Ezzatron

I recently started learning how to use the forms system in symfony 1.2 and for the most part I was impressed with its simplicity and flexibility. Unfortunately I was thrown in the deep end somewhat when a project I was working on had a requirement for an “expanding” form – that is, one where a certain section of a form should be able to be repeated as many times as necessary to accommodate the user’s needs.

In the case of the project in question, the specific situation was an application form where the user could fill out any number of team members involved in their project. Each team member consisted of a name and a role, both free-form text fields. Team members were to be stored in the database, linked to the application in a one to many relationship.

Circumstances conspired that this must be achieved in a single form, so full of confidence in symfony’s design decisions regarding the forms system, a bit of light Googling revealed the answer – symfony’s embedded forms system. Great, so you just plonk in a few embedded forms and away you go, right? Wrong.

The good news is, I managed to find a solution that satisfied the requirements, eventually. The bad news is that it is not easy, elegant, or particularly reusable.

What follows is a loose guide to implementing such a system. Being a relative newcomer to symfony I cannot guarantee that this is the best way to do things, so tread with caution, and if you think of a better way to achieve the same outcome, please please let me know! Read on if you dare… (more…)

Just a quick article on something I struggled to find a good example for – configuring NetBeans to sign a .jar file after compilation is complete.

This is very handy, for example, when developing an applet that requires permission to access the file system. This requires the applet to be “signed” using the jarsigner utility, and this quickly becomes a tedious step when testing changes made in your applet in the browser itself.

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By Jove, I’ve done it!

Yes my friends, after much trial and error, I’ve invented a method of compressing coffee into a smaller size, making it possible to carry around numerous coffees safely and easily.

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A while ago I blogged about my desire for a foreachif() construct in PHP. A recent comment from a reader made me re-think the concept and consider ways in which it could be implemented elegantly, without the need for changes to PHP’s syntax.

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This month we are treated to a clip from Dutch band Textures. This is the official clip for the song “Awake” from their latest offering “Silhouettes“. Enjoy!

“Awake” from the 2008 album “Silhouettes”

This month’s MMC comes from the heavy-as-fuck Massachusetts band The Acacia Strain off their new album “Continent“. This track is called “Skynet”, and the clip is pretty damn funny, but beware: YouTube has already pulled one version of the video, so get in fast before they do the same with this version!

“Skynet” from the 2008 Album “Continent”

I’m going to attempt to post a cool metal clip every month, so stay tuned for more of these. I’ll try to make them recent releases, but that may not always be possible as they don’t always come along that often.

I’ll start things off in fairly epic style with French metallers Gojira, and their clip for “All the Tears” off their new album “The Way of All Flesh“. Enjoy!

“All the Tears” from the 2008 album “The Way of All Flesh”

Just thought I’d write a brief update on the gigs I wrote about late last year.

Sweatfest 08 was a bit of a disaster to be honest, as The Acacia Strain, Suicide Silence and A Day To Remember were no-shows due to flight complications. Apparently the story goes that the Virgin Blue flight that all the bands were on was cancelled when the plane touched another in taxi. I couldn’t find it in any news reports, but I’ve heard this story from a few different people on the night and since.

Kudos must go out to Parkway Drive, who flew all the way from Perth, to Melbourne, and back to Adelaide just to play that night. Their efforts went some way to making up for the disappointment many fans were feeling, although the tiredness was showing, with the band making a few uncharacteristic timing slip ups. Personally, I was so pissed off at missing TAS that I don’t think even their best show ever could have made me forget my sorrows.

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This is just a quick post to try and rally a few signatures against the ridiculous mandatory internet filter proposed for Australia.

There are so many reasons why this should not go ahead. I won’t go into detail here, but you should learn more if you don’t know what I’m on about. Try Horus Kol’s article, or No Clean Feed for some good information.

Please use this nifty form to show your support for the fight against mandatory internet censorship:

In addition, there is another petition you can sign at TakingITGlobal.

It’s time for part 2 of my PHP wish list! In this instalment I’ll detail another feature that I would love to see in PHP: reverse combined operators.

If you missed part 1 (you probably did), you can read it here.

“What the hell is a reverse combined operator?” I hear you scream. Well, technically they probably don’t exist yet, so I’m sure a better name could be found, but bear with me and I’ll try to explain…

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