Adrian Callaghan`s Blog

Styling the wordpress comment count as a button/icon etc can be tricky because the normal call to the comments

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comments_popup_link(__('Comments (0)'), __('Comments (1)'), __('Comments (%)'));

formats the output as an anchor point with the correct link, alt tags etc already set up.

So in order to intercept this and then add you own anchor point with divs/imagery etc you need to make a custom request

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// SQL
$SQL = "SELECT COUNT(*) AS Count FROM $wpdb->comments WHERE comment_approved='1'";
$SQL.= "AND comment_post_ID='".intval($post->ID)."'";
 
// Sort the array into a string prefixed with 'Comments '
list($comments) = $wpdb->get_results($SQL, ARRAY_A); 	
$comments='Comments ('.$comments['Count'].')';
 
// generate the alt and title tags
$alt = 'Comment on '.$post->post_title;
 
// echo the button if this is not a single and not a page
if (!is_single() && !is_page()) {
 
// anchor open
echo '<a href="'.get_permalink($post->ID).'" alt="'.$alt.'" title="'.$alt.'">';
 
// complex formatting rules for the comment pop up, go here
echo $comments;
 
// anchor close
echo '</a>';
}

The above does exactly the same, formats the link etc, but now you can access the anchor point directly and format it your own way.

How to make explorer open by default when opening an ftp connection, I found can be easy..

I needed to make IE6 style FTP access without the extra pop up step, from a desktop shortcut at work and after much googling, and messing with the registery, attempting to make an ftp site open immediatly in explorer without the main browser opening (pre IE7), I found it can be simply done like this.

1. create a bat file (open notepad, save the file with the affix .bat, making sure .txt is not selected in the dropdown)
2. in the batch file add

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start explorer ftp://USERNAME:PASSWORD@FTP_SERVER_ADDRESS

3. add the shortcut to the desktop, and style the icon

Now when the user clicks the shortcut, voila IE6 style FTP access without the extra step, much easier than poking around with the registery

Whilst at work,

I was writing a cart for an e-commerce site I am building.

The Cart consisted of a multi-dimensioned array, part associative, part indexed, anyway of note here is that,

A. It was an array.
B. The contents where indexed numerically
C. Arrays as you know begin at zero.

When removing an element from the cart, the elements indexed value, is passed via GET to be handled via the object, for removal.

It seemed to work fine, until I attempted to remove the first element, after a little debugging, I noticed the “0″ value was being interpreted by PHP as empty?

WTF?

A quick mock up code later

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<?php
if (!empty($_GET['get'])) echo "I RECIEVED A GET WITH VALUE: ".$_GET['get'];
?>

and a check in the url

nameOfFile.php?get=1 displayed “I RECIEVED A GET WITH VALUE: 1″
nameOfFile.php?get=0 displayed “”

It seems that according to PHP the value zero is interpreted as empty because it is being handled as a string when used within GET.

But…………….

A string, as the name suggests is just a string of characters, strung together, it is an array of characters, or bytes, the fact that it held zero, would be irrelevant would`nt it not?

I can understand if it was attempting to cast the datatype to an integer, but again, zero is still zero.

The only scenerio I can see this being valid if it where NULL!

PHP uses loose datatypes or lucid?