Exposing Configuration in Symfony 2 Bundles

PHP

In Symfony 2 there are two main ways to define configuration options for a bundle. The first way is to simply define parameters in the service container and the second is to expose semantic configuration for your bundle. more…

Preventing SQL Injection in PHP

PHP ,

SQL Injection is a vulnerability that allows an attacker to insert or inject a SQL query into an application. Injection is number one vulnerability on the OWASP Top Ten list for 2013. Common ways to exploit this vulnerability is to add a SQL statement into a form element or by sending POST/GET requests with the query using known parameters. The risk of SQL injection is loss or compromise of critical or sensitive data. more…

Bash Script to Create Apache Virtual Hosts

Uncategorized ,

Creating a new Apache virtual host is something that’s done for every web project. It’s not a complicated process, but it can be simplified further by creating a bash script to automate the process. My script will update the Apache vhosts, add the new site to the hosts file, create the site directory if it doesn’t exist, and restart Apache. more…

Managing the iOS Network Activity Indicator

iOS ,

The network activity indicator in iOS is the spinning wheel in the upper left of the screen in the status bar next to the carrier name and connection strength meters. The indicator spins when the device is using the network offering the user great feedback when they are using data. more…

Get First n Items of NSArray in Objective C, or any range.

iOS ,

If you need to get the first n items in an NSArray in Objective C then you can use the subarrayWithRange: method. This method will work to get any range of items of an array and will return a new array containing those items. For example, to get the first 20 elements of the NSArray myArray, try this:

NSArray *firstTwentyItems = [myArray subArrayWithRange:NSMakeRange(0, MIN(20, [myArray count])];

To get the last 20 elements simply update the range like this:

NSArray *lastTwentyItems = [myArray subArrayWithRange:NSMakeRange(MAX(0, ([myArray count] - 20)), [myArray count])];

Using the MIN() and MAX() macros help ensure the range is within the bounds of the NSArray.

Order MySQL Query by User Defined Order Using the Field() Function

Database

I was writing a MySQL database query and ran into an interesting challenge where my result set needed to be ordered in a predefined order to meet business logic requirements. Typically the ORDER BY clause will sort using numeric or alphabetical order. This is pretty limiting if you want to define an enumeration of values that should provide the sort order. more…