WTF

WTF — No Comments
1
Jul 11

How stupid do you think I am?

Really guys?

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Best Practices / PHP / Programming / WTF — No Comments
20
Jun 11

You are doing it wrong…

If you are putting this at the top of every file…

// i will keep yelling this
// DON'T FORGET TO START THE SESSION !!!
session_start();

You may just be doing php wrong… and I hate you

postaweek2011 / WTF — No Comments
29
Mar 11

UBB AVP… same difference

Sadly this seems completely accurate…

In order to be effective as an economic ITMP, the usage based price component needs to be established so as to discourage use above the set limit. The price should incent use in excess of the limit only to the extent that the consumer would gain significant value from that usage. If the price is set substantially below the consumer’s value, it will have little influence on usage.

via: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5711/125/

Drupal / PHP / piwik / WTF — 2 Comments
25
Feb 11

It is like driving a new car off a cliff

So… This was fun…

Welcome to GatorChat!

You are being connected to a representative in our Technical Support department right now.

For immediate answers to your questions, check out our knowledge base and video tutorials at http://support.hostgator.com.

Your Chat ID is 3333053.

Your question is, “My primary domain is seanja.com. mod_security”

(10:03:41 PM) System: There are currently 3 people in front of you and 86 chat technicians assisting customers.
(10:04:10 PM) System: There are currently 3 people in front of you and 86 chat technicians assisting customers.
(10:04:41 PM) System: There are currently 1 people in front of you and 86 chat technicians assisting customers.
(10:05:11 PM) System: There are currently 0 people in front of you and 87 chat technicians assisting customers.
(10:05:12 PM) Gator Tech Support: has entered the chat.
(10:05:18 PM) Gator Tech Support: Hello, welcome to HostGator Live Chat.
(10:05:32 PM) SeanJA: hi
(10:05:44 PM) Gator Tech Support: How may I assist you today?
(10:06:40 PM) SeanJA: I keep getting a 403 error when trying to use piwik as a tracking server… I have also run into this problem with drupal’s ‘shurly’ module and the oauth login module as well… I believe that it would be related to mod_security?
(10:07:55 PM) Gator Tech Support: It really depends
(10:07:55 PM) SeanJA: I got around the one for oauth and shurly (a bit of hackery in drupal core that I would have liked to avoid…) but the one for piwik seems to be a bit more difficult to get around…
(10:08:07 PM) SeanJA: http://stats.seanja.com/piwik.php?idsite=1&rec=1&rand=0.11890891543589532&h=0&m=7&s=23&url=http%3A%2F%2Fseanja.com%2F&urlref=&res=1920×1200&cookie=1&pdf=1&qt=1&realp=0&wma=0&dir=0&fla=1&java=1&gears=1&ag=0&action_name=seanja.com
(10:08:11 PM) Gator Tech Support: Here is the mod security http://support.hostgator.com/articles/employees/daily-tasks/mod-sec-and-you
(10:08:20 PM) SeanJA: this is the url giving me the 403 error
(10:08:46 PM) Gator Tech Support: I am seeing a 500 error
(10:09:46 PM) SeanJA: odd… I am seeing that now too
(10:10:13 PM) SeanJA: oh… the 500 error is for the ErrorDocument
(10:10:19 PM) Gator Tech Support: here is everything I have on mod_security:

(10:10:45 PM) SeanJA: I keep getting bounced out to support.hostgator.com
(10:11:05 PM) Gator Tech Support: Yes, all I would be able to do is create a ticket that goes to them.
(10:11:14 PM) SeanJA: http://support.hostgator.com/articles/pre-sales-policies/secfilterengine-and-secfilterscanpost
(10:11:41 PM) SeanJA: this is what prompted me to contact you
(10:12:37 PM) Gator Tech Support: Right, but I see a 500 error
(10:13:52 PM) SeanJA: ok… but that is for the Error Document, the title of the page is “Error 403″
(10:14:24 PM) Gator Tech Support: Right
(10:14:47 PM) Gator Tech Support: Those two are very different errors
(10:14:51 PM) SeanJA: http://forums.hostgator.com/mod-security-and-403-errors-t71394.html
(10:16:09 PM) Gator Tech Support: I understand, a 403, is very different then a 500.
(10:16:54 PM) Gator Tech Support: http://support.hostgator.com/articles/cpanel/internal-server-error-help-500-error
(10:17:30 PM) SeanJA: what I see is:

Error 403 Forbidden,

Also a 500 error was thrown when trying to use ErrorDocument to handle the request
(10:17:58 PM) Gator Tech Support: I am getting:Forbidden

You don’t have permission to access /piwik.php on this server.

Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
(10:18:29 PM) Gator Tech Support: That would just need the pwiik.php permissions changed to 644
(10:19:33 PM) SeanJA: if you go to http://stats.seanja.com/piwik.php you actually get a result though
(10:19:42 PM) Gator Tech Support: Piwik is a free open source web analytics alternative to Google analytics.
(10:20:09 PM) SeanJA: as soon as you add ?url=http://test.com to the url it fails to work because the http:// is caught as “bad”
(10:20:49 PM) Gator Tech Support: I am getting a page with the following text
(10:20:53 PM) Gator Tech Support: Piwik is a free open source web analytics alternative to Google analytics.
(10:21:00 PM) SeanJA: yep
(10:21:09 PM) Gator Tech Support: Piwik is highlighted and so is web analytics
(10:21:14 PM) SeanJA: and the permissions are set to 664
(10:21:29 PM) SeanJA: well.. 0664
(10:22:32 PM) Gator Tech Support: Right, it is working for me
(10:22:38 PM) Gator Tech Support: Have you cleared your cache?
(10:24:00 PM) SeanJA: hitting the page without and url parameters works fine for me
(10:26:23 PM) Gator Tech Support: Is there anything else I can help you with today?
(10:27:11 PM) SeanJA: is there anyway that you could pass me on to someone that can help me with whitelisting stats.seanja.com/piwik.php from mod_security?
(10:28:11 PM) Gator Tech Support: If you tried to change that, you will cause your site to go down, but I can do that for you if you like
(10:28:27 PM) SeanJA: it will go down?
(10:28:35 PM) Gator Tech Support: It is like driving a new car off a cliff
(10:28:49 PM) Gator Tech Support: If it is not broken you dont want to try and fix it
(10:28:57 PM) SeanJA: it is broken though…?
(10:29:20 PM) Gator Tech Support: I do not show that
(10:29:48 PM) SeanJA: it has a blanket ignore urls with http:// in them
(10:30:00 PM) Gator Tech Support: A
(10:30:08 PM) Gator Tech Support: Are you trying to show this: http://stats.seanja.com/
(10:31:24 PM) Gator Tech Support: Hello?
(10:31:28 PM) SeanJA: nope… what /piwik.php does it log a hit to my site
(10:31:53 PM) Gator Tech Support: Ok, what is the php supposed to do?
(10:32:22 PM) SeanJA: on this page: http://seanja.com/tools/unlab-minecraft/
if you look at the net panel in firebug, or the error console in chrome, you will see a 404 for the call to piwik.php?[...]
(10:32:59 PM) Gator Tech Support: I see a picture of a post with yes written on it with graphics of 1996
(10:34:07 PM) SeanJA: yes, but in the error console there is a 403 forbidden error (if you are using chrome: ctrl+shift+i , or firebug F12 in the Net tab (it has to be active on page load though) )
(10:34:23 PM) SeanJA: which means that the hit is not being logged
(10:34:49 PM) Gator Tech Support: I am using firefox
(10:34:58 PM) Gator Tech Support: I will try IE
(10:35:39 PM) SeanJA: probably won’t show up in IE
(10:35:47 PM) Gator Tech Support: is unlabe a mincraft, yes
(10:36:05 PM) Gator Tech Support: is unlab mincraft up
(10:36:06 PM) Gator Tech Support: yes
(10:37:05 PM) SeanJA: I mean the error in the console (IE’s console isn’t great, nor does it exist in IE6/7)
(10:37:29 PM) Gator Tech Support: No, Firefox is fine though.
(10:37:55 PM) SeanJA: do you have firebug installed in firefox?
(10:38:36 PM) Gator Tech Support: Yes
(10:39:20 PM) SeanJA: if you pull it up, and open up the ‘Net’ tab, then reload the page you will see the 403 Forbidden error that I am talking about
(10:39:36 PM) Gator Tech Support: I dont see it.
(10:40:07 PM) SeanJA: is the Net tab actually active?
(10:41:25 PM) SeanJA: I think they disabled it by default in recent releases as it slows down page loads considerably on larger sites
(10:41:53 PM) Gator Tech Support: It may be a bug issue but if you just want that mod sec changed I can do that
(10:43:04 PM) SeanJA: I think I have found another way around it… I will just do what I did to drupal:

// © by Andriy Gerasika from GerixSoft, Ltd.
if (is_int($return) && $return == MENU_NOT_FOUND) {
$uri = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
$uri = str_replace('http://', urlencode('http://'), $uri);
$path = parse_url($uri, PHP_URL_PATH);
//FIX: SeanJA don't use ereg, use preg_match
$paths = array('/shurly/api/shorten', '/openid/authenticate');
if (in_array($path, $paths) || preg_match('/^\/user\/[0-9]+\/openid$/', $path)!=0) {
$path = substr($path, 1);
$query = 'q=' . $path . '&' . parse_url($uri, PHP_URL_QUERY);
$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'] = $query;
parse_str($query, $_REQUEST);
parse_str($query, $_GET);
$return = menu_execute_active_handler();
}
}

