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Changing a Microsoft Office Product Key

April 21st, 2009

I just had a problem at work whereby the version of office installed in the last 30 days needed activating and the product key was not working. Luckily we have several Office keys sitting in the server room so I set about trying to change the key on the machine without having to reinstall. This means you don’t need to uninstall/reinstall Office which will take half an hour. This took me 2 minutes :)

After a short Google search I came across a Microsoft article that told me exactly how to do it. Here are the steps I took:

  1. Close any Microsoft Office Applications
  2. Open the registry (Start -> Run -> regedit)
  3. Find the appropriate office installation key under  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \Software\Microsoft\Office followed by your version
    • Office XP ->…\10.0\Registration
    • Office 2003 -> …11.0\Registration
    • Office 2007 -> …\12.0\Registration
  4. In one of the subfolders you will see a product name field. Select the subfolder with your Office name in it (IE: Microsoft Office 2003)
  5. Delete the following key names:
    • DigitalProductID
    • ProductID
  6. Close the registry (no need to look for a save button, there isn’t one!)
  7. Open up any Office Application and you will be prompted for your product key and then to activate.

Thanks to Microsoft for writing a clear and concise how-to for a change without referring you to various knowledgebase articles. I used the following site for reference: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/895456

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Posted in Time Savers, Tutorials, Windows

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Turning an Array or Object into XML using PHP

March 25th, 2009

I have read a fair few tutorials written by others using classes and DOM functions to create XML from arrays. But what happens if you have an older PHP installation or prefer to keep things really simple as I do.

The following function declarations generate an XML string from an associative array. In my scripts that use it, it’s usually coupled with a download function so that XML is generated on the fly and then downloaded to a file. The main advantage of this is that you can write a basic import script using the SimpleXML library to restore the array at any time which makes it perfect for use as part of a backup/restore system.

WordPress stores alot of it’s sitewide data in a table called wp_options which stores a named key and a value string for each piece of information. Plugins can also use this table by using the add_option, update_option, delete_option and get_option functions passing values, arrays or objects along with a key name. This isn’t an ideal data structure but does mean that plugin writers can easily store information without bloating the database with unnecessary and often badly designed tables.

The Code..

function generate_xml_from_array($array, $node_name) {
	$xml = '';

	if (is_array($array) || is_object($array)) {
		foreach ($array as $key=>$value) {
			if (is_numeric($key)) {
				$key = $node_name;
			}

			$xml .= '<' . $key . '>' . "\n" . generate_xml_from_array($value, $node_name) . '</' . $key . '>' . "\n";
		}
	} else {
		$xml = htmlspecialchars($array, ENT_QUOTES) . "\n";
	}

	return $xml;
}

function generate_valid_xml_from_array($array, $node_block='nodes', $node_name='node') {
	$xml = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>' . "\n";

	$xml .= '<' . $node_block . '>' . "\n";
	$xml .= generate_xml_from_array($array, $node_name);
	$xml .= '</' . $node_block . '>' . "\n";

	return $xml;
}

Usage

You can use the above functions by generating an array or object as normal and then using the following code. The function returns the XML and you can then do with it as you wish.

$xml = generate_valid_xml_from_array($array);

Things to consider

XML doesn’t allow for numeric tags so any numbers are replaced by the content of the $node_name variable. XML also doesn’t allow for certain special characters within it’s tags and ,for this reason, the htmlspecialchars function is passed over the raw data before it is placed into the string.

You can, however make use of cdata tags which tells XML readers to essentially ‘ignore whats coming next’. See the w3schools explanation of cdata here: http://www.w3schools.com/XML/xml_cdata.asp. There is no right or wrong way to escape data but if you have problems with my script then factor in the cdata tags replacing the htmlspecialchars call and see how you get on.

Alternatively feel free to contact me by commenting on this post or using the contact form and I will work with you to get your script working.

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Posted in PHP, Plugins, Time Savers, Tutorials, Wordpress

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A simple ‘Where Am I?’ using MaxMind Geolocation

March 9th, 2009

MaxMind seem to be the only company that offer some level of free geolocation. You do, however, have to delve into their site (or google it) to find the Open Source section where you can download the free binary database and look at the documentation. To give MaxMind some credit though their documentation is excellent and examples are offered in many programming languages.

So why this blog post?
Well firstly to promote MaxMinds service and willingness to provide a free database to all (even if it is a cunning ploy to sign people up to the paid version) and secondly to extend the PHP example somewhat and help others to understand what’s going on.

The database is essentially a huge lookup table and the associated PHP file will parse the binary file into something a little more searchable. They release a new version of this database monthly so in theory if you have a CRON job setup to fetch the file (or a reminder if you want something a little simpler) then staying up to date couldn’t be easier.

