Hesk Enhancements for Version 2.2

Jul 312010

I’ve ported my popular (that means more than one person is using it. ) hacks from version 2.1 of Hesk to the new 2.2. You can read the whole tutorial on my wiki: http://wiki.cornempire.net/hesk/hesk22/

For those upgrading, you will need to reapply the hack to the new files. The differences were pretty minor between 2.1 and 2.2. I’ll outline the differences here:

The line numbers are different for the files
The function print_add_ticket_start that you need to add needs a few additional lines to bring in the global stylesheets. This was not required in 2.1
I also made a small tweak to this function so that there is no category selected by default, allowing you to select the default category via the dropdown box. Previously, this would have been unselectable.

I’m working on a screencast of applying this hack for those who are more visual learners. So stay tuned for that.

To take a look back at my previous post, and learn more about Hesk, click here.

Desktop GUI Programming (Python (PyDev, pygtk) and Glade)

Linux, Programming, Python No Responses »

Jul 292010

I recently decided to get back into desktop applications. Since about 2000 I’ve focused on developing for the web using Perl and PHP (mostly PHP). But sometimes it is nice to write a desktop app, instead of having to write a web app for everything. I’ve written some applications using the PHP CLI option, but that isn’t quite the same as a gui. My motivation was to write a GUI that controlled ffmpeg and would allow me to capture screen casts for tutorials I needed to make.

I started my adventure looking at a GUI frontend for PHP. And ran across PHP-GTK+. I installed it, and looked at some tutorials on it, but the more I looked, the more it looked like the community was inactive and stale. I also couldn’t find any way to package my application to share with others. They would need to install PHP, compile GTK+ (which wasn’t all that easy), reconfigure PHP and then run my application. Although most of the programs would be for my eyes only, it would be nice to have the option to share from time to time. So that was the end of the road for my PHP adventure.

I then decided to look at other languages for developing the application. I considered some of the options out there, Java, C, Ruby, Python, but decided to give Python a try. I’ve coded Java before, and I wasn’t a fan. Always seemed like overkill for everything I wanted to do. I’ve heard lots of good stuff about Python, and it is usually installed with most Linux installations, so this was my language of choice.

I then began looking for a good IDE for Python. Being a big fan of Eclipse, I ran across pydev for Ecplise. A simple install into the software manager in Eclipse, and I was off to the races. You will need to configure the location to your python binary, which for me (Ubuntu 9.10) was in /usr/bin/python2.6 Enabling this, gives you all the fancy code completion which I love so much. If you need to set it up, you need to visit (In Eclipse) Window -> Preferences -> Pydev -> Interpreter – Python -> New… and browse to your python binary. (If you do not have python available, you may need to install it first using apt-get or Synaptic Package Manager. Just search for python, and it should install everything you need to get started.) Here are some tutorials for getting started with Python:

I’ve used Glade once before, very briefly just to figure out what it was. It is a GUI drawer. Similar to the GUI drawer in Visual Basic, it allows you to layout your interface without using code. It creates XML files which can be imported by your application (and it has bindings for many languages) that create your interface. You just need to connect your code to the signals in the GUI, and you can make magic happen. You will need to install Glade via Synaptic Package Manager. The current version is the 3.6 series. Here are some great tutorials to get you started with Glade:

GTK+ and Glade3 GUI Programming Tutorial
Writing a GUI app with Python & Glade
A Beginner’s Guide to Using pyGTK and Glade (older, but still useful)

So, my first dabble in GUI desktop programming in a decade, and my first taste of python. About 5 hours later I had written the application I wanted. It is an 84 line python script binding to one glade file for the interface. It allows me to select a window, and using a pre-set configuration, launch ffmpeg and record a screencast. Still a lot of work to do before it is ready to be shared, but it is a great start. Using pydev via Eclipse for the Python coding, and Glade for the interface design, you should be able to turn out some simple desktop apps in a matter of hours.

This is probably just the beginning of my python coding, so you may see more here on that in the future.

The Director! is Complete!

Programming, The Director No Responses »

Jun 292010

Announcement

At long last, The Director! is complete. This is the URL redirection php/apache script that I mentioned early last month. Had a few minor things to fix up, which I finally did last night, and now it is available to all.

