When to use transients, when not to? - php

I'm using Wordpress and developed some site-specific plugins for it, additionally my theme is customized to fit the requirements of the plugins in the backend.
The last days I fiddled with transients in Wordpress. In some tutorials they're saying "If your're using custom queries and their results are cachable: Use a transient". Sounds good but I'm wondering when to use transients to get a real advantage.
I mean, even when using transients there have to be at least two queries in the background, haven't it? The first one for checking the validity, second one for the transient itself.
So is it really useful to use a transient i.e. for a custom WP_Query?
Thanks a lot for your help and thoughts.

Seems fairly straightforward. It's a literal class helper that allows you to store objects in a 'memcache' type fashion. You first set the transient
function do_something_here($callback_param = 'value'){
$key = 'do_something_' . $callback_param;//set the name of our transient equal to the value of the callback param being passed in the function.
$my_query = get_transient($myKey); //if we've stored this request before, then use it.
if($my_query !=== false){
//we found a previous existing version of this query. let's use it.
return $my_query;
}else{
//it doesn't exist, we need to build the transient.
//do our database querying here, global $wpdb; etc
//We are going to pretend our returned variable is 'george'
$value = george;
$length = 60*60*24; //how long do we want the transient to exist? 1 day here.
set_transient($key, $value, $length);
return $value;
}
}
Now that we have created our trigger and bound it to the name of '$key', we can access it anytime by using the exact value that key implies (which we declared earlier).
echo 'I wanted to do something, so : ' . do_something('value') . ' is what i did! ';
By utilizing this format you can hold queries in a 'cache' like world and use them to generate your responses. This is similar in a way to using 'trigger' events in MySql. Infact, this is a PORTION of a TECHNIQUE commonly referred to as long polling.

Related

Clickatell parseReplyCallback returning null?

I am trying to get a reply text message from Clickatell using their Rest API, when I call the parseReplyCallback function when their system posts to my page - it seems to be null or I am not sure how to get the variables it is returning. What I would like to do is have all of the variables returned insert into a SQL database so I can use it elsewhere.
I have tried quite a few things, using various styles of getting the variables such as $_POST, $results['text'], $results->text, and so forth each time I can't seem to get any information out of it. I can't just var_dump or anything because I can't see any backend or console so I am pretty much in the blind, hoping someone else is using this system and has it working fine.
require __DIR__.'/clickatell/src/Rest.php';
use clickatell\ClickatellException;
use clickatell\Rest;
$Rest = new Rest("j8VKw3sJTZuVfQGVC7jdhA");
// Incoming traffic callbacks (MO/Two Way callbacks)
$Rest->parseReplyCallback(function ($result) {
//mysqli_query($con,"INSERT INTO `SMSCHAT` (`text`) VALUES ('$result')");
$mesageId = mysqli_real_escape_string($con,$result['messageId']);
$text = mysqli_real_escape_string($con,$result['text']);
$replyMessageId = mysqli_real_escape_string($con,$result['replyMessageId']);
$to = mysqli_real_escape_string($con,$result['toNumber']);
$from = mysqli_real_escape_string($con,$result['fromNumber']);
$charset = mysqli_real_escape_string($con,$result['charset']);
$udh = mysqli_real_escape_string($con,$result['udh']);
$network = mysqli_real_escape_string($con,$result['network']);
$keyword = mysqli_real_escape_string($con,$result['keyword']);
$timestamp = mysqli_real_escape_string($con,$result['timestamp']);
//do mysqli_query
});
I'd like for it to break the result into individual variables (because I plan on doing other things such as an auto-reply, etc) and upload it to the SQL database scrubbed.
Either doesn't create the table entry or gives me a blank one altogether in that first test where I put the result in the text field.
From a Clickatell point of view, although we understand what you're asking - it's unfortunately outside the scope of support that we offer on our products.
If you would like more information on our REST API functionality, please feel free to find it here: https://www.clickatell.com/developers/api-documentation/rest-api-reply-callback/
If you don't succeed in setting up the callbacks, please feel free to log a support ticket here: https://www.clickatell.com/contact/contact-support/ and one of our team members will reach out and try to assist where possible.