So… A code example and integration information

With any system like this, Integration is the hardest part. Getting their code sample shoehorned into place within your code and making sure that the database is updated regularly are things that might put some people off a bit.

The result of having the PHP include and the database (free version is 1 megabyte) is that you can then pass an IP address into a function and it will return the country in which the user resides. The following block of code is a class based version of the sample.php file that maxmind have supplied in their PHP examples section.

define ('GEOIP_BIN_PATH', '/path/to/GeoIP.dat');
$geoip = new geoip_class();

class geoip_class {
	private $gi = false;

	function __construct($bin_path = GEOIP_BIN_PATH) {
		require_once('geoip.include.php');
		$this->gi = geoip_open($bin_path, GEOIP_STANDARD);
	}

	function __destruct() {
		$this->gi = geoip_close($this->gi);
	}

	function country_code($ip) {
		return geoip_country_code_by_addr($this->gi, $ip);
	}

	function country_name($ip) {
		return geoip_country_name_by_addr($this->gi, $ip);
	}

	function where_am_i_name() {
		return $this->country_name($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
	}

	function where_am_i_code() {
		return $this->country_code($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
	}

	function where_am_i() {
		$return = array();
		$return['name'] = $this->country_name($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
		$return['code'] = $this->country_code($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);

		return $return;
	}
}

The class has a few more helper methods inside it but it is still essentially what maxmind had intended from their example. Using the above code will do nothing at present except for instantiate a new version of the geoip_class class. However the advantage of using a class like this is that it will always work when used in a situation where you can’t control the other code that might be running at the same time.

For example, if this were to be used within a WordPress plugin then technically the blog owner could be using another plugin that declares and uses the same functions which would cause a fatal error thus killing the site.

Usage

Adding this code into yours now couldn’t be simpler because all you need to do is update the define (at the top of my example), download the latest DAT file, and use the following ‘Where am I’ example as a guide.

$geoip = new geoip_class();
echo $geoip->where_am_i_name();

Updating the database file

There are a couple of ways to do this but here is a simple bash script (again an updated version of MaxMinds WGET example) to update the file (only when necessary) every time it’s called.

#!/bin/bash

UNGZIPPED_FILE=GeoIP.dat
GZIP_FILE=GeoIP.dat.gz
REMOTE_PATH=http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLiteCountry/
LOCAL_PATH=/tmp/
LOCAL_FINAL_PATH=/www/vhtdocs/geo_ip/ #update this to your directory of choice

cd $LOCAL_PATH
wget -N -q $REMOTE_PATH$GZIP_FILE
gunzip $GZIP_FILE
cp -f $UNGZIPPED_FILE $LOCAL_FINAL_PATH$UNGZIPPED_FILE

exit

The above example will get the file from MaxMind and copy it to a path of your choice updating any existing files that are there or adding it if it isn’t. It could do with having some error checking adding for example if the file failed to download or the permissions are incorrect on the copy path. However, use it as an example and extend as appropriate but as long as you run it as a root user and all destination directories exist then you will be fine.

It could be simply added to your CRONTAB on a daily or monthly schedule and you can forget about it forever (or at least until either the location of your local DAT file changes or they relocate the remote version). Make sure that if you do use CRONTAB to add it onto that of a priviledged user who has access to all the locations specified in the file.

Resources

Here are a few key pages on MaxMinds site that I used to compile this tutorial

http://www.maxmind.com/app/php

http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/api/php/

http://www.maxmind.com/app/geolitecountry

http://www.maxmind.com/app/installation

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Posted in Geolocation, PHP, Time Savers, Tutorials

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Subversion server sertup and configuration for dummies

March 7th, 2009

For those of you that don’t know what it is, Subversion (or SVN for short) is a popular open source version control system used all over the world. Previously people have used other systems like CVS however SVN seems to now be the standard. Firstly here is a little information about clients, skip past it for the server section.

Clients

An SVN client is (obviously) a piece of software that allows you to interact with a central ‘repository’ (or repositories if you work on version controlled files from multiple sources). They facilitate communication and interaction with the SVN server, actions like ‘checking out’ repositories, ‘committing’ your changes and ‘merging’ in other people changes to your own local copy.

