While Subversion 1.5 doesn’t make it merging as easy as a system like Git or Mercurial, it certainly solves common points of pain. As a famous quote goes, “it makes easy things easy, and hard things possible.” Subversion is now beginning to match features in larger, commercial tools such as Clearcase and Perforce.

Read more at the original post to see how easy this is: Subversion 1.5 merge-tracking in a nutshell.

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The documentation covering routes in CakePHP is a bit confusing, and doesn’t quite cover how you can you use paths in the URL as method parameters. I’ll cover how I used them in a recent app in this short article.

Routing in CakePHP is similar to using Apache’s mod_rewrite to give you pretty URLS, for example, mapping:

   http://server/item/1 to http://server/items.php?id=1

They are used in Cake so that you don’t require mod_rewrite/Apache to achieve such cleaned-up URLS.

Cake’s route documentation (look under Section 3)
http://manual.cakephp.org/chapter/configuration

In my application I wanted to get rid of the controller/action convention and rather have URLs like http://server/about and http://server/contact that are both served by one controller called Pages

My route file looks like this:

 1   $Route->connect('/', array('controller' => 'pages'));
 2   $Route->connect('/:action/*', array('controller' => 'pages',
      'action' => ':action'));

Line 1 says that any request for the root document should be handled by the Pages controller, and since no action was specified, the method will default to index().

The second line catches one or more path parameters and assigns the first one to :action, and the rest are caught by the asterisk (*) and passed along to the controller.

Example

   http://server/about/cars/ford
   :action => ‘about’
   parameters => ‘cars’, ‘ford’

We then assign this route to the Pages controller, and to the action that was specified as the first path variable.

Inside pages_controller.php, we have something like this:

   function about($page = 'default', $type = null) {
      //code dealing with parameters
      //error checking etc.
      $this->render($chosen_page);
   }

In our example above, $page will equal ‘cars’ and $type will equal ‘ford’.

In this way you can have one controller serving a variety of different pages, out’ve one action - instead of the usual one action per page convention.

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Digg is the new Slashdot, and whilst getting digged might not bring your site down like a true slashdotting, it is far cooler and carries more interweb credibility. So here are the top ten ways to get your site onto the frontpage of Digg:

1. Buy your diggs
   The easiest way: create a fake website/blog and fill it with drivel and useless rambling content. Now find a pay service that guarantees you diggs through a sneaky network of paid-for clicks. Make sure your site is loaded with Google Ad’s in order to try
   make up the money you spent on getting digged (this probably won’t happen).
2. Post a story about how you got digged using a paid service
   After completing step 1, ensure that you create another article/website detailing how you defrauded Digg by using the sneaky click service. You are guaranteed to be digged again.
3. Get a story digged and then post a follow up story about how you survived the digging
   This is a bit of a conundrum since to get digged you’ll have to have been digged previously. Perhaps use number 1 and 2 above. Once your host has survived/crumbled the digging, post about how it happened, what happened, and which affiliate host you really recommend that every reader signs up with. Don’t forget the your affiliate ID in those referring links! (also known as an advertorial.)
4. The best <subject> picture you’ll see today
   Spend some time browsing those lame college humour websites and find some random picture that was funny in 1998 and then create a new post on your blog hot-linking straight to the image with an additional 5 word caption written by you. Submit it as a new story on Digg with the headline, “The best <subject> picture you’ll see today”. Alternatively find pictures of anything happening in slow motion (milk hitting coffee for instance) and post that - additional points if you manage to get pictures that everyone saw last year digged again.
5. Discuss how Digg is flawed
   Write an article discussing how digg is flawed and the users are stupid. Include examples of spam posts that made it to the front page and also add details of a giant conspiracy that is ruining the internet for everyone.
6. Random non-expert advice
   Find a blog written by a 12 year old who professes to be an expert in some field related to computers. Take his/her word as gospel and repost their article on your blog, and then submit it to Digg as the latest professional advice from some expert. Don’t worry if they can’t spell, think straight, or even write articles longer than 20 words, Digg forgives all.
7. Create a Top 10 list on absolutely anything
   I lied, paying for your diggs isn’t the easiest way to get onto the front page. Creating a top 10 list of absolutely any subject that enters your head is the easiest way to get onto Digg. Think of something, anything, bananas! Make a 10 point list about banana’s; even if it isn’t a TOP 10 list, label it as such. Or steal someone else’s list and link to it on your site, then submit that. Make sure that at least some of the points are fillers or repeats of previous points.
8. Create a Top 5 list on absolutely anything
   I lied, paying for your diggs isn’t the easiest way to get onto the front page. Creating a top 5 list of absolutely any subject that enters your head is the easiest way to get onto Digg. Think of something, anything, bananas! Make a 5 point list about banana’s; even if it isn’t a TOP 5 list, label it as such. Or steal someone else’s list and link to it on your site, then submit that. Make sure that at least some of the points are fillers or repeats of previous points.
9. Repost this article on your blog
   Easy.
10. Write something useful that people would enjoy reading
    Haha, no seriously…

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I realise posts have been thin on the ground lately, so here are a few good links to keep you busy. On a related note, I’m always looking for people who want to write articles on any (web) topic - there are no requirements, as long as you make sense and can spell, then feel free to write up a tutorial or something cool that you want to show everyone else!

Logging in Javascript
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/jslogging/

A good article by the excellent writers at A List Apart. This covers using fvlogger to debug and test your javascript scripts.

15 JS snippets you can’t live without
http://www.igglo.co.uk/6/15-javascript-snippets-you-cant-live-without/

This might be a bit of an overstatement, but there are a couple of really cool scripts covered in the article. Otherwise this seems to be a bit of a rehash of previous articles written elsewhere. Check out Lightbox, and then play around with Thickbox, the JQuery alternative.

I also quite like frequency-decoder’s Date Picker widget.

CSS good habits
http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=FAF76&print=true

Lastly, a relatively short post on good CSS coding habits. Useful for people new to web development and CSS.

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Ok, I’ve had to disable comments on the IE7 for linux post, the amount of spam that’s coming through is quite insane. Today there were 149 spam comments in my moderation queue. This site alone is eating up a large chunk of bandwidth on my host, I think (note: think) that it’s due to the repeated hits and abuse from spam bots. I’m going to start looking at blocking hosts in my .htaccess file, but I am not optimistic about it.

If anyone has any suggestions, please comment and let me know. Remember though, I want to deny spambots access to the site completely, so a Wordpress plug-in probably isn’t what I’m looking for.

There’ll be some new articles and tutorials soon, once I have a free minute!

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