Piins Team Blog

Check MySQL connection from shell (bash) and backup database

2008-08-25T23:39:00.003+01:00

et voilà. In case you should ever be in a situation to check your mysql connection from a shell script you can easily do so by:

#!/bin/bash
echo -n -e "Please enter the DB user: \t\t"
read DB_USER

echo -n -e "Please enter the DB password: \t\t"
read DB_PWD

DB_con_ok=$(mysql -u $DB_USER --password=$DB_PWD -e "show databases;"|grep "mysql")
if [[ $DB_con_ok != "mysql" ]]
then
echo
echo "The DB connection could not be established. Check you username and password and try again."
echo
exit;
fi
#whatever code is executed here, only is done so, IF the mysql credentials are valid

And above, if you need to back up your DB (e.g. in a cron), you can easily do so by

#!/bin/bash
#DEFINITIONS FIRST
DB_USER="mysqlUser"
DB_PWD="mysqlPwd"
VERSION=$(date +"%d-%m-%Y") #store the day, month and year the backup was performed

#CHANGE TO BACKUP DIRECTORY
cd /backup
#PERFORM THE MYSQL BACKUP COMMAND
mysqldump --routines --all-databases -u $DB_USER --password=$DB_PWD > db_$VERSION.mysql

The --routines command makes sure, you're backing up stored procedures as well.

OR if you only want to backup specific databases, just use

#!/bin/bash
#DEFINITIONS FIRST
DB_USER="mysqlUser"
DB_PWD="mysqlPwd"
DATABASES="database1 database2 database3" #define the databases that you want to backup (delimited by the ' ' whitespace character)
VERSION=$(date +"%d-%m-%Y") #store the day, month and year the backup was performed

#CHANGE TO BACKUP DIRECTORY
cd /backup
#PERFORM THE MYSQL BACKUP COMMAND
mysqldump --routines -u $DB_USER --password=$DB_PWD --databases $DATABASES > db_$VERSION.mysql

check out the MySQL manual for mysqldump as well. Hope this was useful to some of you :D

Cheers,
Charly

PHP Performance Optimization

2008-08-07T13:08:00.001+01:00

In every development cycle there comes the time, when you've got to optimize things. I really love the following article: guys & iris: you should all have a good read of http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PrematureOptimization about this topic.

It clearly explains and lays out why it is the best to:

Make it work.
Make it right.
Make it fast.

in exactly that order. To be even more precise it says:

Make it work.
Make it right
Make everything work.
Make everything right.
Use the system and find performance bottlenecks.
Use a profiler in those bottlenecks to determine what needs to be optimized.
Make it fast. You maintained unit tests, right? Then you can refactor the code mercilessly in order to improve the performance.

So, I think we've hit that 2nd/4th point now. As you know from one of my last blogs, I massively like my MacBook. So of course, I'm not prepared to switch away for a simple performance analysis tool.

As you might be well aware, a typical combination to identify PHP bottlenecks is XDebug to log execution times and KCacheGrind to make them human-readable. Unfortunately, the installation process of KCacheGrind of Mac OS X is not that straight forward, although it's pretty straightforward :).

I've taken the following small tutorial from http://brent.izolo.com/blog/?p=4 and amended it where necessary.

Install Fink. An excellent article on how to set up Fink on your Mac can be found in the O'Reilly macdevcenter. Check it out. Otherwise, you can just download the installable binaries for your version of Mac OS from the Fink homepage.
install the X11 development package as hinted by this incredibly useful little tutorial:
Installing X11 on OS X 10.4 Tiger. It's 5 years old, but still up to date.
edit /sw/etc/fink.conf and add:
unstable/main unstable/crypto
to the Trees key. The line should now read like this:
Trees: local/main stable/main stable/crypto unstable/main unstable/crypto
Open the command-line and enter:
fink selfupdate; fink index; fink scanpackages
After the update and reindexing finished enter:
sudo fink install kcachegrind
in the command line
Answer all the questions by the script and prepare for a looooooooooong configuration and installation time (many, many package dependencies)

To run KCacheGrind:

start X11 (e.g. by using the Spotlight and searching for "X11")
open the console and type:
/sw/bin/kcachegrind

That's it (hopefully!). Enjoy.

