Yesterday I Tweeted that AppleScript seemed to be no longer working for me after I installed Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

As I suspected at the time the problem was with MySQL, and after a kick install of a new version of MySQL (see earlier post), the problem was fixed…..

Yesterday I Tweeted that MySQL was no longer working after I installed Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

Well, the bad news is installing Snow Leopard over 10.5.8 running MySQL results in a ‘broken’ install of MySQL. The fix, though, is easy….

To fix the problem, download and install the latest version of MySQL – mysql-5.1.37-osx10.5-x86. Although it says it is 10.5 it installs OK, and seems to run with no problems under 10.6

Besides working on sites for Willow Farm Bed and Breakfast and Edwards Irish Partnership LLP, I have also continued work (mainly maintenance) for Court Park Properties. No major changes, just added a few pages for a new building project called Onyx. There was also a small amount of work on their database system.

This was an interesting project, which ran over last summer.

The problem:

Students need to be able to submit files (essays etc.) on-line
Files need to be named with a unique student id assigned by the system
Students need to be emailed a reminder and a unique url for the upload
Staff need to be able to track which students have uploaded, and when
Staff need to be able to email students that have failed to submit

So, the upload system used a combination of php and MySQL with students being sent email reminders by a cron script. As files are uploaded the system automatically changes the file name to the unique ID.

The staff get to view (track) uploads using an AJAX driven website, which they can use to automatically email students that have failed to submit.

This was a big project during the summer of 2008. I can’t say who the work was for, but I can post about what the system does.

The requirements:

• An online system that can be used by students to take tests
• Tests had to be open for an extended period of time
• Tests (in version 1) had to consist of multiple choice, and numeric input
• Students had be able to login and out and answer questions when and where they wanted during the test period
• Once the test period was over students had to be able to login and get their marks and feedback
• Copies of the test had to be downloadable for emailing to students
• Marks had to be available for input into another system
• All student/system interactions had to be logged and tracked.
• System had to be ‘extensible’, i.e. version 2 can be developed later.

So, the system was written using php for the front end and MySQL for the database. The web interface uses AJAX.

It was decided to use AJAX so that once a student answered a question the result was immediately sent to the database, so if there was a power outage, or the student forgot to save their text results, the answers were still captured. On the whole this has worked well, but some students using ‘older’ browsers from home (you know the sort of browser I mean!) had problems with the use of AJAX. However, as the system as built in error checking (i.e. nightly cross check between the server log for the day and the database state) these problems were dealt with.

There was no easy solution for ‘emailing’ out a copy (a pdf was required) of the results. In the end a compromise was reached when an html ‘dump’ from a test session was generated and this was converted to a pdf file using AppleScript and then the system mailed the results to the students.

The final product worked very well,and the clients were pleased. And this summer I am back to write version 2….

I have just got around to checking out some of my php/MySQL websites I have on my MacBook after upgrading to Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). And the good news is everything appears to work, but a few tweaks were needed.

After upgrading to Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) the webserver was turned off (security?). Turning it back on was a easy, System Preferences > Sharing, click on ‘Web Sharing’. However, after turning on Apache was no longer pointing to my ‘Site’ folder on http://localhost, but a directory called /Library/WebServer/Documents – most annoying. Plus, php was dead….

To get things working I had to change three lines in the httpd.conf file (After I had made a back up of it!), which is located at /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf .

Change 1 to get php working:

Change line 114 from:

#LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

to:

LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

(i.e. remove the hash/pound sign at the start)

Change 2 to get Apache ‘pointing’ at my ‘Sites’ folder

Change line 163 from:

DocumentRoot “/Library/WebServer/Documents”

to:

DocumentRoot “/Users/my-home-user-folder/Sites”

Where my-home-user-folder is the name of my home folder.

Change 3 to get Apache ‘pointing’ at my ‘Sites’ folder

(If you don’t do this you will be given a 403 – Insufficient User Privileges for Access)

Change line 190 from:

Directory “/Library/WebServer/Documents”

to:

Directory “/Users/my-home-user-folder/Sites”

Where my-home-user-folder is the name of my home folder.

Finally, you may wish to change any other occurrence of /Library/WebServer/Documents to /Users/my-home-user-folder/Sites if you use an CGI scripts in you home sites directory.

Finally, restart Apache from System Preferences.

MySQL seems to be working fine (I am using version 5), and CocoaMySQL is working… great!

Unbelievable! The MMISoftware blog was spammed to death…. there were so many comments submitted and awaiting moderation, that it was impossible to access the WordPress management system for the site to clear all the spam! There was a backlog of over 25,000 messages.

As a result we took down the blog for a few days, cleared the spam from the database using MySQL commands (a 2 second job) and upgraded the WordPress software to version 2.

Version 2 has much better spam handling than the previous version we were using, so hopefully the spam problem has been solved. We have also taken the opportunity to upgrade WordPress over at the thesnowsite blog.

Now, where did all this ‘spam’ comment come from? Well, I guess it is back to the Zombie problem that we reported on in an earlier post. And judging by the type of spam received there are obviously large ‘zombie’ networks out there pumping out the false blog comments.

Update: Since add the ‘spam filter’ plugin to the MMISoftware blog 10 hours ago we have caught 40 spam messages.

Update II: The filter has not even been in place for 24 hours and it has caught over 100 spam messages.

Update III: We have now added a spam counter to the front page – 27 Jan 2007 23:26:45

MMISoftware has been very busy on a number of projects.

MMI have been working closely with Court Park Properties to develop their website. We are also working with the company to develop specialised ‘in-house’ software for use in the property development trade.

In addition, MMI has been working very hard since March 2005 on an exciting new website project. The site is being developed in php and MySQL, and will also lead to a number of ‘stand-alone’ Mac OS X programs. Can’t say anything more about this project at the moment…. but watch this space! (This explains why updates to existing programs have not been coming along and why nothing much has been said on this blog!)

As you may have noticed, if you have been here before, the blog has changed!

Originally the blog was hosted over at mac.com but was moved to this location in February 2005. The move came about due to some hosting problems over at mac.com and because it was thought it was better to have the blog at the same site as the MMISoftware website.

The blog was written using iBlog. The program works ‘as described on the tin’, however, it was always a bit limiting in the html that could be created and in the design of the eventual blog.

After some looking around it was decided to use wordpress and ecto.

wordpress is a php and MySQL system. This fits in well with current, and future, work at MMISoftware. Installation of wordpress was snap. Never had an easier install. Took less that 5 minutes (php and MySQL were already up and running).

All blog entries can be created and edited in wordpress. However, this is like a little step back in time as all the entries have to be hand-coded in html. An alternative solution is to use ecto which has a WYSIWYG editor and also has the advantage that entries can be created and edited whilst offline.

One problem was how to get the entries out of iBlog. The solution turned out to be Agitprop. This program, which is freeware, did a pretty good job.

1. Follow the instructions with Agitprop and extract the entries from iBlog.
2. Move the resulting entry file and image file over to the webserver (used Interarchy for the transfer – a great program from Stairways)
3. Follow the instructions with wordpress to load the entries.
4. Use ecto to clean up any transfers that didn’t quite work.

In fact a number of the entries needed a bit of work as my attempts to get around the html limitations in iBlog had caused some problems with the processing by Agitprop. The entries were cleaned up using BBEdit and Applescript.

There is also a new RSS feed which is at http://www.mmisoftware.co.uk/weblog/wp-rss2.php