PHP

• Mixing Non-array and Array in array_map()

  array_map function is a function that I use the most in my php scripts recently. However, there are times where I want to pass some non-array into it, therefore often times I have code like the snippet shown below:

  $result = array_map(
'some_callback',
array_fill(0, count($some_array), 'some_string'),
array_fill(0, count($some_array), 'some_other_string'),
$some_array
)

  It doesn’t look good IMO, as it makes the code looks complicated. Hence, after seeing how the code may vary in all different scenarios, I created some functions to clean up the array_map call as seen above. Code snippet after the jump

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• Extending Zend Framework

  I like how Kohana 3 organizes the classes, and I thought the same thing may be applied to my Zend Framework experimental project. Basically what this means is that I can name the controller class according to PEAR naming convention, and deduce the location of the file by just parsing the class name.

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• Blending ACL and FSM-based Workflow

  After reading through the documentation, I find that the role based ACL and work flow can be more tightly integrated. Therefore I made all the transaction into many FSMs and my work flow component now consists of one work flow library and one work flow management model. As I am going a more normalized design (I use denormalized design in work as it deals with a lot of documents, however for a small project like mine, a denormalized design should do well).

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• Magic SQL

  Ever wanted to find the number of days between two dates without counting weekend (Saturdays and Sundays)? In PHP you typically needs to do a lot of calculation and a lot of factors needs to be considered. Therefore, in the end you will end up having a whole bunch of code that you will probably start asking yourself whether you are programming a web-calendar or something similar.

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Random Posts

• Spiraling Number

  Back then in college, we were given a lot of programming practices. These questions usually shows a desired output format, and we were required to write a program to print out the exact thing. Usually it involves printing a matrix of numbers, or symbols etc. For these problems, usually a loop structure or two should solve the problem.

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• Fuzzy C-Means and Content Recommendation

  This post is purely based on my own speculation as there’s no experiment on real-life data to actually back the arguments. I am currently trying to document down a plan for my experiment(s) on recommender system (this reminds me that I have not release the Flickr data collection tool :/) and my supervisor advised to write a paragraph or two on some of the key things. Since he is not going to read it, so I might as well just post it here as a note.

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• Abusing PHP Again: Convert meeTrainer’s CSV to GPX

  The Sports Tracker app for my awesome Nokia N9 is not receiving any updates and doesn’t look like things are going to change any time soon. Recently the development team at Sports Tracker published a status update post and sadly there’s no mention of N9 port at all. It’s really sad considering how incomplete the N9 port is at the moment (horrible GPS positioning, no pedometer to name a few).

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• Recommender System Classification

  Had a discussion with my secondary supervisor and it turned out pretty bad because I wasn’t fully prepared and he was rushing to somewhere else for a meeting. So I am jotting down a brief summary (read: highly based on personal/subjective feelings/opinions) of my readings here to help organize things before the followup meeting that is taking place next week.

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• Learning asyncio by redoing my messaging bot

  I used to develop a bot, partly for work, that fetches current latest petrol retail price in Malaysia. The bot was really an experiment, but at the time it worked well. Then a few years later, out of boredom, I revisited the project after finding the telegram bot library is moving towards asyncio. It was great (at least a lot of people rave about it), but also at the same time intimidating, I learned about coroutines and used gevent in the past, but not asyncio itself.

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