Studio Canaria

Database switching in CakePHP

Published: on 9/9/08 | Comments (0)

Thought I would share a quick tip today for managing database connections and debug information betwen your local development machine and production server.

Personally I tend to have a version running on my local development machine and on my web server and keep them in synch using the excellent Aptana Studio IDE and the following mean that I can do this without worrying about overwriting my database settings whenever I synchronise.

For starters replace the DATABASE_CONFIG class in...

cakePHP Thumbnail Helper with GIF, PNG and JPG support

Published: on 8/9/08 | Comments (3)

Hi all, a couple of weeks I got a request to add PNG and GIF support to my cakePHP thumbnail helper, so thought I'd post a quick updated version which includes this functionality.

Not a difficult one, I admit as the excellent phpThumb class library already includes this functionality, so just a matter of defining a default in the variable $extension, checking for an extension key in params, then setting it dynamically. In fact the only reason I didn't do this was because I didn't need it...

CakePHP Thumbnail Helper

Published: on 8/7/08 | Comments (7)

Today I've been working on generating thumbnails using the excellent phpThumb library, and integrating it into a CakePHP application I am writing.

In case you've not come across it before, phpThumb uses the GD library to create thumbnails from images (JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, etc) on the fly. The output size is configurable (can be larger or smaller than the source), and the source may be the entire image or only a portion of the original image. True color and resampling is used if GD v2.0+ is...

CakePHP Containable Behavior

Published: on 3/7/08 | Comments (8)

The last week or so, I have been taking a good look at the latest release of CakePHP.

CakePHP.1.2.0.7296 RC2 is a great release, so a big pat on the back to the entire development team, and keep up the good work.

One of my favourite features of the this release is the new Containable Behaviour which was introduced back in change set 6918 and is a mixture of two behavoirs, the original Containable behavior by Felix Geisendörfer and the Bindable behavior by Mariano Iglesias.

Basically the...

PayPal IPN Controller for CakePHP

Published: on 27/6/08 | Comments (6)

Thought I would share this handy little controller for processing PayPal IPN notifications within your cakePHP Apps.

For those new to PayPal integration, PayPal offers a system called IPN or Instant Payment Notifications whereby you can have a notification sent to your site each and every time a transaction takes place in your PayPal account.

The system is very flexible and allows you to send pass through buttons with your payment or subscription buttons that will come back in your IPN...