For version 1.0.x: normally, Joomla’s mosPathWay() and module would take care of generating links to sections and categories, but in case you ever needed to do it yourself:

        // TODO: You need someway to get $rid, which is the ID of the content item.
        // I usually get this in the main content.html.php page, so I use $row->id

        // The SQL to get the section and category for an article
        $sql = "SELECT c.title ctitle, c.id cid, s.title stitle, s.id sid FROM #__content co INNER JOIN #__categories c, #__sections s WHERE (co.id=$rid) AND (c.id=co.catid) AND (s.id=co.sectionid)";
        $database->setQuery($sql);
        $result = $database->loadRow();

        if ($result != null) {
                // Section page
                $sid = $result[3];
                $stitle = $result[2];
                $slink = sefRelToAbs("index.php?option=com_content&task=section&id=$sid");

                // Category page
                $cid = $result[1];
                $ctitle = $result[0];
                $clink = sefRelToAbs("index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=$sid&id=$cid");

                // Write out links
                $relatedSecCat = "Related articles: <a href='$slink'>$stitle</a> > <a href='$clink'>$ctitle</a>";
        }
        else $relatedSecCat = "";
        echo $relatedSecCat;

Problem: Even when you use mod_expires to cache content on your server, some redirects may break the cache headers so the mod_expires will not output the right headers. This especially seems to happen when you have CMSs like Joomla/Drupal with SEO features and are trying to cache them.

This is how the mod_expires was set up before

<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresDefault "access plus 20 minutes"
ExpiresActive On
</IfModule>

But these lines using mod_headers need to be added to remove the no-cache directives being output by the CMS:

Header unset Cache-Control:
Header unset Expires:
Header unset Pragma:
Header unset Keep-Alive:
Header unset Connection:

That removed the HTTP cache headers output by the CMS that seemed to be caused by the redirects (and which mod_expires was not replacing.)

You may need to enable mod_headers; it wasn’t enabled on my installation of Apache 2.2. The command to do that is:

a2enmod headers

For my first Joomla 1.5 module, I had to write a module that would get the contents from another webpage (actually, just a number) and display it in the module area.

To make it more challenging, I also added the following requirements:

• Has to use caching so as to not hit the webpage each time.
• Should allow the “template” for displaying the content to be editable by the webmaster

This is the code I wrote - simple, but its my first Joomla 1.5 module.

mod_webnumber.php

<?php
//no direct access
defined('_JEXEC' )
or die('Direct Access to this location is not allowed.');

// Get a reference to the global cache object.
$cache = & JFactory::getCache();
$cache->setCaching(1); // make sure it caches

$number  = $cache->call( array( 'Website', 'latestNumber' ) );

// get a parameter from the module's configuration
$template = $params->get('template');
$output = str_replace ("#n", $number, $template);

echo $output;

class Website {
    function latestNumber() {
        // Get the latest number from the webpage
        $number = file_get_contents (
          "http://www.yourwebsite.com/");
        $number = strip_tags ($number);

        return $number;
    }
}
?>

mod_webnumber.xml (mostly derived from the official Joomla docs site on creating a module, following is only the parameters I used which the module depends on)

    <files>
        <!-- The "module" attribute signifies that this is the main controller file -->
        <filename module="mod_webnumber">mod_webnumber.php</filename>
    </files>
<params>
        <param name="moduleclass_sfx" type="text" default="" label="Module Class Suffix" description="PARAMMODULECLASSSUFFIX" />
        <param name="@spacer" type="spacer" default="" label="" description="" />
        <param name="template" type="text" default="#n is the number you need." label="Template" description="TEMPLATE" />
    </params>

To do: To show a list of the latest stories from your site/URL/domain using the Digg API.

Solution:

The following PHP code will display the latest 20 stories from the domain of your choice. Thanks a heap to Web Cash’s entry on grabbing a random Digg story as well as the Digg Story API which helped with this code.

<?php
//  Takes an array of arguments and returns a query string
//  Each parameter's name is its key in the array
function buildQuery ($args) {
  $query = '?';
  foreach ($args as $key => $val) {
    if ( $query != '?' )
      $query .= '&';

    $query .= $key . '=' . urlencode($val);
  }

  return $query;
}

// Digg specifies that user agent must be set
ini_set('user_agent', 'My domain stories/1.0');

$baseurl = 'http://services.digg.com';
$endpoint = '/stories';
$url = $baseurl . $endpoint;
// Number of stories to display
$numberStories = 20;
// Your domain of choice - CHANGE THIS
$domainName = 'your.domain.com'; 

//  Parameters to fetch latest articles
$params = array();
$params['appkey'] = 'http://' . $domainName;
$params['domain'] = $domainName;
$params['type'] = 'xml';

$params['count'] = '' . $numberStories;
// The following displays the newest items first
// This can be changed using the parameters in the Digg API
$params['sort'] = 'submit_date-desc'; 

//  Reuse the $url created above
$query = buildQuery($params);
$reqUrl = $url . $query;

// Display the URL. Uncomment for troubleshooting.
// echo $reqUrl . "\n";

$xml = simplexml_load_file($reqUrl);

//  Output the stories
for ($i=0; $i<$numberStories;$i++) {
  $numberDiggs = intval($xml->story[$i]['diggs']);
  echo '<p>';
  echo '<h2><a href="' . $xml->story[$i]['href'] . '">'
    . $xml->story[$i]->title . '</a></h2>';