Laravel store session in cookie

I have a website where the front page contains a search form with several fields.
When the user performs a search, I make an ajax call to a function in a controller.
Basically, when the user clicks on the submit button, I send an ajax call via post to:
Route::post('/search', 'SearchController#general');
Then, in the SearchController class, in the function general, I store the values received in a session variable which is an object:
Session::get("search")->language = Input::get("language");
Session::get("search")->category = Input::get("category");
//I'm using examples, not the real variables names
After updating the session variable, in fact, right after the code snippet shown above, I create (or override) a cookie storing the session values:
Cookie::queue("mysite_search", json_encode(Session::get("search")));
And after that operation, I perform the search query and send the results, etc.
All that work fine, but I'm not getting back the values in the cookie. Let me explain myself.
As soon as the front page of my website is opened, I perform an action like this:
if (!Session::has("search")) {
//check for a cookie
$search = Cookie::get('mysite_search');
if($search) Session::put("search", json_decode($search));
else {
$search = new stdClass();
$search->language = "any";
$search->category = "any";
Session::put("search", $search);
}
}
That seems to be always failing if($search) is always returning false, and as a result, my session variable search has always its properties language and category populated with the value any. (Again: I'm using examples, not the real variables names).
So, I would like to know what is happening here and how I could achieve what I'm intending to do.
I tried to put Session::put("search", json_decode($search)); right after $search = Cookie::get('mysite_search'); removing all the if else block, and that throws an error (the ajax call returns an error) so the whole thing is failling at some point, when storing the object in the cookie or when retieving it.
Or could also be something else. I don't know. That's why I'm here. Thanks for reading such a long question.
Ok. This is what was going on.
The problem was this:
Cookie::queue("mysite_search", json_encode(Session::get("search")));
Before having it that way I had this:
Cookie::forever("mysite_search", json_encode(Session::get("search")));
But for some reason, that approach with forever wasn't creating any cookie, so I swichted to queue (this is Laravel 4.2). But queue needs a third parameter with the expiration time. So, what was really going on is that the cookie was being deleted after closing the browser (I also have the session.php in app/config folder set to 'lifetime' => 0 and 'expire_on_close' => true which is exactly what I want).
In simple words, I set the expiration time to forever (5 years) this way:
Cookie::queue("mysite_search", json_encode(Session::get("search")), 2592000);
And now it seems to be working fine after testing it.

How to store search conditions with php and Codeigniter?

I have small problem.
I've coded a full website in php using CodeIgniter framework. One of my modules is search module, it contains text input with keyword and three select lists with filtering criterias.
That's ok, when I'm searching something - result's listing pagination is done via URL like that:
mysite.com/$keyword/$criteria1/$criteria2/$criteria3/$offset
works like a charm.
But when I'm entering into one of my images (it's image gallery) I want to have an option to go into NEXT and PREVIOUS image from my search results - the ones which I entered this image from.
I'm solving this case now in this way - I have session table called 'search_conditions' and I'm storing values of keyword and my three criterias there, but that's quite not comfortable, because why if someone opens second window and search something else there?
Then all of his searches in another windows or tabs are getting the same criteria - because with every new search, user overwrite the session value.
My next and previous functions:
public function next($count)
{
$search = $this->session->userdata('search_conditions'); //getting session table and overwriting it
$catid = isset($search['catid'])?$search['catid']:'0';
$brandid = isset($search['brandid'])?$search['brandid']:'0';
$prodid = isset($search['prodid'])?$search['prodid']:'0';
$keyword = isset($search['keyword'])?$search['keyword']:'';
$res = $this->search_model->main_search($keyword, $catid, $brandid, $prodid, $count, 1);
}
public function previous($count)
{
$search = $this->session->userdata('search_conditions');
$catid = isset($search['catid'])?$search['catid']:'0';
$brandid = isset($search['brandid'])?$search['brandid']:'0';
$prodid = isset($search['prodid'])?$search['prodid']:'0';
$keyword = isset($search['keyword'])?$search['keyword']:'';
$res = $this->search_model->main_search($keyword, $catid, $brandid, $prodid, $count-2, 1);
}
Can you recommend me some other, more comfortable solution, because this seems not to be good...
: )
Thank you!
Add an index to the $search_conditions variable:
$search_conditions[1]['catid']
$search_conditions[1]['brandid']
...
then refer to it with a controller's or config variable. This way you can allow one session to store multiple search conditions.
But I would recommend you drop storing the search condition in session. Instead, just pass it with the URI. Session data, in the case you describe, work as an intermediary; you don't need it. Use the Pagination Class and pass the search page number, not the direction (next or previous) to the URI.
Do not worry that the URI may look ugly - it only depends on what user searches for, and it's still friendly to share. Your only concern is if the GET string does not extend the limited length.
Pull the segments from the URI in your next() and previous() functions. Use the codeigniter URL helper. That should allow you to pass the different search criterion as variables to the next page, this would also remove your need to use the session.

php refactoring and better coding for php?