Bests,
Charly

PHP exec output

2008-07-07T15:29:00.000+01:00

We encountered a random problem while trying to execute a program via the PHP exec command and trying to capture the output of the executed program; we always retrieved an empty String.

This is due to not using the default I/O buffer. You have to tell the shell which output buffer to use. This can be simply done by appending "2>&1" to the command.

exec($command, $output); ->
exec($command." 2>&1", $output);

et voilà, the output array variable should not be an empty string anymore.

Hope this helps.

Bests,
Charly

Piins Contact API - The data is the users'

2008-07-03T00:11:00.010+01:00

We just don't agree that platforms have the right to claim possession over user data in terms of completely restricting them from accessing/deleting/editing all their data in the most efficient way. CAVEAT: "most efficient" does definitely not refer to the way some platforms (we don't want to point with fingers here) define "efficient", i.e. only via their own platform.

They might do a nice job to convince themselves that they are the best, and market valuation might suggest that they are, but all the data there is still the users'. We'd even go that far to say, that not only the direct data, but also all the inferred one is the users', although you can probably argue about that, so we'll cover that in another posting :)

Anyways, as part of our movement to make all data as accessible to their respective users, being extremely aware of privacy and data protection standards, we've released our little contact-import and message sending API.

If you are interested contact us anytime, we're happy to discuss how you can help users to access all their data as easily as possible (well at least, as our little Piin-brains can do, if we piin down the time :). We want to speak to you first to assure, that you are not going to misuse the API in any malicious or harmful way.

The link for the API is for testing only. WE DO NOT STORE ANY OF YOUR CONTACTS, NEITHER DO WE SPAM THEM. We hate spam ourselves and if we had a little bit more time, we'd be working on a giant fight-spam-forever project! This is why we disabled message sending via the Outlook upload as well. You will still be able to see the imported contacts directly after import from your Outlook CSV file, but not be able to send them messages.

P.S.: If your are interested in an internationalization library for PHP, we've developed one for Smarty in PHP. A tutorial for this library can be found here. We're planning to release many more APIs for the open source community and the startup community, so stay tuned with our blog.

Install Sphinx on Mac OSX Tiger (10.4)

2008-06-27T16:57:00.000+01:00

Hello everyone (especially developers),

I know, I know - you should NEVER use a development environment that is different from your deployment one, but I just can't help myself. I just love my Mac and don't want to replace my nice little black MacBook by a clumsy other one, just because I've to run a customized version of Gentoo on it :) - neither do I want to mess with BootCamp...

That aside, I've struggled for a little bit getting Sphinx (the incredible indexing and search engine) to work on my machine, a MacBook with OSX Tiger (10.4) on it. Maybe some of you are struggling with the same problem, so I thought I put a short tutorial together that helped me compile and run it successfully.

So here we go:

download version 2.5 of XCode from the Apple page. Version 2.5 is for Tiger (10.4).
install the X11 development package as hinted by this incredibly useful little tutorial:
Installing X11 on OS X 10.4 Tiger. It's 5 years old, but still up to date.
download and install MacPorts (if you haven't already): http://www.macports.org/
open console and enter sudo /opt/local/bin/port install mysql5-devel
wait, wait some more, wait, wait, get coffee and wait
Download Sphinx and untar it to any directory
in the console, change to the directory you just untar'd Sphinx to
enter in console: ./configure --with-mysql-libs=/opt/local/lib/mysql5/mysql/ --with-mysql-includes=/opt/local/include/mysql5/mysql/
enter in console: ./make
enter in console: sudo ./make install

That should have done the trick!

Enjoy.

Bests,
Charly

Piins - extended Beta

2008-04-29T02:09:00.000+01:00

very, very soon (1st of May) Piins is entering an extended Beta version meaning that not only friends and family can see, live and breathe the spirit of Piins.

If you are interested in participating in this extended beta, send us a mail to invitations@piins.com with a funny, exciting or otherwise catchy reason why you should be on it and you'll get an invitation code. If you want, you can also get on our "most famous reasons why I want to be on Piins" list :)

Applications are open until 15th of May 2008.