It is a very rough looking piece of software, true to my views that admins shouldn’t care what the software looks like, provided it works correctly, and it looks pretty to the public. Since I suck at UI, AND The Director! has no public face, this is the perfect project for me!

So what does The Director! do?

The Director! is a URL shortening/redirection service similar to tinyurl and others that allow you to point one web address to another (presumably a short one to a longer one). Currently it does some simple stat tracking (if you want) on the URLs, and allows you to manage your redirects. More information and a download can be found here: http://www.cornempire.net/go/director (this shows The Director! in action as I have it installed on my site now).

Requirements and Cost

The Director! is a free download, available under an undetermined licence at this time. You are free to use it, just don’t take the code and sell it. If you make any modifications, feel free to share them back to us (submit an issue to the bug tracker and attach your code). We provide no support or guarantees/warranty for the code, if you choose to use it, you are on your own. Later, I’ll enumerate that into some sort of formal licence.

In order to make use of The Director! you will need:

A webserver
PHP running on the webserver
A domain name of some sort
A rewrite module for fancy redirects (instructions provided for apache and mod_rewrite)

You will need access to edit your webserver config, or .htaccess file if you are on shared hosting.

If you run into any issues, make a note below and I’ll do my best to help. But again, no formal guarantees or warranty come with the application.

Screenshots

Certainly nothing to be proud of…but here are some screenshots of The Director! in all of it’s ugly orange glory:

Credits

Other then me, many thanks to Pat for his help in writing The Director!. As well as credit to Mark James for the Silk Icons which I don’t think I’ve actually put to use yet, but when I redesign the GUI, I will.

New Project: The Director!

Programming, Webdesign No Responses »

May 072010

Just a quick announcement that I’m working on a new programming project called The Director!. It is essentially a url redirection/shortening service written in PHP and utilizing the apache rewrite module to do the really cool stuff.

Those in the know realize that creating such a service is just a few lines of code in the vhost entry for apache, and then a few lines of code in a php script to do the redirection, but the goal here is to make it easy to use management interface with a bit of simple stat tracking.

Hoping to have version 0.1 out this weekend (depending on how my fence construction goes this weekend).

You can view more information here: http://wiki.cornempire.net/thedirector/start

Add Comments to Column – MySQL

Programming 3 Responses »

Apr 152010

So, you have a nice new database table, and you forgot (or couldn’t) add comments to the columns when you created it. I recently ran into this problem, and my usual internet searches didn’t turn up much. One would expect a statement similar to this:
ALTER COLUMN `columnname` ADD COMMENT 'a comment'
However, that statement doesn’t exist.

If you have gotten to my post, you probably realize that there is no easy way to add comments (unless you have a nice application that does it for you). The real statement is something along the lines of this:
ALTER TABLE `courses` CHANGE `courseid` `courseid` bigint(20) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT COMMENT 'a new comment'

Which means you need to know the table definition, and restate it every time you want to change the comment. If you are doing this in bulk, that is a pain in the butt.

So, I wrote this little script that will take a create table definition, and turn it into Alter Table commands, that will add comments to each of your columns.

All you need to do is run ‘SHOW CREATE TABLE `tablename`’ on your database table, and insert that definition into my script here, and it will spit out a series of Alter Table calls with a space for a comment appended to the end.

The script is very basic at this point, and expects the formatting as shown in the example. The GUI I use, DbVisualizer, as well as the mysql command line client spit this out. So hopefully yours will to.

If you find this useful, or run into any problems with the script, please let me know.

Edit (April 15, 2010): Uploaded v0.2. Small mistake that was placing the column name in place of the table name. Sorry to anyone that was used it before and noticed it.

Hesk Helpdesk (And Enhancements!)

Programming, Webdesign 16 Responses »

Dec 062009

Edit: I’ve made a new post regarding Hesk and these enhancements for the new version 2.2. You can read it here: http://cornempire.net/2010/07/31/hesk-enhancements-for-version-2-2/

I came across the free, open source Hesk Helpdesk (http://www.hesk.com) while I was looking for a light weight help system for a project that was starting up. The project has since been put on hold, but Hesk is still a great application for a helpdesk/knowledge base. Hesk is offered as a free downloadable PHP script, as well as a Hosted Version if you do not have a server. The hosted version will cost you $20 US a month. You can also by a license for the downloadable version for $39.95 US to remove the Hesk branding.