This might be a little basic for this tutorial so I shall move swiftly onto client software. The Subversion project is hosted by tigris.org who release the source code for Subversion itself. Volunteers port the code onto different platforms. I can only recommend the software I have used to they are as follows:

  • TortoiseSVN – A free and very popular windows client with Explorer integration
  • SCPlugin – A free, yet buggy, Mac client whose advantage is integration with Finder
  • Zigversion – A Mac client which is free for personal use. No Finder integration (to my knowledge)

Server

This section will detail how to install and configure a Subversion repository on a Unix based system. It assumes that the ‘yum’ package is installed however for those of you who don’t have it or are unaware of what it does then please read Valerie Aurora’s Linux Basics guide where there is a helpful section called ‘Finding and Installing Software’.

First things first, install subversion and its dependancies using yum. This is a nice one liner to get the job done for you.

yum -y install apr apr-utils http-devel mod_dav_svn subversion

Yes it was that easy! One command just installed Subversion and it’s dependancies (let me know if i have missed any). The next thing to do is configure a new repository and setup access using htaccess.

The first thing to do is to create a new repository. For this tutorial I will be using ‘/usr/local/svn’ as a place to store repositories however you can put it anywhere you like on the file system.

Firstly, create the directory ‘svn’ using the mkdir command (within /usr/local/ :) ) and then chown it recursively to apache:apache. Move into it and use the following command to set up your first repository (which in this case is called test but obviously it can be anything you choose):

svnadmin create test

The above install process also adds a new config file into the apache conf.d directory (/etc/httpd/conf.d/). The config file is called subversion.conf, within which is an example block to uncomment to set up http access to the respository and set up htaccess permissions.

The most basic example of what to put in this file is below. It will set up a virtual subdirectory of your website so try to either make the name unique or not use the name on any of your sites on the same server. This example will set up a subdirectory called ‘svn’ so if your site is http://127.0.0.1 then your Subversion path will be http://127.0.0.1/svn

<Location /svn>i
	DAV svn
	SVNParentPath /usr/local/svn
</Location>

After making any changes to this file (and any file served by apache for that matter) then you must restart apache for them to take effect. You can then view your repository in your browser and assuming you see a blank page with something that resembles ‘Revision 0:’ or the name of your repository as a link then you are ready to start using it.

For those that run multiple sites using VirtualHost directives then the above section of code can be included within one as per the example below which should create access to Subversion on a site named ‘svn.localhost’.

<VirtualHost *:80>
	DocumentRoot /usr/local/svn
	ServerName svn.localhost
	<Location /svn>
		DAV svn
		SVNParentPath /usr/local/svn
	</Location>
</VirtualHost>

Access Control

You may want to configure access to your repository allowing only certain people and groups to have different levels of access. Subversion allows a couple of ways to do this but the most common seems to be htaccess. Configuring this is more or less the same as configuring htaccess. See the example below:

AuthType Basic
AuthName "Subversion"
AuthUserFile "/etc/httpd/conf.d/svn_passwd"
Require valid-user

The above 4 lines can be slotted in beween the ‘<Location>…</Location>’ tags. It tells Apache not to allow access to anyone except those that have their crudentials within a file (in passwd format) at the location specified. The ‘AuthName’ line is optional, all it does it put a name onto the box that pops up asking for login information.

The file that I have called svn_passwd can be situated anywhere on the system however it would be sensible NOT to put it anywhere that can be served by any of your websites. Generate the ‘svn_passwd’ file using the following command if it doesn’t already exist.

htpasswd -cm /etc/httpd/conf.d/svn_passwd admin

You will then be prompted for a password for the user and once entered (twice?), after Apache has been restarted you won’t be able to get access to your repositories without those details. The name of the user you choose for this doesn’t have to be a system user and if it is (like admin for example) then the password you use doesn’t have to match its counterpart.

After restarting Apache again you will be only be able to access your repository with a correct set of credentials defined in the htpasswd file.

That concludes the tutorial for now. I hope that I have given you a good round knowledge of Subversion server setup which in turn will enable you to easily run your own version control system. There will likely be snags along the way, there always are. If in doubt then Google it! or ask me (who will likely Google it anyway :) )

Resources

http://svnbook.red-bean.com

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Posted in Mac, Subversion, Tutorials, Windows

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SQL Import from a file using PHP

March 4th, 2009

On seeing the title of this post your first uncontrollable outburst may be ‘Why on earth would I want to do that?‘. On further reading, you may decide that PHP is the way to get tables created from within an automated install process (WordPress plugin activation or PHP based software ‘installation’). It may trigger another outburst when you see that the code I am about to paste in is more than a single line long (which would be all it would take using the PHP exec() command).

Why not use the Exec command?

Alot of developers cringe at the thought of the exec command in PHP, others have disabled it due to ‘security issues’. My reason for not using it is because my script doesnt just import SQL. It can do two very important things for me:

  • Prioritise the import
  • Prefix the table names

Prioritising the import isn’t essential but it means that your SQL file can be a mess of random statements and no matter where the INSERTs are, they will be grouped and run last to allow the CREATE statements a chance to work.