(10:43:26 PM) SeanJA: basically refill the $_GET and $_REQUEST variables before they are checked
(10:44:08 PM) Gator Tech Support: I see
(10:44:09 PM) Gator Tech Support: Is there anything else I can help you with today?
(10:44:14 PM) SeanJA: nope
(10:44:28 PM) Gator Tech Support: Ok, let us know if you have any further questions
(10:44:31 PM) Gator Tech Support: Thank you for using HostGator Live Chat. If you could take a minute to rate your experience with HostGator as well as my overall performance, that would help us to improve our customer service. To do that, just click the button that says Rate and Exit in the upper right hand corner. The survey takes less than a minute to fill out.

In the end, I didn’t trust him not to screw up my site… so now I have to do a bunch of hackery to get it to work…

1 star

Best Practices / PHP / Programming / Ruby / WTF — 7 Comments
14
Apr 10

PHP Functions, you’re doing it wrong…

Just a quick tip today. If your function looks something like this:

 
<?php
/**
 * A really long function definition
 * @param string $has
 * @param bool $a
 * @param int $lot
 * @param float $of
 * @param assoc_array $parameters
 * @param string $I
 * @param string $wonder
 * @param int $what
 * @param int $they
 * @param int $do 
 */
function myfunction(
	$has=null,
	$a=null,
	$lot=null,
	$of=null,
	$parameters=null,
	$I=null,
	$wonder=null,
	$what=null, 
	$they=null,
	$do=null
	){
	//do some magic
}
 
//this is how it would be called
myfunction(null, false, null, 1.2, array('one'=>1, 'two'=>2), 'I', null, 1, null, 3);

You are doing it wrong, if all of these parameters are really nullable and required for your function, and there is no way for you to split it up, then you _can_ refactor it like this:

 
<?php
/**
 * Quickly refactored to make it easier to use
 * @param array $array containing: (string)'has', (bool)'a', (int)'lot', (float)'of', (assoc_array)'parameters', (string)'I', (string)'wonder', (int)'what', (int)'they', (int)'do'
 */
function myFunction(array $array){
	//make sure we are only taking in parameters that we recognize...
	$has = isset($array['has'])? $array['has']:null;
	//array key exists because it is a fake boolean value... it has 3 possibilities
	$a = array_key_exists('a', $array)? $array['a']:null;
	$lot = isset($array['lot'])? $array['lot']:null;
	$of = isset($array['of'])? $array['of']:null;
	$parameters = isset($array['parameters'])? $array['parameters']:null;
	$I = isset($array['I'])? $array['I']:null;
	$wonder = isset($array['wonder'])? $array['hwonders']:null;
	$what = isset($array['what'])? $array['what']:null;
	$they = isset($array['they'])? $array['they']:null;
	$do = isset($array['do'])? $array['do']:null;
 
	//some magic
}
 
//it could also be written:
 
/**
 * Quickly refactored to make it easier to use
 * @param array $array containing: (string)'has', (bool)'a', (int)'lot', (float)'of', (assoc_array)'parameters', (string)'I', (string)'wonder', (int)'what', (int)'they', (int)'do'
 */
function myFunction(array $array){
	//make sure we are only taking in parameters that we recognize...
	$args = array('has', 'a', 'lot', 'of', 'parameters', 'I', 'wonder', 'what', 'they', 'do');
	foreach($args as $arg){
		$$arg = array_key_exists($arg, $array)? $array[$arg]:null;
	}
	//some magic
}
 
 
 
//this is how it would be called
//equivalent to:
//myfunction(null, false, null, 1.2, array('one'=>1, 'two'=>2), 'I', null, 1, null, 3);
myfunction(array('a'=> false, 'lot'=>1.2, 'parameters'=>array('one'=>1, 'two'=>2), 'I'=>'I', 'what'=>1, 'do'=>3));

It may be more to type, but it is harder to get it wrong when you are using named parameters. You don’t have to remember what each of the parameters do in their specific positions either so it is easier to understand the code as you quickly glance at it. Note that this is similar to the way that a lot of ruby functions are written, except we don’t have a short hand for named parameters like they do (it would be awesome if we did…):

 
myfunction(:a => false, :lot => 1.2, :parameters => { :one => 1, :two => 2 }, :I => 'I', :what => 1, :do => 3)

While this is definitely easier to read and remember, it is probably worth refactoring a function like this (as it is an extreme case) further because it is likely that you are doing way too many things within it.

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