Make It Easy

There are a couple of ways to see cachegrind outputs

• KCachegrind ( KDE Based )
• Webgrind

If you absolutely hate KDE, then you might want to consider Webgrind – but it is not as comprehensive as KCachegrind

Setting Up

• Running instance on Ubuntu ( i am Ubuntu 13.04 on a VM )
• Running instance of Apache, PHP with xdebug installed
• A very quick way to set up your environment is using these commands

sudo apt-get install tasksel
sudo tasksel ( select the LAMP and follow instructions )
sudo apt-get install php5-xdebug

• Next install KCachegrind using the command ( big package )

 sudo apt-get install kcachegrind

 xdebug settings

• We then make sure we have the following things in the xdebug.ini ( some of them might be set – skip them – check phpinfo() output )
• Mine is /etc/php5/conf.d/20-xdebug.ini 
• You can find xdebug.ini if you look at your phpinfo() output under Additional .ini files parsed 

 xdebug.remote_enable = 1
 xdebug.remote_connect_back = 1
 xdebug.profiler_enable = 0
 xdebug.profiler_enable_trigger = 1
 xdebug.profiler_output_dir = /tmp
 xdebug.remote_handler = dbgp
 xdebug.remote_port = 9000

• Save and exit the ini file
• Restart apache and verify that all your ini settings are reflected in phpinfo() xdebug section

Generating the profile files

If you are just using a browser

• append XDEBUG_PROFILE=1  ( in the GET/POST request to your script )
• eg: localhost/index.php?XDEBUG_PROFILE=1

If you are using an IDE,

• make sure port 9000 is open
• xdebug is allowed to accept external connections
• you have installed a browser xdebug extension like Easiest Xdebug for firefox
• you have enabled Profiling
• Then make a request to your favourite PHP script

Looking at the results

• This will create a cachegrind file in /tmp directory – something like cachegrind.out.2955
• Open this file using KCachegrind
• Start scratching your head and try to improve things 🙂

Simple tutorial on how we can use jquery to load CSS and JS files as and when we require them

We will create 4 files ( in the same directory of your web root – mine is /var/www/test )

• index.html : the main html file
• main.js : the main JS file which will be included in main.html along with the jquery library
• style.css : this file will be dynamically loaded using main.js
• one.js : this file will be dynamically loaded using main.js

the files are here – rest of this is self explanatory 🙂

index.html

<html>
 <head>
 <script type="text/javascript" src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
 <script type="text/javascript" src="main.js"></script>
 </head>
 <body>
 <h3 class="red">This red color is from dynamically loaded css file</h3>
 </body>
</html>

main.js

jQuery(document).ready(function($){
 
 /**
  * function to load a given css file 
  */ 
 loadCSS = function(href) {
     var cssLink = $("<link rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' href='"+href+"'>");
     $("head").append(cssLink); 
 };

/**
 * function to load a given js file 
 */ 
 loadJS = function(src) {
     var jsLink = $("<script type='text/javascript' src='"+src+"'>");
     $("head").append(jsLink); 
 }; 
  
 // load the css file 
 loadCSS("style.css");

 // load the js file 
 loadJS("one.js");

});

style.css

.red {
    color: red;
}

one.js

jQuery(document).ready(function($){

    alert("This alert is from dynamically loaded js file");

});

• Drupal 6 fieldsets can be themed by supplying the #theme attribute for the fieldset
• #theme = your custom fieldset theming function
• you need to declare this theme function in the modules hook_theme function
• drupal will automatically look for theme_your_fieldset_theme_function()
• see the complete working example below

/**
 * hook_menu
 * @return array
 */
function test_menu() {

    $items = array();

    $items['test'] = array(
        'title' => 'Test',
        'page callback'	=> 'drupal_get_form',
        'page arguments' => array('test_form'),
        'access callback' => true,
        'type' => MENU_NORMAL_ITEM,
    );

    return $items;
}

/**
 * hook_theme
 * theme registry - register all theme functions here
 * "theme_" is added to all the functions
 *
 * @return array
 */
function test_theme() {
    return array(
        'test_form' => array( 'arguments' => array(),),
        'address_fieldset' => array( 'arguments' => array(),),
    );
}

