This overview is for beginner-to-intermediate PHP developers who want to build Web 2.0 applications based on the PHP framework. Read on for useful snippets of knowledge of the Yii framework…

=> Starting Point

* To create any sample application using the Yii framework, you first need to create an index.php file. This file in turn requires and references the yii.php file which is located at framework/yii.php.
* To start the framework process there should be some code in index.php that will start the process on your entered URL and posted data. This code is as follows:

Yii::createWebApplication()->run();

=> MVC Structure

* A simple file structure is used for MVC

* There should be a folder called protected – this is the standard folder name for storing all controllers, models, views, configuration, data and other folders.

=> Controller & Action Search

* Just like other frameworks, this one also searches for controllers using URL path.
* Every controller should be extended using CController, which is a standard Yii class.
* For example, if my URL is http://dev.yii.com/demos/blog/index.php/post/show/id/21, then the framework will search for a PostController.php file in the protected/controllers folder.

The argument after the post is the name of the action. The controller PostController.php be searched for an actionShow() function. Remember that the default action for every controller is “index”. So if you don’t specify any action name, then it will search for an actionIndex() function.

After the controllerID and actionID, you can see the arguments /id/21. These are the arguments which are passed through URL.

=> Rendering Layouts

* HTML Views files should be stored under, protected/views/controllerName/
* HTML files are stored with a PHP extension e.g. show.php
* To render any layout on any action, you need to include

$this->render(‘show’,arrayParameters);

The arrayParameters are optional.

* Remember, files in views and controllers have direct contact with each other. So it is possible to call any function of a controller file, because $this instance passes to view files by default.

=> Configuring the Main.php file

* The main.php file is used to override the default configuration of the Yii framework.
* You can modify the base path, name, database details, etc.
* To connect to your database, place the following code into main.php:

‘db’=>array(
‘connectionString’ => ‘mysql:host=localhost;dbname=blog’,
‘emulatePrepare’ => true,
‘username’ => ‘root’,
‘password’ => ‘ rootroot ‘,
‘charset’ => ‘utf8′,
‘tablePrefix’ => ‘tbl_’,
)

=> Calling Layouts

* To call any layouts from any controller, you just need to define one variable in your controller file as follows:

public $layout=’column2′;

* The framework will search for this layout in protected/views/layouts/column2.php.
* It’s also possible to call any layout from a layout file. For example, if you want to call your column1.php file into column2.php, you can use:

beginContent(‘/layouts/column1.php’); ?>
endContent(); ?>

=> Database Active Record Model

* A database is defined as object in the Yii framework.
* An AR (Active Record) model system is used to achieve this type of structure. So every record also counts as an object.
* Models should be stored in protected/models.

=> Creating Forms

* To create a form, there should be a corresponding model file in the protected/models folder. Further, the class should be extended using CFormModel, a standard form class.
* Validation is done using the rules() function. Here’s an example:

public function rules()
{
return array(
// username and password are required
array(‘username, password’, ‘required’),
// rememberMe needs to be a boolean
array(‘rememberMe’, ‘boolean’),
// password needs to be authenticated
array(‘password’, ‘authenticate’),
);
}

OffshoreSoftwareDevelopmentIndia.com (Maven Infosoft) has developed scores of enterprise applications based on OOP-based frameworks and have an extensive knowledge base of PHP frameworks built using OOP and MVC. Please email at info@offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com for any technical support or queries regarding Yii. RFIs / RFPs are solicited for web applications running Yii.

Magento team at OffshoreSoftwareDevelopmentIndia.com has developed an Magento module for Footer Links.

This Footer links module for Magento contains the following items,

(1) All the categories in the tree structure with Category images.

(2) Top 12 searched performed on Magento Store,

(3) All static links in structured way, as defined in Admin section.

By Default this More links section remains hide in the footer. Once user click on more links it will display all the above links in the footer sections.

All the category links contains subcategories, clicling on + sign it will show all subcategories under the root Category.

Click on image to see Full image.

More links are by default hidden. Once user click on more links, it will display all links as per the following image.

Magento Module – Enhanced Product insertion

Magento team at offshore software development india has developed Enhanced Product insertion module for the Magento.

