[email protected]

" Below is a list of command line tricks I've found to be very useful in web development that a surprising number of web developers don't know about.



1. ln -s /some/destination name_of_link



This is pretty straightforward: it'll create a symbolic link from name_of_link to /some/destination. If I'm sitting in /www/matthew/ and I entered the above command, a new file will be created inside that directory that moves the user to /some/destination if they CD to name_of_link. (It's a shortcut, basically).



If I'm working on a web server where the docroot is buried deep in a directory structure, I'll often create a symbolic link in something like /www to save myself a few keystrokes when accessing it.



Also, apache won't follow symbolic links unless you tell it to do so using the following directive: Options +FollowSymLinks

2. tail -f /some/file



This tails a file: it'll read what's at the end and output it to your terminal. The -f parameter tells it to keep outputting as the file grows. I use this a lot when examining log files that are constantly being written to.

3. ctrl+z and bg



ctrl+z is the long lost brother of ctrl+c. It's a signal that tells the process to suspend execution, while ctrl+c terminates it. Ctrl+z is useful if you execute a process but you want to get control of your shell; it'll suspend the process and send it to the background. Think of ctrl+z like minimizing a window, except once it's minimized it's not doing anything anymore. If you want the process to stay in the background but continue running, that's where bg (background) comes in: typing bg once a process has been suspended makes the process resume but still keeps it in the background.



I often combine ctrl+z and bg with tail:



shell> perl -e 'while() { print "."; sleep(1); }' > bunch_of_dots.log



[hit ctrl+z, execution is suspended]



shell> bg [process is now in the background and running]

shell>tail -f bunch_of_dots.log [show me the printed dots]





4. fg and jobs



fg is used if you background a process but want to bring it to the foreground. If you have multiple processes in the background, type 'jobs' into your terminal to see them all. This will display a list of processes that are in the background with each process assigned a number (Note: these are not the same as pids). Typing fg [some number] will resume the process you sent to the background where [some number] matches the number reported by 'jobs.'



A good example of using fg is if you're working with an interactive program, such as the mysql command line, but you want to drop back to the shell.



mysql>SELECT foo FROM bar;



mysql> [hit ctrl+z]



[1]+ Stopped



shell>pwd /home/matt/stuff



shell>jobs



[1]+ Stopped mysql -u matt -p matts_db



shell>fg 1



mysql>[hooray, we're back in the mysql command line]





You can omit the job number when running 'fg,' it'll just foreground the first process you sent to the background. So if you only have one process in the background you can just type 'fg' without any extra numbers.





5. Hit the freakin tab key!



Assuming your shell is configured properly, hitting tab will auto-complete with whatever it thinks you need. I've encountered a surprising number of developers who don't know about this and move around servers at glacial speeds. If you aren't familiar with the tab auto-complete, get to a terminal right now and type cd [tap the tab key], you should see a list of available files or commands.



6. scp



This securely copies a file across a network using SSH for data transfer. For example:



scp [email protected]:~/secret_stuff /some/destination



This would connect via SSH to example.com as the user 'matt' and copy the file 'secure_stuff' from my home directory on example.com to /some/destination on the machine I'm currently on. It's saved me a ton of time when transferring sensitive files from one machine to another.

..."

Web Developer command line tricks

"Pop-Up windows are a pain in the lower back to use. Years of abuse by advertisers, malicious attackers and phishing attempts have conditioned users to close them immediately or turn on their third party pop-up blocking tool or the browser option to do the same.
Yes, there is a difference between unsolicited pop-ups and pop-ups that are necessary for the web site to work. Or is there?
The main reason clients give us when they ask for pop-ups is that they "don't want the users to leave the page" and this is not reason enough to use a new browser instance.
With today's scripting techniques you can keep the user on the site and avoid pop-ups. Just try it on this photo of a confused puppy or even a document containing Terms and Conditions.
DOMinclude is a script that creates this effect: If JavaScript is available the linked file gets shown in a new layer - if it is an image just as the image, if not inside an IFRAME. DOMinclude automatically positions the popup where the original link is and adds a text prefix to the original link telling the user how to hide the layer again."

DOMinclude - Kissing Pop-Ups good-bye

DOMinclude - Kissing Pop-Ups good-bye

"Overview
Lightbox JS is a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page. It's a snap to setup and works on all modern browsers.
What's New in Version 2.0
Image Sets: group related images and navigate through them with ease
Visual Effects: fancy pants transitions
Backwards Compatibility: yes! "

Lightbox2

Lightbox2

"Apache is an open-source HTTP server implementation. It is the most popular web server on the Internet. The December 2005 Web Server Survey conducted by Netcraft [1] shows that about 70% of the web sites on Internet are using Apache.
1. Apache server performance
Apache server performance can be improved by adding additional hardware resources such as RAM, faster CPU etc. But, most of the time, the same result can be achieved by custom configuration of the server. This article looks into getting maximum performance out of Apache with the existing hardware resources, specifically on the Linux systems. Of course, it is assumed that there is enough hardware resources, especially enough RAM that the server isn't swapping frequently. First two sections look into various Compile-Time and Run-Time configuration options. Run-Time section assumes that Apache is compiled with prefork MPM. HTTP compression and caching is discussed next. Finally, using separate servers for serving static and dynamic contents are being discussed. Basic knowledge of compiling and configuring Apache, and Linux are assumed. "