/**
 * form with fieldset
 * @return array
 */
function test_form() {

    $form = array();

    // first name
    $form['first'] = array(
        '#type' => 'textfield'
    );

    // last name
    $form['last'] = array(
        '#type' => 'textfield'
    );

    // address fieldset
    $form['address'] = array(
        '#type' => 'fieldset',
        '#title' => 'Address',
        '#collapsible' => true,
        '#collapased' => false,
        '#theme' => 'address_fieldset' // declare this in the module theme registry
    );

    // city
    $form['address']['city'] = array(
        '#type' => 'textfield'
    );

    // zip
    $form['address']['zip'] = array(
        '#type' => 'textfield'
    );

    // submit
    $form['submit'] = array(
        '#type' => 'submit',
        '#value' => 'Submit',
    );

    return $form;
}
/**
 * theme function for the form
 * @param $form
 * @return string
 */
function theme_test_form($form) {
     $output = "<table>
         <tr><td>First Name: </td>
             <td>".drupal_render($form['first'])."</td>
         </tr>
         <tr><td>Last Name: </td>
             <td>".drupal_render($form['last'])."</td>
         </tr>
     </table>";
     // render the fieldset
     $output .= drupal_render($form['address']);
     // render the rest of the form
     $output .= drupal_render($form);
     return $output;
}

/**
 * theme function for the address fieldset
 * @param $form
 * @return string
 */
function theme_address_fieldset($form) {
    $output = "<table>
        <tr><td>City: </td>
            <td>".drupal_render($form['city'])."</td>
            <td>Zip: </td>
            <td>".drupal_render($form['zip'])."</td>
        </tr>
    </table>";
    return $output;
}

Just go here and add a launcher – enjoy 🙂

• /usr/share/cinnamon/applets/panel-launchers@cinnamon.org 
• run the file  /usr/share/cinnamon/applets/panel-launchers@cinnamon.org/cinnamon-add-panel-launcher.py 
• a nice GUI window should open up and allow you to add the launcher with the Name and Icon
• if there is an error, check the permissions on the .py file

If you are constantly typing lengthy commands or a series of common commands, the bash alias feature in Linux is your friend. You can slim down the lengthy bash command into your favorite command name and use it whenever you need.

One of the main advantage is that you can store all your command aliases into a file and carry it with you anywhere. Just plop in the file int the system you are working and you are ready to go. It gets even better if you sync your aliases file to the cloud. So you can add and modify aliases and as long as the bashrc in your profile is pointing to this file, your are good.

Steps

Create your bash_aliases file and store it in a place where you like. I typically store it in my desktop.

touch /home/naveen/Desktop/bash_aliases

Add the first command alias to your file – i use these commands to update my system

1. sudo apt-get update
2. sudo apt get upgrade
3. sudo apt-get autoclean
4. sudo apt-get autoremove

Now you can combine all 4 commands to 1 alias. Put the below line into the alias file

alias system_update="sudo apt-get update; sudo apt get upgrade; sudo apt-get autoclean; sudo apt-get autoremove"

system_update is your alias for all the 4 commands.

Final step is to tell bashrc to use our aliases file

There is a .bashrc file located at your home directory – its hidden ( press CTRL+H). Open it up and search for these lines

if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then
 . ~/.bash_aliases
fi

If you cannot find these lines, then add them to the file at the bottom.

Basically we are instructing bashrc that if it can find the file called .bash_aliases in our home directory, use that.

All we need to do now is create a symbolic link to the bash_aliases file on our desktop

The symbolic link will be called .bash_aliases and we will place it in our home directory.

cd /home/naveen
ln -s /home/naveen/Desktop/bash_aliases .bash_aliases

• Note that you can directly put all your commands into the file called .bash_aliases and put it in your home directory ( no need to create symlinks )
• You can also just change the file path in the if condition

Log out and log in

Open a terminal and issue the command system_update

You can carry the file on your desktop with you and make a symlink to in any other system