While this application is great…

Allows unlimited staff
Granular permissions to the system and help desk categories
Excellent knowledge base built in
Innovative system that doesn’t require user accounts for clients

It is lacking a few features. I plan to use this application to respond to clients from a number of different projects. As such, it would be nice if they didn’t see ALL of the problem types when submitting tickets. Because Hesk is open source, we can make a few tweaks to get directly to a specific problem type.

Hesk also allows custom fields for your tickets, but it shows all custom fields on all problem types. This can get confusing for users in a multi-project environment. I’m developing a little hack to get around this limitation.

I’ve outlined both of these changes required on my wiki, you can take a look here.

awstats Information

General, Linux, Programming, Webdesign No Responses »

Oct 222009

Just surfing the web and came across this excellent site with advanced awstats configuration information. As you all know, I do enjoy using awstats, and have had to modify it in the past.

Well, this site has lots of cool scripts and modifications to make awstats more useful: http://www.internetofficer.com/awstats/

My favourite modifications so far are:

And don’t forget to check out my own tutorial on adding robots (Blog Post/Wiki Entry)

D2L Bulk Deactivation Part 2

General, Programming, Repair, Webdesign 3 Responses »

Jul 072009

Note:

Instead of editing my previous post to pieces, I thought it might be best if I repost my script with a better description of how it works. I’ve written up documentation of the script on the CornEmpire Software wiki which is available at http://wiki.cornempire.net. The documentation directly related to this script is available at http://wiki.cornempire.net/doku.php?id=d2l:bulkdeactivate

Introduction

One of the often requested features is to be able to bulk deactivate courses in D2L after they have completed. You can currently deactivate courses, but this is a one at a time effort. This has become more important as version 8.3 of D2L brought along a new My Courses widget, which allows users to see updates from each of their courses. Unfortunately, when course access ends, they can still see the updates. This has caused confusion for many users.
Another reason to deactivate courses is minimize the amount of clutter in the view of users. If course access has ended, and they cannot access the course, there is no need for the course to remain active (this could vary depending on how your roles are configured). A way around this is to script the bulk deactivation of courses. Through the use of some Javascript coding, we can instruct the web browser to visit each course, and deactivate it for us.

See the script in action.

Would you like to see more? I have the script, and it’s documentation available on this page: http://wiki.cornempire.net/doku.php?id=d2l:bulkdeactivate

If you have any questions, please post them below.

Desire2Learn Bulk Course Deactivation

General, Programming 3 Responses »

Jun 102009

Update

Please see my new post on this topic. Available at: http://www.cornempire.net/2009/07/07/d2l-bulk-deactivation-part-2/

Introduction

Another reason to deactivate courses is minimize the amount of clutter in the view of users. If course access has ended, and they cannot access the course, there is no need for the course to remain active (this could vary depending on how your roles are configured). A way around this is to script the bulk deactivation of courses. Through the use of some Javascript coding, we can instruct the web browser to visit each course, and deactivate it for us.

Example

Take a look here for this script in action.

If you think that this might be useful for your organization, you can download the html file which includes the javascript.

For D2L Version 8.3
For D2L Version 8.4 (Thanks Dennis!)

Instructions on Use

You will need to edit the file and modify line 5. This contains the URL to your learning environment, and the URL to your Course Offering Information screen.
This file will need to be placed in one of your courses in your learning environment in the Manage Files area.
You need to open the file from your Manage Files section and provide the script with the OU numbers of the courses you need to deactivate. (Take a read below to see how we get the ou numbers)
Once the OU numbers are loaded, you can click the Start Processing button and your web browser should go to all the courses and deactivate them.

Limitations

You are required to have administrative access to any courses you need to deactivate (I haven’t been able to figure out why this is, but a javascript error is thrown if you do not have admin access)
This has been tested in Firefox 3 on Windows XP and Ubuntu 9.04 as well as a Chrome Development Beta for Linux but may not work in other web browsers (especially IE).
This has been tested on D2L Version 8.3 MR01. I’d suspect it would work on any version of 8.3 but not sure about 8.4 yet, or any earlier versions.
I’m not responsible if this code melts your CPU. or causes any other horrible damage to your D2L installation (although it shouldn’t….it’s only about 35 lines of Javascript. :p)

Getting a List Of Courses

The tricky part in all of this is actually getting the OU numbers for each of the courses you need to deactivate. For those who don’t know, the OU number is the org unit number, and is an internal identifier for D2L. You will notice the ou number in the URL of courses as ou=#####.

