16. April 2014

Free IP geolocation databases

Sometimes when personalizing or translating interfaces, IP geolocation is required.

Maxmind Geolite Free

Besides their subscription based products Maxmind also provides a free IP Geolocation database set. The set is offered under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. The free databases maps IPv4 + IPv6 addresses and is being updated once a month. GeoLite Free Downloadable Databases

IP2Location Lite

Another free set of data is provided by IP2location Lite. It is free for personal or commercial use with attribution required

16. April 2014

JSON Date (.NET) to PHP timestamp

The JSON spec allows integers, fractional numbers, strings, arrays, but when it comes to dates things are handled differently. There really is no date format in the JSON spec. Would be nice if every JSON date output would conform to ISO8601 :)

// Ruby
2011-07-14 19:43:37 +0100

//ISO 8601
2011-07-14T19:43:37+0100

// Javascript Date Object
new Date(1310669017000)

// Javascript built-in JSON object
2012-04-23T18:25:43.511Z

// .NET JavaScriptSerializer
Date(1310669017000)

// .NET DataContractJsonSerializer
Date(1335205592410-0500)

// Ruby

2011-07-14 19:43:37 +0100

//ISO 8601

2011-07-14T19:43:37+0100

// Javascript Date Object

new Date(1310669017000)

// Javascript built-in JSON object

2012-04-23T18:25:43.511Z

// .NET JavaScriptSerializer

Date(1310669017000)

// .NET DataContractJsonSerializer

Date(1335205592410-0500)

Some of these can easily be converted to a PHP timestamp using strtotime(), others require some more magic.

Here is a way to transform the .NET variant, something that has been haunting me in a current project ;)

preg_match('~(\d+)\d{3}((?:\+|-)\d+)~',  $date, $match);
$dt = new DateTime('@' . $match[1]);
$dt = new DateTime($dt->format('Y-m-d H:i:s') . ' ' . $match[2]);
$date =  strtotime($dt->format('r'));

preg_match('~(\d+)\d{3}((?:\+|-)\d+)~', $date, $match);

$dt = new DateTime('@' . $match[1]);

$dt = new DateTime($dt->format('Y-m-d H:i:s') . ' ' . $match[2]);

$date = strtotime($dt->format('r'));

Due to the wide usage of JSON as an exchange format, I really hope we will see a spec update in the future :)

3. February 2014

Google App Engine PHP + Parse.com + Rest

The Google App Engine has no cURL support, which means that all REST calls need to be executed using file_get_contents.

As Parse REST calls need to be secure, you need to make sure that you send the request with a proper SSL context.

Short example of adding data using the Parse REST API from a Google App Engine application:

$data = array('data1' => 1113,
              'data2' => 'Alex',
              'data3' => false);
$context =
    array(
        "ssl"=>array(
            "allow_self_signed"=>true,
            "verify_peer"=>false,
        ),
        'http'=>
        array(
            "method" => "post",
            "header" => "X-Parse-Application-Id: YourAppID\r\n" .
                "X-Parse-REST-API-Key: YourRESTID\r\n" .
                "Content-Type: application/json\r\n",
                "content" => json_encode($data)

        )

    );
$context = stream_context_create($context);
$result = file_get_contents("https://api.parse.com/1/classes/yourClass", false, $context);

$data = array('data1' => 1113,

'data2' => 'Alex',

'data3' => false);

$context =

array(

"ssl"=>array(

"allow_self_signed"=>true,

"verify_peer"=>false,

'http'=>

array(

"method" => "post",

"header" => "X-Parse-Application-Id: YourAppID\r\n" .

"X-Parse-REST-API-Key: YourRESTID\r\n" .

"Content-Type: application/json\r\n",

"content" => json_encode($data)

)

);

$context = stream_context_create($context);

$result = file_get_contents("https://api.parse.com/1/classes/yourClass", false, $context);

10. December 2013

Get Share count of a weblink on LinkedIN

function get_linkedin() {
$json_string = $this->file_get_contents_curl("http://www.linkedin.com/countserv/count/share?url=$this->url&format=json");
$json = json_decode($json_string, true);
return isset($json['count'])?intval($json['count']):0;
}

function get_linkedin() {

$json_string = $this->file_get_contents_curl("http://www.linkedin.com/countserv/count/share?url=$this->url&format=json");

$json = json_decode($json_string, true);

return isset($json['count'])?intval($json['count']):0;

}

10. December 2013

Getting Facebook Likes for a weblink

Shares only

function get_likes($url) { 
    $json_string = file_get_contents('http://graph.facebook.com/?ids=' . $url);
    $json = json_decode($json_string, true); 
    return intval( $json[$url]['shares'] );
}

function get_likes($url) {

$json_string = file_get_contents('http://graph.facebook.com/?ids=' . $url);

$json = json_decode($json_string, true);

return intval( $json[$url]['shares'] );

}

Shares & Likes

function get_likes($url) {

$json_string = file_get_contents(‘http://graph.facebook.com/?ids=’ . $url);
$json = json_decode($json_string, true);

$like_count = 0;

if (isset($json[$url]['shares'])) $like_count += intval($json[$url]['shares']);
if (isset($json[$url]['likes'])) $like_count += intval($json[$url]['likes']);

return $like_count;
}

function get_likes($url) {

$json_string = file_get_contents(‘http://graph.facebook.com/?ids=’ . $url);

$json = json_decode($json_string, true);

$like_count = 0;

if (isset($json[$url]['shares'])) $like_count += intval($json[$url]['shares']);

if (isset($json[$url]['likes'])) $like_count += intval($json[$url]['likes']);

return $like_count;

}

10. December 2013

Getting Twitter counts for a weblink

function get_tweets($url) {
    $json_string = file_get_contents('http://urls.api.twitter.com/1/urls/count.json?url=' . $url);
    $json = json_decode($json_string, true);
    return intval( $json['count'] );
}