Prefixing the table names is almost self explanatory. Wordress, which I wrote this script for, allows Database prefixes to be used when setting up a blog. It only makes sense that to avoid conflict when more than one blog is in the same database to prefix my tables with the same string.

How does it all work?

For those interested the code above simply does the following:

  • Imports the file from an absolute path passed to the function into an array split by line
  • Loops through the lines looking for starting words defined as SQL statement keywords in an array and generates a list of complete statements
  • Removes all comments as it goes (comment defined as any line starting with ‘–’
  • Looks for the first backtick character (`) which MUST be present (at least around the table name) and inserts the WordPress Database Prefix
  • Inserts the completed query into an array grouped by those that are INSERT queries and those that aren’t
  • Sorts the new array by a priority figure (new numbers can be added to mark muti-level priority if you like)
  • Runs the queries

Integration

To integrate it into your WordPress plugin then simply copy/paste the code into yours and pass it an absolute path on plugin activation. I also use it to drop tables on a ‘hard’ deactivation by passing it an SQL file full of DROP commands. To integrate it into your NON WordPress site then simply remove all references to $wpdb and substitute ‘$wpdb->prefix’ with your own string or variable name.

The Code

Here is the code although I have also provided it in download form: MySQL Import Script (1.14 kB)

function mysql_import($filename) {
	global $wpdb;

	$return = false;
	$sql_start = array('INSERT', 'UPDATE', 'DELETE', 'DROP', 'GRANT', 'REVOKE', 'CREATE', 'ALTER');
	$sql_run_last = array('INSERT');

	if (file_exists($filename)) {
		$lines = file($filename);
		$queries = array();
		$query = '';

		if (is_array($lines)) {
			foreach ($lines as $line) {
				$line = trim($line);

				if(!preg_match("'^--'", $line)) {
					if (!trim($line)) {
						if ($query != '') {
							$first_word = trim(strtoupper(substr($query, 0, strpos($query, ' '))));
							if (in_array($first_word, $sql_start)) {
								$pos = strpos($query, '`')+1;
								$query = substr($query, 0, $pos) . $wpdb->prefix . substr($query, $pos);
							}

							$priority = 1;
							if (in_array($first_word, $sql_run_last)) {
								$priority = 10;
							} 

							$queries[$priority][] = $query;
							$query = '';
						}
					} else {
						$query .= $line;
					}
				}
			}

			ksort($queries);

			foreach ($queries as $priority=>$to_run) {
				foreach ($to_run as $i=>$sql) {
					$wpdb->query($sql);
				}
			}
		}
	}
}

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Posted in PHP, Plugins, Time Savers, Tutorials, Wordpress

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Setting up a PHP/MySQL Local Development Environment on a Mac (doing it properly)

February 25th, 2009

This tutorial will show you how to setup a Local Development Environment on your Mac the proper way (not using MAMP or XAMPP). I will also give examples of some of the software you can use for your day to day development including an IDE, SQL Browser and Subversion client.

Since OSX Leopard (I think), Macs arrive bundled with a local Apache server and a PHP install. The only real missing thing are MySQL and turning it all on. It’s not quite as easy as that as you are about to see but follow the instructions below and you should be up and running in half an hour (depending on typing speed ;) )

Why not use a 3rd party product?

You may ask why not use XAMPP or MAMP… This is entirely down to personal preference but seeing as Macs are bundled with most of the software required for local development, it seems silly to just ignore all that and duplicate all that functionality.

For those of you that would prefer the easier route then use one of the following links and download the files on their sites as instructed.

So… For those of you NOT taking the easy way out

Download the software

The first step is to download all the software you will need which in this case is simple, get the MySQL DMG Package from http://dev.mysql.com. If you prefer not to trawl their site then use the following link:

To save having to compile from binaries, MySQL have released a version in a Mac friendly DMG format. Just double click the file when it downloads and then it should be installed to the appropriate place.

Configure Apache

For this section you will need to be logged in as a user with Administrative rights on the computer (or someone in the ‘sudoers’ file). At this stage it would be wise to backup the file we are about to edit.

Open your Terminal (which lives in /Applications/Utilities/) and type the following

sudo vi /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf

You will be asked for your password again to confirm that your user can use the ‘sudo’ command and then be entered into ‘vim’. You can substitute ‘vi’ for any of the other terminal based text editors, pico, nano, etc..

Within the file you need to comment a line which will enable PHP to function on the computer. Find a large block of lines that each start ‘LoadModule’ and in the list you will see a line that looks like:

#LoadModule php5_module      libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

Remove the preceeding hash (#) character.