Configurable Products import through CSV files.

This new enhanced module provides Configurable Products import through CSV files.

Initial installation of Magento doesn’t provide the product insertion for Configurable products, Group products, Related products, Up-sell products, Cross-sell products and Tier prices.

With this module/extension, user can Import Configurable Products through CSV file.

The Enhance Product Insertion module can achive following functinalities.

1. Magento – Import Configurable Products through CSV files.
2. Magento – Import Grouped Products through CSV files.
3. Magento – Import Tier Prices through CSV files.
4. Magento – Import Related Products through CSV files.
5. Magento – Import Up-sell Products through CSV files.
6. Magento – Import Cross-sell Products through CSV files.

Please email at info@offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com for any further information.

]]> http://www.offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com/blog/2009/05/19/magento-module-import-configurable-products-through-csv-files-extension/feed/ 0 http://www.offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com/blog/2008/11/15/moss19-integration-of-excel-services-with-the-sharepoint-server/ http://www.offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com/blog/2008/11/15/moss19-integration-of-excel-services-with-the-sharepoint-server/#comments Sat, 15 Nov 2008 06:46:02 +0000 rupen http://www.offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com/blog/?p=172 Dot Net team at OffshoreSoftwareDevelopmentIndia.com has developed many extenions for Excel Services with the SharePoint Server. How to integrate Excel Services with SharePoint, has mentioned in this article.

Excel Services provides a server-side paradigm for Excel in which spreadsheets published to SharePoint can calculate and render on the server, letting users pull results down to their browsers. In this new scenario, analysts can publish their worksheets to SharePoint, and allow Excel Services to kick in, meaning that anybody who browses to the site containing the spreadsheet can access the full functionality of the sheet whether or not they have Excel installed. In this scenario, the formulae that analysts enter become the code that everyone will run. You don’t need a developer to reemployment the formulae or create a new application.

Creating and Configuring SharePoint for Excel Services:-

First of all create the Blank Site. At the top right of the screen you can see the Site Action menu dropdown list. Select “Create” from the dropdown and you will be taken to a screen containing several categories of options for creating various types of item (See below Figure).

Select “Document Library” from this screen to create a new Document Library. On the Document Library screen, give the new document library a name and a Document Template. Choose any name you like (the examples use “Analytics,” and select “Microsoft Office Excel Worksheet” as the document template).

And Click on Create.

Running Excel Services:

Before Excel Services will work with this repository; you must make sure that the services are up and running correctly. To do this, return to the Central Administration screen, and select the Operations tab. From here, select the “Services on Server” screen. You’ll see a list of services at the bottom of the screen. Make sure that “Excel Calculation Services” is started. If it isn’t, use the link beside it to start up the service.

Additionally, you’ll have to configure a trusted file location for your Excel workbooks. You do this by returning to Central Administration, and selecting the “Create or configure this farm’s shared services” link. You’ll see the “SharedServices1 (Default)” entry on this screen. Drop this down, by clicking the arrow to the right of it, and select the “Open Shared Services Admin Site” option. This opens the administration screen for these shared services. On the right side of this screen you’ll see the “Trusted File Locations” link which you can use to set up where you can store the Excel files securely. Select “Add Trusted File Location” and you’ll see the screen below.

Use the URL address of the document library that you set up earlier (for example: http://win2k3sp:17964/sites/DevX1/Analytics) and make sure to specify the Location Type as “Windows SharePoint Services.” Click “OK” and the SharePoint will create the trusted file location as shown in Figure.

Creating and Publishing a Spreadsheet:-

Now you need a spreadsheet to use for shared calculations. For this example, you’ll build a very simple example spreadsheet that serves to demonstrate how the calculation services work. The spreadsheet performs a simple analytics calculation, called a “P/E Ration,” which simply divides the price of a stock by its earnings. It’s a useful analytic that tells you how many years you’ll need to own a stock before it pays for itself in earnings. So, for example, if your stock costs $100 and earns $10 a year, it will take 10 years to pay for itself in earnings. This ratio (or analytic) is usually seen as a great indicator of the value of a stock. In a real-world scenario, the user will provide a stock ticker, and the application would retrieve the values for price and earnings from a database. The spreadsheet could then divide price by earnings using a formula. For simplicity, this example doesn’t use a database—you’ll simply provide the spreadsheet with the price and earnings values. The P/E will be a simple Excel formula that divides the named ranges for the Price and Earnings values.