Hope to see you soon on Piins.

Minibar honors Piins

2008-04-07T00:53:00.000+01:00

Christian from Minibar allowed Piins do start the ‘web innovators in residence’ blog at the Minibar site. The first blog can be seen here on the Minibar site.

More blogs of Piins to appear there. So stay tuned :)

Designing Piins - Object and Issues –

2008-04-06T22:15:00.000+01:00

“ Design refers to the will to interpret the meaning of human life and existence through the process of making things”.

Kenya Hara

During Piin’s” stealth mode period” It is an interesting challenge to talk about the design of something without revealing the details of the actual object. But every design is based on interpreting how to make certain functionalities as easy to understand and accessible for their intended users. Talking about Piins’s ideas and philosophy is a good start for the conversation as it is the basis for every design decision made regarding the user interface and structure of the site itself.

We’ve decided to start by approaching this discussion by talking about few common user pains that Piins addresses - When Piins comes out of it’s stealth mode we’ll be able to reveal more details on the solutions we’ve come up with.

1) Frustration - “I like this site, how do I remember it and how can I comment on it?”-
When browsing the Internet you often find information that interests you, it might be a paragraph, a sentence, a photograph or just anything that you would like to remember, find again, comment on, share etc. while keeping it in the context of the original page. You can always bookmark the page but then it can still be a hassle finding it again within it.

We believe in helping the user gain that flexibility with the information he finds. We believe in convenience, being able to communicate, share and above all saving our precious lifetime not having to deal with repetition.

2) Limitedness - “I have 3 computers: at home, a laptop and at work… How can they share the same Internet data?”-
It’s a hassle having to export your bookmarks and reinstall them every time you change computers. There are a lot of sites out there that give you the chance to gather information such as bookmarks, favourite blogs etc. but users have to go to a specific website to access that content which breaks up the browsing experience. We like mobility and accessibility and assume so do most other people.

3) Perceived Privacy Threats - “Which of my private data is floating in the Web? How secure is it?”-
Big brother always feels to be standing right behind your shoulder, especially these days when we enter so much information about ourselves online. Even worse, this information is potentially trackable by “other users” We are becoming more paranoid about who is accessing our personal data. We don’t like privacy threats and we don’t’ like being watched.

4) Time - “I rather have the best search results rather than many!”-
The future of the Internet as we see it is about user helping user. It’s about being able to communicate with other users and being able to voice our opinions whatever they may be. Keeping those thoughts and ideas either private, for our own use or sharing them with others that might benefit from them. Having other users with similar interests to help us find what we are looking for would be ideal.

The design solutions for Piins called for simplicity. The elements involved had to be visible but not obtrusive. Their structures, colours and shapes should not compete with other visible elements but exist in harmony with the other content. There where many design challenges facing us when we started Piins and there are still many more to come, most required a whole new way of thinking.

We are creating something new and revolutionary but we have to make it comfortable for people to be able to use it straight away without having to learn something new. While sitting in the comfort of familiarity we can start browsing the unknown and have some new surprising, pleasurable experiences.

We are here to try to make life better and we hope you will enjoy.

PIINS – AIMS AND PHILOSOPHY BLOG Nr. 1

2008-04-05T20:46:00.000+01:00

So people keep asking us – “what’s Piins all about?”. But as with many new concepts when you first start working on them, it’s actually quite hard to sum it up in one pithy sentence. Piins offers such a huge amount of functionality in one clever application that focusing on one specific thing never seems to do it justice.

However, if we were pushed to ‘piin it down’ we’d probably say that Piins simplifies your online life. That’s a bit vague and non-specific we hear you say? Well, the truth is that whatever you want to do on the internet – Piins makes it easier. It’s that simple. And that big.

Piins is a unique combination of social media applications and services accessible via a personalised toolbar anywhere on the internet. In essence Piins turns the web into your own personalised internet (you might call it the ‘Piinternet’).