We run a report using the reporting tool that gives us the ou numbers (in one, non-ideal form. Hopefully D2L web services will eliminate the need for this).

In the Reporting tool, create a report using the Org Units dataset. With in the report, include the column for the course Path. This path contains the OU number for the course. Under the filter tab, add a few filters that will narrow down your search to the information you require. Our organization adds a semester code to all of our courses, so all courses that end in 200802 are courses that ran in the last semester. We can query these courses, and get a list of the ou numbers through the course offering paths. See below for some images of our report in action.

Then you have to do some work in manipulating the report to filter out the OU numbers. I select the whole column using firefox, and dump it into OpenOffice. Customize the import to break the lines on all of the dividing characters, and then I have a column of ou numbers. Then take that, and add in commas after all of the entries using a find and replace. You will need a text editor that can find and replace on characters you cannot see. Replace the new lines with commas.

Hopefully you can find a better way to get your list of OU numbers . If you have a good way, leave a comment and let me know.

IE Error: Object Expected

Programming, Webdesign No Responses »

Jun 092009

I’ve been recently doing some Javascript coding and ran across an error in IE that I wasn’t noticing in Firefox (well…there are hundreds of these, but this one is a show stopper).

It is a small validation script for a form to do some checking before submitting. It’s pretty simple, take a look:


function validateForm(){
	/*
	 * First, get the fields.
	 */
	var name = document.getElementById('name').value;
	var title = document.getElementById('title').value;
	var phone = document.getElementById('phone').value;
	var email = document.getElementById('email').value;
	var description = document.getElementById('description').value;
	var cost = document.getElementById('cost').value;
	//pic1 = document.getElementById('pic1').value;
	//pic2 = document.getElementById('pic2').value;
	if(name == ""){
		alert('You must enter your name.');
	}
	else if(title == ""){
		alert('You must enter give your ad a title.');
	}
	else if(phone == "" && email == ""){
		alert('You must enter a phone number or email address.');
	}
	else if(description == ""){
		alert('You must enter a description of the item you want to buy, sell or trade.');
	}
	else if(isNaN(cost)){
		alert('You must enter a numeric cost, without the $ symbol.');
	}
	else{
		document.getElementById('submit').style.display = 'block';
		alert('Please press the submit button below.');
	}
}

Executing the script on a blank form in FF would give the correct response, Enter in a name. In IE, I would get an error on Line 15 about Object Expected (in the script, line 15 is actually a commented out line, so that error isn’t very helpful).

I then remembered something about IE automatically creating variables from a form by the name/id of the form field on the page. Since my variable name, and field name were the same, it would try to compare its self created object against my test, instead of the variable that I was assigning, thus creating an error.

To work around this, I had to rename all of my variables (I could have also renamed all of my fields):


function validateForm(){
	/*
	 * First, get the fields.
	 */
	var bsname = document.getElementById('name').value;
	var bstitle = document.getElementById('title').value;
	var bsphone = document.getElementById('phone').value;
	var bsemail = document.getElementById('email').value;
	var bsdescription = document.getElementById('description').value;
	var bscost = document.getElementById('cost').value;
	//pic1 = document.getElementById('pic1').value;
	//pic2 = document.getElementById('pic2').value;
	if(bsname == ""){
		alert('You must enter your name.');
	}
	else if(bstitle == ""){
		alert('You must enter give your ad a title.');
	}
	else if(bsphone == "" && bsemail == ""){
		alert('You must enter a phone number or email address.');
	}
	else if(bsdescription == ""){
		alert('You must enter a description of the item you want to buy, sell or trade.');
	}
	else if(isNaN(bscost)){
		alert('You must enter a numeric cost, without the $ symbol.');
	}
	else{
		document.getElementById('submit').style.display = 'block';
		alert('Please press the submit button below.');
	}
}

After this, it runs fine in both browsers. I remember hitting my head off the wall for a LONG time when I originally encountered this error, so hopefully this will save someone else some time.

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