Changing PHP 5.4 initialization configuration on Go Daddy account | SESSION not created issue

Well, Today I figured out a solution to a weird problem that I had been facing and which had wasted almost 2 days of mine. And this also makes me think how error proof and reliable are the automated scripts used by the Hosting service providers like Go Daddy.

In order to be capable of using the latest PHP features, I got the PHP version of my GoDaddy account upgraded. All hell broke loose since then :-(
The session management on the site went haywire. In fact session was not working itself.
The session information in PHP is maintained in a file that is placed in some specific folder.
The folder location is mentioned in the PHP.ini file.
It is also important that you  MUST have WRITE access to this particular file/folder.

But the buggy upgrade system on GoDaddy hosting does not automatically provide you write access to the default folder. Hence, after an upgrade you are forced to change the SESSION folder to a location where you have write access.

But, at the same time you do not have write access to the PHP.ini file as well.
After lot of Google search I found that though we cannot modify the default PHP.ini file; we can create a custom PHP config file and place it in the HOSTING ROOT location. Thus GoDaddy uses the configuration from this file rather that the ones in default configuration.

Now, for different version of PHP / Type of Hosting Plan; there is specific name that you need to give to the custom config file of yours.

Please refer to the following URL for the name that you must give to you custom PHP.INI

https://support.godaddy.com/help/article/8913/what-filename-does-my-php-initialization-file-need-to-use?countrysite=in&marketid=en-IN

If you are upgrading to PHP version 5.4 on GoDaddy Hosting the name of the config file has to be .user.ini and must be placed at Root of account 

Hope this tip saves you the huge amount of time that I lost
Happy coding :-)

Is Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) AJAX Requests interfering with your development ?

This is again another learning from one of my latest projects. I have been creating a Backbone based web application. The data was being fetched from the webservice exposed on the developers machine. The issue occurred when backbone view tried making AJAX call to the webservice; it was being rejected by Chrome browser marking it as a CORS call.

We wanted an immediate intermediary solution to continue with our development and we found that using a command line parameter  while starting chrome browser makes it ignore CORS check during AJAX call.

I thought it would come handy to someone facing same issue and needing immediate solution :-)

Please use the below steps to start chrome browser with CORS security disabled;

1. press windows button + R key to start windows Run prompt
2. type follwoing command i.e.

chrome.exe --disable-web-security

EDIT:
Some people could not get CORS working using above method.

For them, here is a little PHP function that can also help you get rid of CORS issue.
All you need to do is call this function in the start of the PHP page.

/**
 *  An example CORS-compliant method.  It will allow any GET, POST, or OPTIONS requests from any
 *  origin.
 *
 *  In a production environment, you probably want to be more restrictive, but this gives you
 *  the general idea of what is involved.  For the nitty-gritty low-down, read:
 *
 *  - https://developer.mozilla.org/en/HTTP_access_control
 *  - http://www.w3.org/TR/cors/
 *
 */
function cors() {
    // Allow from any origin
    if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_ORIGIN'])) {
        header("Access-Control-Allow-Origin: {$_SERVER['HTTP_ORIGIN']}");
        header('Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true');
        header('Access-Control-Max-Age: 86400');    // cache for 1 day
    }
    // Access-Control headers are received during OPTIONS requests
    if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'OPTIONS') {
        if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCESS_CONTROL_REQUEST_METHOD']))
            header("Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, POST, OPTIONS");        
        if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCESS_CONTROL_REQUEST_HEADERS']))
            header("Access-Control-Allow-Headers: {$_SERVER['HTTP_ACCESS_CONTROL_REQUEST_HEADERS']}");
        exit(0);
    }
    echo "You have CORS!";
}

Thanks for reading and happy coding :-)

Make a bootable windows 7 / Windows 8 usb drive

Recently, I landed into my worst fear i.e. my work computer crashed and I had to setup a new machine from scratch. In the entire recovery process; installing the OS the most tedious work.
It was then when I realized the lack of proper documentation regarding how to create a bootable USB drive to install windows 7 or windows 8

