward. I am assuming you have already installed XAMPP and Mercury Mail Transport is already running. I also assume you already know how to setup a mail client (eg Outlook, Outlook Express, ThunderBird, EudoraMail are few of them). Setting up a mail client is not covered here.

Requirements:

XAMPP - Our webserver
Codeigniter - PHP Framework
Mail Client - Receive mails
Text Editor - TextMate is a very good editor but I use notepad

Now, all we need to do is Add Users for testing:

1. Open XAMPP Control Panel and Click on Start on the Mercury Section

2. Click on the Admin Button to Add Users

3. On the Mercury Menu, go to Configuration -> Manage Local Users

4. To Add an account Click on ADD

5. Add your desired test Accounts by filling in the Username, Name and Password field

6. Then click OK, then click Close

Before testing, you might want to configure codeigniter's config to store your sender accounts. To do that:

1. Navigate to your codeigniter application->config folder

2. You may create you own config file or add them in the email.php config

3. if email.php does not exist you may create one.

4. You can use the basic config for sending smtp/pop3 below:

5. You may add your test account so you don't have to manually type them whenever you send.Take note, I used localhost.com as my host name. Mail clients may not permit you to add an account with just localhost so adding .com, .net, .org will do the trick.

6. Remember not to close your 7. If you want to, you can also configure codeigniter to autoload the email config by adding it at the autoload.php file

We can now start sending mail with code igniter:
1. At the application->controllers create a controller class: 
config->item('email_address', 'email');
$from_name = $this->config->item('email_name', 'email');
$to = 'tildemark@localhost.com'; 
$to_name = "To Name";
// we load the email library and send a mail
$this->load->library('email');
$this->email->from($from, $from_name);
$this->email->to($to, $to_name);
$this->email->subject('Email subject');
$this->email->message('Testing the email class.');
$this->email->send();
//to debug we can use print_debugger()
echo $this->email->print_debugger();
}
}
2. On your browser, type in http://localhost/codeigniter/test_mail
3. Check you mail client for new mails. 
4. Thats it! We have successfully sent a mail using Mercury on XAMPP on in your local computer.


Please the codeigniter manual for more resource about its email class.



Mass rename files using wscript
Sat, 15 Mar 2008 08:22:09 +0800
Obviously, its seldom to see people using batch files nowadays. Most people dont even know what it is. On, contrary i still use them on my daily tasks to automate things, its like having Perl on a Linux box. but things are changing now, i guess using batch files isn't the trend anymore these days. The same with Linux OS, Windows also comes in handy with some tools used to automate tasks and using batchfiles is one of them. Since we're using Windows XP now, its also wise to do things in GUI mode in contrary with the old style DOS mode edit.
While downloading some pictures from a camera, I found them hard to manually rename its filename to a more meaningful title and not some random "DSC001323.JPG". After rename 10 or 15 files, i got bored, thinking this would take me forerver to rename them all for they are more than a thousand in total. If you can still recall that neat application called Irfan View, my life would have been alot easier. 
Well anyway, lets change things we normally do and instead of using batch files we use vb script. A zipped version of the 
mass renaming script is also available for download. 

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
' Mass Rename Script by tildemark
' http://www.tildemark.com
' 
' 
' Usage: 
'   Place this script on a list of files you wish to rename.
'   Run this script by double clicking on the filename.
'
'
' For bugs send it to tildemark@gmail.com
'
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
Dim fso, Path, Folder, Counter, Prefix, File, Extension
set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Path = InputBox("Input the location of the files to be renamed. ('.' means current folder)", "Mass Rename Script", ".")
Prefix = InputBox("Input the filename prefix", "Mass Rename Script")
If Prefix = "\" Then WScript.Quit
Extension = InputBox("Input the file extension to be renamed", "Mass Rename Script")
If Extension = "\" Then WScript.Quit
Counter = InputBox("Input the starting offset", "Mass Rename Script")
Set Folder = fso.GetFolder(Path)
For Each File In folder.Files
  If Not ((File.Attributes And 8) = 8) Then
    If fso.GetExtensionName(File.Path) = Extension Then  
      File.Name = Prefix & CStr(Counter) & "." & Extension
    End If
  End If
  Counter = Counter + 1
Next
MsgBox("Done")


DevjaVu: new developer tool
Fri, 01 Feb 2008 13:55:04 +0800


DevjaVu a neat and simple app for trac and subversion hosting. Great to use when starting out a project or simply by managing an ongoing project. Its issue tracking system makes collaboration a lot easier and more organized. DevjaVu includes some basic project management features like milestones, built in wiki and an administration page used to manage every aspect of the project thru a web interface. 



 If you are familiar with source forge, you should also try this one out. Its ticket system is beautifully implemented which makes project management even easier. Best of all you can subscribe for free. Just use the invite code johnny5 when creating DevjaVu projects. 


HTML Error Codes
Fri, 08 Dec 2006 11:58:14 +0800
Actually, they are better called response codes. Below is a list of the HTML error codes and its short description

Informational

100="Continue"

101="Switching Protocols"

Successful Client Requests

200 	OK

201 	Created

202 	Accepted

203 	Non-Authorative Information

204 	No Content

205 	Reset Content

206 	Partial Content

Client Request Redirected

300 	Multiple Choices

301 	Moved Permanently

302 	Moved Temporarily

303 	See Other

304 	Not Modified

305 	Use Proxy

Client Request Errors

400 	Bad Request

401 	Authorization Required

402 	Payment Required (not used yet)

403 	Forbidden

404 	Not Found

405 	Method Not Allowed

406 	Not Acceptable (encoding)

407 	Proxy Authentication Required 	 

408 	Request Timed Out

409 	Conflicting Request

410 	Gone

411 	Content Length Required

412 	Precondition Failed

413 	Request Entity Too Long

414 	Request URI Too Long

415 	Unsupported Media Type

Server Errors

500 	Internal Server Error

501 	Not Implemented

502 	Bad Gateway 	 

503 	Service Unavailable 	 

504 	Gateway Timeout 	 

505 	HTTP Version Not Supported