Configuring Apache for maximum Performance

Configuring Apache for maximum Performance

"One of the few things that I find lacking in PHP is the ability to report the progress of a file upload. This means that file uploads, especially uploads of larger files, can be extremely frustrating for end users when they don't know if the upload is progressing or if it has stalled or if it has even started. There are two ways around this. One is to patch PHP, Pdoru provides such a patch. Not everyone can patch PHP though. You can't use a patch if you're on a shared server, if you want to use ready-made binaries, if you don't want to risk stability by using a patch or if you just don't want to have to remember to apply the patch again every time you upgrade PHP. The other option is to use a perl script to receive the file when it's uploaded. This is the approach used by MegaUpload. MegaUpload is what I have based my solution on, but I have added asynchronous file upload support and an AJAX upload progress bar, instead of the refreshing popup used by MegaUpload."

AJAX PHP File Upload Progress Bar

AJAX PHP File Upload Progress Bar

Eine Präsentation der Architektur von Flickr.com

Flickr.com Architektur

Flickr.com Architektur

"The focus of this article will be to show you ways of doing things commonly reserved for innerHTML with only DOM methods. In each example, the innerHTML method will be shown, followed by its DOM based alternative. "

Alternatives to innerHTML

Alternatives to innerHTML

10 nützliche CSS Tipps

Ten CSS tricks you may not know | evolt.org

Ten CSS tricks you may not know | evolt.org

"Web Application Security

Web Security ist ein wichtiges Thema, nicht nur wenn sensible Daten übermittelt werden. Häufig können, durch Nachlässigkeit bei Planung und Umsetzung einer Webanwendung, Angriffe erfolgreich durchgeführt werden. Vor allem die Unkenntnis der unterschiedlichen Angriffsmethoden und deren Wirkungsweise, sowie ein fehlendes oder minimales Sicherheitsbewusstsein lassen Angreifer Erfolg haben.
Sogar bekannte Open Source-Projekte wie PHP-Nuke weisen eine erhebliche Anzahl und Arten von Vulnerabilities (Schwachstellen/Sicherheitslücken) auf. Der Vorteil jedoch ist, dass man daraus lernen kann, um ähnliche Fehler zukünftig zu vermeiden und gegebenenfalls solche in seinen Anwendungen zu fixen. Das bedarf unter anderem einer genauen Analyse des Quellcodes und Hintergrundwissen."

Web Security ist ein wichtiges Thema, nicht nur wenn sensible Daten

Sicherheit von Web Applikationen

Sicherheit von Web Applikationen

Sicherheit von Web Applikationen

Vernünftige Ratschläge zur Performance-Optimierung von Webseiten

10 Realistic Steps to a Faster Web Site

10 Realistic Steps to a Faster Web Site

"MVC and web apps: oil and water

by Harry Fuecks

Roll back the clock by two years. That's before AJAX, before Web 2.0, before Rails. Where were we then? Well pondering whether MVC was really such a good idea after all. Continuing from there:

What is MVC?

For a long answer, the best I've seen (for web heads) is Jeff's analysis here. There more to be found via Wikipedia and yet more on the old C2 wiki.

A short answer, for web applications (with a PHP slant), is probably a way to organise code based around the following ideas;

Model: those functions that wrap calls to your db
View: the templates / scripts that output HTML
* Controller: the stuff that examines variables like $_GET and $_POST and works out what to do next

What's important to remember is there's no absolute definition of MVC and there are many grey areas for interpretation and yet more when it comes to using it online. That in itself means, if you're building a framework, you just need to put the words Model, View and Controller in there somewhere and you're probably as right as anyone else. A while back John Lim dared to ask Is MVC over-designed crap?, I suspect coming for the gut instinct of an experienced programmer. In a later update he wryly commented;"

MVC and web apps: oil and water

MVC and web apps: oil and water

"CSS FOR BAR GRAPHS

Having a working knowledge of XHTML and CSS when developing applications is a big help in knowing what can be done client-side and what should be generated server-side.

Recently we've had to tackle some interesting visualizations which we coded in XHTML and CSS. The method we used, while fairly simple, was a big help to the engineer and created a very flexible and inexpensive solution. We thought we would share our solution and code in case anyone else ran against similar situations."

CSS for Bar Graphs

CSS for Bar Graphs

"A list of all the best javascript libraries on the net... " - Scheint eine ziemlich vollstaendige Liste zu sein

Quicksilverscreen.com: Javascript Libraries Roundup

Quicksilverscreen.com: Javascript Libraries Roundup

"Rewriting dynamic URLs into friendly URLs

Let's suppose you are building a small database driven website or web-based application which you need search engine covery for. And this isn't the only reason why you would choose to create a web application with search engine friendly URLs. Another important aspect is the usability of this feature. To achieve this, you could use Apache's mod-rewrite module. This would be one way. Another way would be to implement a sort of URL rewrite engine into your web application's engine."

Rewriting dynamic URLs into friendly URLs - Valentin Agachi: web developer

Rewriting dynamic URLs into friendly URLs - Valentin Agachi: web developer

"Tooltip.js is the next generation in Tooltips; using the Web 2.0 approach of doing a simple thing, and doing it well.
WTH?
Tooltip.js is a simple class to make it possible to add tooltips to your page. "

Tooltip.js

Tooltip.js