I’ve added a chart to show the relative values of Price and Earnings, and you can see the spreadsheet in Figure.

When you’ve completed the spreadsheet, publish it to SharePoint using the Excel Services option on the “Publish” menu see Figure.

When you select this, the “Save As” dialog will appear. You can use this dialog to specify the save location this should be the location that you configured as a Trusted Location earlier. However, before you do this, you should select the “Excel Services Options” button at the bottom of the dialog. You use these options to specify the items within the sheet that you want to have available to browsers. This is important, as you may have some proprietary stuff that you do not want to publish. You can simply uncheck that from this dialog and it will not be published to SharePoint, and thus kept private.

You’re now ready to publish. For the file name, specify the path to the SharePoint site that you set up earlier. The dialog will refresh and show you the document library. You can then save the document into the library. (See below Figure).

SharePoint publishes your workbook into the document library. If you browse to this document from IE, you’ll see an Excel-like generated interface. Remember, your clients do not need to have Excel installed to use the application that you’ve just built in Excel that’s part of the magic of using SharePoint and Excel services.

You may open the worksheet from the Document Library (See Figure).

In this article you saw the procedures to configure and use Excel Services with SharePoint 2007. This is a terrific and incredibly useful service that allows you to publish your Excel documents to a server library and let users run them, taking advantage of the Excel’s calculation power and formulae. This is important on a number of fronts. First, it prevents version drift of documents a common problem for companies that use a lot of spreadsheets. Having a centralized repository means that all users can share the same version. Additionally, because the calculations can now run on the server, many users don’t even need to have Excel installed! They just need to be able to browse to the SharePoint repository and render the sheet within their browsers. The user who specifies the calculations also becomes the developer of the functionality available to the end users. So, instead of having a developer translate Excel spreadsheets and formulae into a language suitable for Web applications and building a custom UI, your formula experts can simply publish their spreadsheets to Excel and have end users consume them directly.

Team would like to share same experience. This can help who wanted to begin with the sharePoint development and Project Server development.

There are list of articles start with SP and from number 1 to …. Always start with the article SP1 and read next article to start working on MOSS easily and quickly.

How to Create Site Columns:

Before going into detail on the creation of content types via features it is important to understand how Content type IDs work.

You should read the following MSDN page that explains about ContenTypes IDs and their inheritance based model: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa543822.aspx

Since this post shows how to create Publishing Content Types we need to find from which existing content type we want to base our own. I did some research on the features that are installed and activated when you use the Publishing site. In there we can see that the base content type from which we want to inherit is the “Page”. This Content Type has an ID of:

0×010100C568DB52D9D0A14D9B2FDCC96666E9F2007948130EC3DB0
64584E219954237AF39

So in order to create our own ID we can add two hexadecimal values, or, we can add “00″ followed by a GUID. I prefer this approach as it is unique and identifies custom content types more easily.

So my content type ID can be:

0×010100C568DB52D9D0A14D9B2FDCC96666E9F20079481
30EC3DB064584E219954237AF3900ADB88465BE2C439798977662094183BC

The bold text is the Page content type ID to which I append “00″ and a new GUID.

Content Type Schema:

Second important piece of information is the Content Type schema. I could not find any information specific to publishing content types on MSDN or the MOSS SDK. So again the solution is to use the available information together with some nosing in the publishing features installed by MOSS in the 12 hive. ContentType schema on MSDN: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa544268.aspx

In the following sample I’m creating two content types: a product content type and a hardware product content type. You will see that the hardware product content type inherits from the product content type by appending 00 + a new GUID to the ID.

Now we need to add this to the feature and install it together with what was done in part I of this series.

The complete feature can be downloaded here.

Refer:

http://www.katriendg.com/aboutdotnet/2007_4_2_publishing-content-types.aspx