Maybe I’m just keeping this for my own future reference, but maybe someone else out there could use it too. 

The function generates a string containing numbers and letters only (it’s easily customizable to contain other chars).  The form just creates inputs with random names from the string generator and random values from the string generator.


function randomString() {
        $chars = '0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ';
        for ($i=0; $i<rand(10,20); $i++) { $string .= $chars[rand(0,strlen($chars))]; }
        return $string;
}

?><form action="" method="POST"><?php
        for ($i=1; $i<=rand(5,10); $i++) { ?><p /><input name="<?php echo randomString(); ?>" value="<?php echo randomString(); ?>" /><?php }
        ?><p /><input type="submit" /><?php
?></form><?php


It’s easy to find the documentation to do PayPal Express Checkout, but to find that one little field where you send an alternate user as the recipient of the payments, well that’s downright impossible.  It is not in the docs (at least not as of this writing 5-18-2011).

How simple is it? Very — the variable is “SUBJECT”

Yes, you specify an alternate “SUBJECT” of the transaction.

Normally your SetExpressCheckout request looks something like:

METHOD=<method_name>&VERSION=<version>&PWD=<API_Password>&USER=<API_UserName>&SIGNATURE=<API_Signature>&...

Now it will look like this:

METHOD=<method_name>&VERSION=<version>&PWD=<API_Password>&USER=<API_UserName>&SIGNATURE=<API_Signature>&SUBJECT=<Payee_PayPal_Account>...

Payee_PayPal_Account is the email address/username the user uses to log in.

Hope this helps!  Took us valuable time to find …

I use this all the time as I don’t know of a better Linux alternative, but it’s simple enough.  Just put save it as “/sbin/find-file-with” with executable permissions, and use it like so:

find-file-with sometext

If a matching file is found, it will print the full path of the file as well as the lines matching using grep (so the “some text” is passed directly into grep if you need help on how to vary your search)

Obviously some advancements can be performed, but without this script, I always just type (each time):

for I in `find ./*` ; do echo $I; cat $I | grep sometext; done

This script just keeps me from filling the screen with directory errors and unmatching files.

As a side note, if you want to include quotes (as in grep “some text”), you need to escape them:

find-file-with \"some text\"

Hope others find it useful … but the main reason it is here is so I have an online backup. 

#!/bin/sh
echo "";
for I in `find ./*` ; do
        if [ ! -d "$I" ] ; then
                if [ -e "$I" ] ; then
                        CMD="cat $I | grep $* | wc -c";
                        C=`eval $CMD`
                        if [ $C -gt 0 ] ; then
                                echo "\033[1m[ "$I" ]\033[0m"
                                cat $I | grep $* -n --color=auto;
                                echo ""
                        fi;
                fi;
        fi;
done;

This post is more for my own future reference, because seriously, what keywords would anyone use to find this?  Anyway, the solution is just to edit this file:

/wp-includes/ms-settings.php

Find the if clause containing “wp-signup.php” — the phrase only exists in the file in one place, so just do a text search.

It is actually nested in two if clauses.

Simply change:

if (defined('NOBLOGREDIRECT')) {

to

if ($_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] == "mydomain.com") {
$destination = 'http://www.mydomain.com'.$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
} else if (defined('NOBLOGREDIRECT')) {

You can obviously do other variations if you need more advanced redirection, but this is where the magic happens.  Enjoy!

It took my quite a long time to figure out how to get it to change to that directory then stay logged in, even though it is rather simple.  It also took my a long time again recently because I reinstalled without backing that up.  So, this post is mainly so I don’t have to do that again, but maybe it will help others too.

The trick is to make SSH behave like a terminal (with the oft-overlooked -t flag), then to execute a login bash shell using normal SSH command execution.

So:

ssh -t ‘cd /path/to/go/to; bash -l’

So for me, my shortcut in the gnome taskbar is

gnome-terminal –tab -e “ssh -t ‘cd /path; bash -l’” –tab -e “ssh -t ‘cd /path; bash -l’” –tab -e “ssh -t ‘cd /path; bash -l’”

There — saved myself (and you) some time!

For users like me, however, there is an equally stupid result, and that is that VSFTP apparently disabled all FTP write commands in new versions.  Are you running VSFTP and using FTP to do your WordPress upgrades?

Well just edit your /etc/vsftpd.conf (exact location may vary by distro) and uncomment the line:

#write_enable=YES

(Just remove the #, save, and restart VSFTP.)

This worked for me, and I just figured it out on my own.  Stupid, yes, but for those of use who have become search-engine-instant-success-addicts, impossible to find.  Hopefully not so for you.

Anyway, it is not enabled by default, so if you want to take advantage of the functions on your Ubuntu LAMP server, you might spend hours searching the web for that magic aptitude command.  But, as far as I can tell, it doesn’t exist.

Luckily, I stumbled across this article on the Ubuntu forums, so I’m dedicating a post here with the hopes that other will find it more easily.

Please note that you’ll probably need build-essentials and a few other source compilation basics, but as long as you have that, the following code will get you what you want.

First, in your home directory:

mkdir php
cd php
apt-get source php5
cd php5-(WHATEVER_RELEASE)/ext/pcntl
phpize
./configure
make

Then:

cp modules/pcntl.so /usr/lib/php5/WHEVER_YOUR_SO_FILES_ARE/
echo "extension=pcntl.so" > /etc/php5/conf.d/pcntl.ini

FYI: “make install” does not appear to put the files in the correct place.

Btw, please direct any thanks/praise to skout23 on the Ubuntu forums.