Next we need to tell it to look for the index.php file when a root url is given and no filename (http://www.google.com as opposed to http://www.google.com/index.php). There will be a block of code that looks something like the following:

<IfModule dir_module>
    DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm
</IfModule>

Add index.php to the list of files on the middle line so it looks like the following:

<IfModule dir_module>
    DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.php
</IfModule>

Save and close the file. If you are not logged in as an administrator and didn’t use the ‘sudo’ command then you will likely see an error telling you the file is read only and cannot be saved. In this case you need to go back and do it all again using ‘sudo’.

We will need to start/restart Apache now to make sure that nothing is broken. Firstly though, run a test on the settings through Apaches internal validator:

sudo /usr/sbin/apachectl configtest

If you see no errors then run the next command which will restart Apache. If there are then revert httpd.conf back to your backup and start the process of editing it again.

sudo /usr/sbin/apachectl restart

Test it’s all working

We can now test that PHP is functionning by creating a test PHP file at the following location:

/Library/WebServer/Documents

You should see a number of files and images including an index.html file. Create a new file called index.php and put the following line inside:

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

Open your browser and navigate to:

http://127.0.0.1

Assuming you don’t see an apache welcome page or a server error then everything is working so far. If you see the apache welcome page then it might be a priority issue in the file naming. Just go to the place where you saved your ‘index.php’ file and delete the ‘index.html’ file (and any other files if you aren’t going to use them for something). On trying again it should show your file.

That concludes the main part of the tutorial. You should now have a local Apache server that supports PHP and MySQL by default. If you are not interested in software or running multiple local sites (virtualhosts) then thanks for reading!

For the rest of you…  Read on

Adding .htaccess Support

By default there isn’t a standard .htaccess file for this. It’s a simple fix however, just add the following code to your httpd.conf file and restart Apache as previously mentionned. You can then create .htaccess files in your web servable directories to do anything you need them to.

AccessFileName .htaccess

Multiple sites

If you would like to run more than one local site then you would need to set up Virtualhost directives in your httpd.conf file. First go to the bottom of the file and add the following line.

NameVirtualHost *:80

Then you can add the following block for as many local sites as you want to run.

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "/Library/WebServer/Documents/wordpress"
ServerName wordpress
</VirtualHost>

The above block will look for a site called ‘wordpress’ at the path specified (it can be anywhere on your system).  You can specify several other options within the VirtualHost block and it has been thoroughly documented elsewhere. The most useful extra thing to add is another AccessfileName line in case you wanted to call it something else for example. Remember that you will need to restart Apache after you make any changes to the http.conf file before any of your changes can take effect.

You may have noticed that I called the above site ‘wordpress’, this assumes there is a local site by that name. Without adding the next part, none of it will work. You need to edit a file called ‘hosts’ which lives at ‘/private/etc/hosts’. This contains a number of lines that follow a standard format. You will need to add a new line to the file for each site you want to add. For my example I would need to add the following line.

127.0.0.1    wordpress

You don’t need to restart apache after editing the hosts file, it will all just work.

Recommended Software

Subversion
Tigris.org, the people that make the popular Windows software Tortoise SVN have written a free SVN client called SCPlugin. It integrates Subversion controls into Finder making it easy to work with version controlled files without using a dedicated application. It’s also free!

I have also heard good things about Zigversion which is free except for commerical use. Worth a look if SCPlugin is a little flaky.

IDE
I personally have used numerous IDEs over the last few years but settled on Eclipse (PHP version) more recently. Like alot of ported software, not everything works on the Mac version however it nicely does the trick for me. It handles projects and basic autocomplete if you use it. Again it’s free! which helps somewhat.

As for paid software I used to use Zend on the PC however it was very slow and didnt recover well when the computer was coming out of hibernate mode. It does everything Eclipse does however and not bad for the price. The new version is based on eclipse anyway.

A friend of mine is very much in love with a new IDE written specifically for the Mac called Coda. It isn’t free but at $99 it is apparently worth the investment.

MySQL Tools
At work I use Navicat and am very pleased with it. Everything works and it’s very fast. Nothing has changed on the Mac version so it is still my favourite. It isn’t free but worth the money and they have a 30day free trial if you need convincing.

If you are after free then I would recommend MySQL Query Browser. It does what it says on the tin and most importantly allows you to throw the pile of garbage that is PHPMyAdmin in the bin if you haven’t already done so. It’s available from MySql along with some of their other useful tools like MySQL Workbench and MySQL Administrator.

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Posted in Mac, PHP, Tutorials

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