  // Number of Diggs
  echo '<b>Diggs: ' . $xml->story[$i]['diggs'] . ' ' ;
  // If you don't have an image for number of diggs,
  // then uncomment the following line
  for ($j=0; $j<$numberDiggs; $j++) echo '<img src="digg.gif"> ';
  echo '</b><br />';

  echo 'Date: ' . date('m-d-Y, H:i:s', (int) $xml->story[$i]['submit_date']) . '<br />';
  echo 'Link: <a href="' . $xml->story[$i]['link'] . '">'
    . $xml->story[$i]['link'] . '</a><br />';
  echo 'Topic: ' . $xml->story[$i]->topic['name'] . '<br />';
  echo 'Container: ' . $xml->story[$i]->container['name'] . '<br />';
  echo 'Desc: ' . $xml->story[$i]->description . "</p>\n";
}
?>

Request: The excellent Gallery2 Bridge component/module for Joomla has one “shortcoming”: it points to the embedded Joomla component. Some applications/websites will require the Bridge’s functionality to embed the Gallery, but will want to link to Gallery2 and not the embedded component.

Solution:

The URL link is created using the $baseUrl variable in /components/com_gallery2/init.inc.

At around line 83 of the Gallery2 Bridge component, there are the statements that assign the link URL:

/* build url according to our current Itemid and our ItemidList */
if(!empty($ItemidList) && in_array($Itemid, $ItemidList)){
        $baseUrl = 'index.php?option=com_gallery2&Itemid='.$Itemid;
} else if(!empty($ItemidList)){
        $baseUrl = 'index.php?option=com_gallery2&Itemid='.(int) $ItemidList[0];
} else {
        $baseUrl = 'index.php?option=com_gallery2&Itemid=99999999';
}

Right after this, add one statement to specify the URL of the actual Gallery2 site:

/* $g2Uri is specified earlier in the code */
$baseUrl = $g2Uri;

and that’s it - all Gallery2 Bridge components and modules should now point to the live Gallery2 site.

Thanks to this forum post on vTiger, one additional change needs to be made to the CustomView code in order to get the CURRENTUSER variable to work (I don’t know which versions of vTiger it applies to, but I think to all version of 5.x):

function getRealValues($tablename,$fieldname,$comparator,$value,$datatype)
        {
                if($fieldname == "smownerid" || $fieldname == "inventorymanager&quot 
                {
                        /* HACK - to get current user */
                        global $current_user;
                        if ($value == "CURRENTUSER&quot 
                                $value = $current_user->user_name;
                        /* End HACK */ 

                        $value = $tablename.".".$fieldname.$this->getAdvComparator($comparator,getUserId_Ol($value),$datatype);
                } else if($fieldname == "parentid&quot  

A quick follow up to my previous post Customizing vTiger custom views with dynamic “variables” . There is an easy extension to enable multiple variables to be used in the custom views.

This is the code:

        /* Associative array with list of replacement pairs */
        $dvReplacements = array(
                "yourstring" => $variable,
               //
        );
        /* Replace each of the variables */
        foreach ($dvReplacements as $dvKey=>$dvValue) {
            if (strstr($advfsql,$dvKey))
            {
                $advfsql = str_replace ($dvKey, $dvValue, $advfsql );
            }
        }

For example, say I want to replace the variables SP_CURRENTNAME and SP_TODAY with the username of the logged in user and today’s date, respectively. The code is as follows (I am using “2099-12-31″ as the replacement key, since for dates, vTiger requires you to enter them in date format. So, if I want a custom view to check against today’s date, I enter this value in the date field.)

$dvReplacements = array(
            "CURRENTUSER" => $current_user->user_name,
            "2099-12-31" => date("Y-m-d&quot 
        );
        foreach ($dvReplacements as $dvKey=>$dvValue) {
            if (strstr($advfsql,$dvKey))
            {
                $advfsql = str_replace ($dvKey, $dvValue, $advfsql );
            }
        }

I’ve come across a problem where you have to customize your vTiger custom views by specifying particular “variables”. For instance, list the leads assigned only to the current user.

This will require some custom programming, but it can be done!

Here is how to do it:

1. Think of a variable name that you will use for your customization.
2. Set up a new custom view with the variable name
3. Change some code in /modules/CustomView/CustomView.php in either the getCVStdFilterSQL() or getCVAdvFilterSQL() to replace the variable name with the correct value

For instance, here is an example

1. I want to create a custom view for leads called “My Leads” which only displays the leads for the user logged in
2. I create a new custom view, and set the “Assigned To” to be “CURRENTUSER” (this is my variable name)
3. In the getCVAdvFilterSQL() function, just before the return $advfsql statement, I insert the following:

        if (strstr($advfsql,"CURRENTUSER"))
        {
            $advfsql = str_replace ("CURRENTUSER",
                $current_user->user_name, $advfsql );
        }

This replaces all instances of the CURRENTUSER variable so that the custom view is now … customized! And dynamic! And it displays only the leads assigned to the current user logged in. (The $current_user variable is a global variable in vTiger.)

Caveats:

1. Make sure your “variable” is a very exotic term. If you use a common word, you might end up mangling your SQL statement due to the str_replace() call.
2. I don’t know why there are two types of Custom Views called advanced and standard which require two function calls: getCVStdFilterSQL() or getCVAdvFilterSQL()

I’ve been playing around with my Belkin USB wireless card/dongle for a long time and unable to get the driver working … finally to realize that Belkin has several different versions of the same USB dongle, with different drivers!

They could have made it more obvious…

In any case, their official site makes it a little more clear and provides the drivers as well. Make sure to find out exactly which version your dongle is (it should be listed in small font on the dongle).

Thanks to this posting at UbuntuForums for pointing me in the right direction.