We think Piins has the potential to be as revolutionary as Google was. Big words…but we really believe this. We are aiming to change forever the way that people access and share online content and store personal data. We also provide people with the tools to completely personalise the online experience, turning every website into a social space that is unique to the user. We promise you it will change the way everyone uses the internet.

be good

2008-03-23T19:29:00.000Z

less evil is a proper wish
to be made by oh so many
but what they are prepared to give
is seldom worth a penny

For what? To stand, to fight, to live
in a period of upheaval
for one thing we cannot forgive:
being passive, by not being evil

First Piins OS release: Smarty & I18N

2008-03-18T02:47:00.000Z

Yipiiieh, here we go. Our first public Piins open source release (MIT license). We've decided to release Smarty plugins that make life with Smarty and i18n easy (well, at least as easy as I18N can be per se).

Wolfram Schlich posted a nice overview of best practices to internationalize Smarty templates. His overview can be read in this mailinglist archive.

Unfortunately none of the provided best practices seemed to be compliant to the standard GNU i18n library gettext, as employed in many applications. Hence we thought about implementing our own, which turned out to be both - incredibly easy and very handy.

We would like to share this library with you including a little tutorial how to use it. The files for the i18n & smarty tutorial can be downloaded as well.

We've also hosted it on Google code as the Google code piins-smarty project.

Help us making the library better by posting the bugs you found :) ah and by the way, there are many more libraries to come, such as:

php-DAL: data access layer for PHP and MySQL, built on PDO. Allows stored procedure call with easy access
php-DAL-generator: auto generate the DAL (data access layer) for your MySQL database (including stored procedures).
php-MVC: a very lightweight MVC framework for PHP with complete i18n/L10n support
.NET enterprise libraries compiled for Mono on Unix systems
and much much more...

Enjoy & stay tuned!

Piins @ Minibar - 28th of March

2008-03-01T02:31:00.000Z

As many of you have read in our last post, Piins is still in 'stealth-mode'. We've received quite some e-mails regarding this and whether we can disclose anything yet. Please bare with us some more weeks. Be assured, no one except the team and our investors know what it is about yet, so it is just fair not to disclose to some individuals and not some others.

For everyone who might care (and even for those who don't), we want to announce, that we're leaving our strict 'stealth-mode' in the next Minibar, where Christian, the organizer, secured one of the much sought-after presentation slots for Piins. We'd be very happy if you could mark the 28th of March red in your calendar. Sign up at the Meetup site, still room for about 30 people. It's worth it...

We're going to distribute 100 MOO minicards with unique invitation-codes on them for our hopefully very dedicated first-ever user group. These will be the only ones to see the interiors of Piins for about another month until we're opening to a wider audience, well presumably the whole OpenID community at least.

In case you can't make it, don't worry - we're going to post at least some pictures of the event on this blog. So although, we're very sorry, that we didn't meet you personally at least you can see us - for whatever that's worth.

See you there...!

Further Links: Minibar Location (GoogleMaps)

Piins' "Hello World"

2008-02-27T17:22:00.000Z

Over 2 years now have passed since the idea was first born. Unlike most births, it did not hurt very much but it rather was a feeling of complete freedom and happiness. It was a nice, maybe a little idealistic vision of being able to be more than "just not evil", it was a vision of actually "being good".

Over the years we built a nice little prototype, that we're soon going to release to a very special closed group. And no, although it sounds a little odd and 90-ies to be in "stealth-mode", experience from previous ventures just proves that the user is everything you've got in the Internet world. The user is the single most important thing, so you have to give them a chance to help you.

And as much as we think we can enrich the daily life of our users in the Internet, we are convinced that every individual out there enriches and challenges our vision on a daily basis allowing us not only just to "be good" but to even "be better". So stealth-mode is not just another odd marketing gag or a way to make people talk about us (although that could not do any harm), but to allow everyone to participate in that vision without diluting it.

One more thing: we know, that Piins is going to be quite disputed. What we're doing is, as we see it, the next step in Web-Development (yeah, sounds opaque and fuzzy again, but we're happy to discuss with everyone) and it is going to require a possibly yet unmet amount of trust from our users. We're convinced that not only our personalities, everyone in the team, but also our users aim for nothing else than "being good" - naive again? Well, we say it's worth a try!

In that sense, a warm "hello world!" to all you guys'n girls out there from the Piins team - let's go the next step in the Web together.