PHP 5.x

I am currently working on an assignment to convert a Perl/PHP based intra-net project to an ASP.NET web application.

The complexity of the project has been significant as it involves the management of an internal Windows 2003 Active Directory setup for a large governmental organization, integrated with a proprietary ticketing system, and a Sql Server database. The (sometimes cryptic) non object-oriented PHP/Perl code together with a severely limited testing environment have only made the task that more difficult.

Well, it feels good to be blogging after a while. The past few weeks have been really hectic. Did you notice I do not have a single blog post for this month before this post? Well, I intend to compensate the void now, and what better way to begin than to offer some useful downloads for the community.

I have been getting a lot of Drupal consulting proposals for sometime. I will discuss these together with my schedule for the past days in a chit-chat entry, but let's concentrate on the topic on hand.

I recently needed to create a table in Drupal (while working on my next Drupal open source module, Document). It's just too easy outputting a table in PHP using a simple for loop over data fetched from the db. However, I wanted the table to look exactly like a native Drupal table, with sticky headers, ability to sort selected columns, paging etc.

While working on my next open-source module, Document for Drupal, I had a peculiar situation trying to create sub-directories under Drupal's files directory (usually located at /sites/default/files).

The module allows users to upload files to Drupal, and the admin interface of the module has a setting to allow administrators to specify the sub-directory under the files directory where the uploaded files should be saved to.

Document is a complete Document Management System for the Drupal CMS. I am still working on some parts of the module and hopefully, its first release should be available soon.

The official page for the module on drupal.org is this:
http://drupal.org/project/document

After recommendation by my brother to try MediaTemple as a Hosting Provider, I moved one of my client websites (based on WordPress) to MediaTemple last month.

My initial view of the service was reasonably satisfied, except for I would have liked a more functional Hosting Panel, especially related to backing-up & restoring databases (instead of having to do it each time manually via SSH, maybe I have been spoiled by CPanel).

While working on the next release of my open-source Drupal module Reference Links, I needed to delete all votes for links attached to a node when the node itself was being deleted. Here, remember the votes were stored for the links attached to the nodes (and not the nodes themselves).

"Reference Links" allows custom Urls to be attached to nodes. Its use is seen basically for documentation pages on a site.

The installation of my Take Control module for Drupal requires a bit more effort compared to a regular Drupal module.

The following video tutorial demonstrates each step required for installation. I have used CPanel's File Manager for the purpose but the process for your FTP client should not be too different.

These instructions are for the 2.0-Beta 2 version of the module, which differ significantly from the earlier instruction for 2.0-Beta 1 version.

Take Control is an administrative module for the popular Drupal CMS created by me last year primarily for managing this very website. The module is currently in its 2.x series with major enhancements and features being introduced in its 2.0 release, notably featuring a full-fledged File Browser/Manager.

The original intent for creating the module was discussed by me in an earlier blog post:
http://www.rahulsingla.com/blog/drupal-take-control-module