With lot of pain I found a tutorial and I would like to share the steps with all of you;

1. Open the windows command prompt in the Administrator modeType following commands in sequence i.e.

• diskpart (Note: This will open a new command window. Please do not close the previous command window as we will need that later)
• list disk
• select disk 1 (Note: here disk 1 is the disk number of the usb drive)
• clean
• create partition primary
• select partition 1
• active
• format fs=ntfs quick
• assign
• exit (Note: This will close the command window and you will land into the original / first command window)

Now, you need the copy of windows 7 or windows 8 that you want to move to usb drive

Execute the following commands in the command window that is open i.e.

• cd d:\windows7_install\boot (Note:  Navigate to directory named boot under the windows installation directory. For me it was in the D: drive in windows7_install directory)
• bootsect.exe/nt60 e: (Note:  Here e: is the drive letter of the USB drive. Make sure that you make no mistake in this step)
• Your bootable USB drive is all set now. Copy the windows 7 or windows 8 install directory in the USB drive and restart the computer with boot from USB disk option selected in the BIOS.
• You computer boots from the USB drive. Now you can execute the setup from the install directory that you copied in previous step

Cheers !! :-)

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZVgInbhTAw&index=93&list=WL

PHP Mail - Send HTML email with attachment

As the title says, we are going to discuss how to send mail with attachment using the default PHP mail() function.
Sending a plain text / HTML email using PHP mail is very simple but when it comes to adding attachments to it then it becomes equally tricky and difficult.
I was caught up in this tricky situation and after searching around and trying zillions of solutions suggested by users in various forums got the following solution to work;
Hope this comes handy to someone in need :-)

This is the code that worked for me;

/* Email Detials */
  $mail_to = $to;
  $from_mail = $from;
  $from_name = $from_name;
  $reply_to = $from;
  $subject = $subject;
  $message_body = $msg;

/* Attachment File */
  // Attachment location
  $file_name = $basefilename;
  $path = "../reports/";
 
    // Read the file content
    $file = $path.$file_name;
    $file_size = filesize($file);
    $handle = fopen($file, "r");
    $content = fread($handle, $file_size);
    fclose($handle);
    $content = chunk_split(base64_encode($content));
   
/* Set the email header */
    // Generate a boundary
    $boundary = md5(uniqid(time()));
   
    // Email header
    $header = "From: ".$from_name." \r\n";
    $header .= "Reply-To: ".$reply_to."\r\n";
    $header .= "cc: ".$cc."\r\n";
    $header .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
   
    // Multipart wraps the Email Content and Attachment
    $header .= "Content-Type: multipart/mixed;\r\n";
    $header .= " boundary=\"".$boundary."\"";

    $message .= "This is a multi-part message in MIME format.\r\n\r\n";
    $message .= "--".$boundary."\r\n";
   
    // Email content
    // Content-type can be text/plain or text/html
    $message .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=\"iso-8859-1\"\r\n";
    $message .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\r\n";
    $message .= "\r\n";
    $message .= "$message_body\r\n";
    $message .= "--".$boundary."\r\n";
   
    // Attachment
    // Edit content type for different file extensions
    $message .= "Content-Type: application/csv;\r\n";
    $message .= " name=\"".$file_name."\"\r\n";
    $message .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\r\n";
    $message .= "Content-Disposition: attachment;\r\n";
    $message .= " filename=\"".$file_name."\"\r\n";
    $message .= "\r\n".$content."\r\n";
    $message .= "--".$boundary."--\r\n";
   
    // Send email
    if (mail($mail_to, $subject, $message, $header)) {
        echo "Sent";
    } else {
        echo "Error";
    }

Credit goes to user Karmaprod at the forum eureka.ykyuen.info
link: http://eureka.ykyuen.info/2010/02/16/php-send-attachmemt-with-php-mail/