i have this process that is the heart of my app, that im creating, but for some reason i feel like its the worst way to do it(instinct) , and i wanted to see if thier is something wrong with this process, and am i approaching it in a bad way! p.s. the code works fine, just refactoring problem.
the process is:
users go to homepage, they see thier latest activities, by other site memebers(home.php),
//function to bring the latest activities from database
$results=function getUserUpdates($_SESSION['user_id'];
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($results))
{
//another function to format the activities in a social stream
echo formatUpdate($row['user_note'],$row['dt'],$row['picture'],$row['username'],$row['id'],$row['reply_id'],$row['reply_name'],$row['votes_up'],$row['votes_down']);
}
i have put the function codes in pastie.
formatUpdate function http://pastie.org/1213958
getUserUpdates function http://pastie.org/1213962
EDIT both functions are from different files they are included in home.php,
formatUpdate from functions.php
getUserUpdates from queries.php
First of all, it's good that you have separate functions for getting the data and for formatting the data. It's a good start toward refactoring your code. It makes it easier in the future: if you ever want to format your data differently, you can just expand your formatter.
Second, this is what coreyward meant by a lambda:
$results=function getUserUpdates($_SESSION['user_id'];
Remove the function keyword. You use function when you're defining a function. But here you're only calling one. (You defined it in queries.php.)
Third, I agree with webbiedave about the echo statements. A good way to avoid that: In the "heart" of your app, collect all the HTML into one place. Then, when you've collected everything you're going to display on the page, you can echo it all at once. This makes it a lot easier to keep track of what you're doing, and to remember the order of everything. It also makes it easier to add headers and footers, or do more formatting. Otherwise, if you have echo statements scattered around your code, it's a lot easier to let something slip that shouldn't be there.
Here's a very basic example of what I mean:
$html = '';
$results = getUserUpdates($_SESSION['user_id'];
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($results)) {
$fields = array(
'user_note' => $row['user_note'],
'dt' => $row['dt'],
'picture' => $row['picture'],
'username' => $row['username'],
'id' => $row['id'],
'reply_id' => $row['reply_id'],
'reply_name' => $row['reply_name'],
'votes_up' => $row['votes_up'],
'votes_down' => $row['votes_down'],
);
$html .= formatUpdate($fields);
}
// This way you can do whatever you want to $html here.
echo $html;
Also notice that I put all the fields from $row into an array and passed it to formatUpdate(). That has two advantages:
It's easier to read.
If you ever
want to change the fields that
formatUpdate deals with, you don't
have to worry about searching
through your code to change the
arguments every time you call it.
Firstly, I think you mean:
$results = getUserUpdates($_SESSION['user_id']);
In your getUserUpdates() function there is a redundant branch:
if ($username == $_SESSION['u_name']){
// return something
}
if ($username != $_SESSION['u_name']){
// return something else
}
You don't need the second if statement as any code run at that point will only be run if $username != $_SESSION['u_name'].
In my opinion, it's usually better not to have different functions directly echoing HTML up the stack (such as echoVote()). It's preferred to have functions return data and have the original caller echo it. This allows the caller to perform additional data massaging if desired.
Other than that, your code is fetching data, looping through and acting on the results which is pretty much standard fare.
I think your instinct is to be a little too harsh on yourself ;) There are improvements to be made but it's certainly not the worst way to do anything.

Using LDAP functions to get Active Directory tokenGroups attribute in PHP

Greetings,
I already have a working connection to the AD and can search and retrieve information from it. I've even developed a recursive method by which one can retrieve all groups for a given user. However, I'd like to avoid the recursion if possible. One way to do this is to get the tokenGroups attribute from the AD for the user, which should be a list of the SIDs for the groups that the specified user has membership, whether that membership be direct or indirect.
When I run a search for a user's AD information, though, the tokenGroups attribute isn't even in it. I tried specifically requesting that information (i.e., specifying it using the fourth parameter to ldap_search) but that didn't work, either.
Thanks,
David Kees
Solved my own problem and thought I'd put the answer here so that others might find it. The issue was using the ldap_search() function. The answer was to use the ldap_read() function instead of ldap_search(). The difference is the scope of the request. The search function uses a scope of "sub" (i.e., subtree) while the read function uses "base." The tokenGroups information can only be found when using a scope of "base" so using the correct PHP function was the key.
As I mentioned above, I was working from someone else code in perl to create my solution and the perl script used a function named "search" to do it's LDAP requests which lead me down wrong path.
Thanks to those who took a peek at the question!
--
As per the requests in the comments, here's the basics of the solution in code. I'm extracting from an object that I use so this might not be 100% but it'll be close. Also, variables not declared in this snipped (e.g. $server, $user, $password) are for you to figure out; I won't know your AD credentials anyway!
$ldap = ldap_connect($server);
ldap_bind($ldap, $user, $password);
$tokengroups = ldap_read($ldap, $dn, "CN=*", array("tokengroups")));
$tokengroups = ldap_get_entries($ldap, $tokengroups);
At this point, $tokengroups is our results as an array. it should have count index as well as some other information. To extract the actual groups, you'll need to do something like this:
$groups = array();
if($tokengroups["count"] > 0) {
$groups = $tokengroups[0]["tokengroups"];
unset($groups["count"]);
// if you want the SID's for your groups, you can stop here.
// if you want to decode the SID's then you can do something like this.
// the sid_decode() here: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.unpack.php#72591
foreach($groups as $i => &$sid) {
$sid = sid_decode($sid);
$sid_dn = ldap_read($ldap, "<SID=$sid>", "CN=*", array("dn"));
if($sid_dn !== false) {
$group = ldap_get_entries($ldap, $sid_dn);
$group = $group["count"] == 1 ? $group[0]["dn"] : NULL;
$groups[$i] = $group;
}
}
}
That's the basics. There's one caveat: you'll probably need to work with the individual or individuals who manage AD accounts at your organization. The first time I tried to get this running (a few years ago, so my memory is somewhat fuzzy) the account that I was given did not have the appropriate authorization to access the token groups information. I'm sure there are other ways to do this, but because I was porting someone else's code for this specific solution, this was how I did it.

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