So, while I have to applaud FedEx for the granularity and versatility of the API they have exposed, it has caused me severe headaches due to the PHP SimpleXML issues it brings up with SOAP envelopes — particularly nested soap envelopes.

Long story short, the jist of this post is to help others deal with the responses they receive from the FedEx servers (if, like me, their pre-packaged methods do not implement tidily into your application structure).

Here is a sample response of a rate request (NOTE: this is a “Warning” response, only here for demo purposes):

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
    <env:Header xmlns:env="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" />
    <env:Body xmlns:env="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
        <v8:RateReply xmlns:v8="http://fedex.com/ws/rate/v8">
            <v8:HighestSeverity>WARNING</v8:HighestSeverity>
            <v8:Notifications>
                <v8:Severity>WARNING</v8:Severity>
                <v8:Source>crs</v8:Source>
                <v8:Code>556</v8:Code>
                <v8:Message>There are no valid services available. </v8:Message>
                <v8:LocalizedMessage>There are no valid services available. </v8:LocalizedMessage>
            </v8:Notifications>
            <v8:TransactionDetail xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/">
                <v8:CustomerTransactionId>TC05_Rate_Package_Groups_POS</v8:CustomerTransactionId>
            </v8:TransactionDetail>
            <v8:Version xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/">
                <v8:ServiceId>crs</v8:ServiceId>
                <v8:Major>8</v8:Major>
                <v8:Intermediate>0</v8:Intermediate>
                <v8:Minor>0</v8:Minor>
            </v8:Version>
        </v8:RateReply>
    </env:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>
    

There are lots of ways you might envision accessing that precious “RateReply” tag, but to keep it simple and avoid inferences, you get to it like this:

$xml = simplexml_load_string ($xml_from_above);
$xml->children(‘http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/’)->Body->children(‘http://fedex.com/ws/rate/v8′)->RateReply;

I do suppose this is obvious enough, but believe me, the nuances that can throw it off can still cause you to inadvertently lose ridiculous amounts of time on it.

Furthermore, if you prefer to do direct PHP cURL XML calls (which you probably do given that you’re reading this), you’ll find that FedEx is not terribly interested in your type of programmer. To find a simple sample XML call, you’ll have a tough time (although I managed to find it in the WSDL downloadable ZIP). However, this is a very basic call. To add additional data (such as the exotic field that apparently no one would ever think to use — “InsuredValue”) — this field has the form (EXACTLY, stuff in brackets is what can be changed) “<InsuredValue><Currency>[currencytype]</Currency><Amount>[float]</Amount></InsuredValue>”

The “InsuredValue” node/field must go immediately before the “Weight” node in the “RequestedPackageLineItems” node. (This of course reference FedEx API v8 — things may be different in future releases.)

Then you’ll get to programming and realize that the documentation is pretty crappy, but specifically I want to address the idiosyncrasies of the USPS “test” environment.  Effectively, what USPS means when they say “test” is not a test of robustness of your application, but simply whether or not your application can build a sample request (an EXACT sample request), and send it to their server.  Yeah — it’s like asking a math teacher to write the numbers 1 to 30 on a sheet of paper (in order) before he/she can get hired.

The problem is, the USPS docs don’t tell you this, nor do they show you the sample request.  So, for others who are about to embark on a few hour journey finding these details on Google (or worse, emailing USPS directly …eeek) I’m going to sum up a few facts here.

The most laborious for me so far is the one I already mentioned above.  For a rate request, the docs show you a RateV3Request, but in testing you can only use a RateV2 request (which does not support package dimensions).  Also, you must use the zip codes 10022 and 20008 for origination and zip, as well as 10 lbs. 5 oz. for the weight, and “LARGE” for the size.  Everything else (LAUGH) you have leeway with.

If you don’t use these exact values, you’ll get responses like “Please enter a valid zip code for the sender” (which of course makes you think you wrote the XML incorrectly) or “The package size must be ‘Regular’, ‘Large’, or ‘Oversize.’” (even though you have “regular” quite clearly in the request.

The advice is to get to production as soon as possible, though why USPS would design things this way is beyond me, but them’s the cards, you gotta play ‘em.

I will add more here as I find them obstaclicious enough (yeah I just made up that word).

Amendment 1:  I should add that the issues about the documentation not mentioning the “canned” requests is only applicable to the PDF documentation.  It is stated quite clearly in the HTML versions.  Go figure …

My rejection was simply:

Hello Jeremy,

Thank you for your interest in Google AdSense. Unfortunately, after
reviewing your application, we’re unable to accept you into Google AdSense
at this time.

We did not approve your application for the reasons listed below.

Issues:

- Unacceptable site content

Looking around their restrictions, I really could not find a solution, as I couldn’t find any rule that I explicitly violated.  I posted a request for insight on the forums, and a very insightful user (wasaweb) pointed out my extensive duplicate content on http://jeremytharp.com/ and http://www.coffeecuphalfmoons.com/.  And it’s true — I use my blog’s rss to feed much of the content on my music site.

Since I want to keep the sites separate, I saw no reasonable solution, but then I discovered that recently Google began allowing cross-domain canonical URLs.  Eureka!  I simply set the canonical URLs on the pages on jeremytharp.com that fed from coffeecuphalfmoons.com to the appropriate page that fed the same content on coffeecuphalfmoons.com.  When I resubmitted the AdSense application, it was approved!

Keep in mind that there are a LOT of reasons you might get rejected from AdSense, but given that this was very simply successful, I thought I would share.

I also noticed an immediate reorganization of my site:jeremytharp.com results on Google (for the better).  I’m hoping it has some positive effects on PR on both pages as well.