The Dreadnought Framework

A friend of mine and I are working on a pretty impressive project which will hopefully fill a niche in the IT market.
Its a pretty impressive amount of work, but we are both up for a challenge, and the chance to sink a few beers on a project meeting will be a necessity.

One major milestone has been completed – the Dreadnought framework. Its basis is two files – index.php and _dreadnought.php. All heavy duty code is held in the dreadnought kernel – accessable through $dreadnought. Its very very simple. No access control, basic MySQL support but has a promising future.

I am developing a ‘blogging’ module into it, and hopefully will move this site from wordpress into Dreadnought in the not too distant future.

The one thing I really love about the way I have designed dreadnought is that the templating system could not be easier. You have a html file and just add the tag <DREADNOUGHT_CONTENT /> and the code does the rest.
I’m hoping to release the framework as open source soonish, but not until some more work has gone into it, including some rudimentary pre-flight checking of modules – ie to prevent a module from killing the framework’s kernel.

See if people you follow are following you in twitter

This is a very quickly hacked together script, but it does its job. Careful though, after a certain number of requests, your IP gets blocked. I’ve done it, and I have begged for it to be whitelisted…

Anyhow, for your enjoyment, here is the script. Its nothing spectacular and needs a lot of work. Consider it version 0.00.00.00.01a:


<?php
$username
=$_REQUEST['user'];

$friendsurl='http://twitter.com/statuses/friends/'.$username.'.xml';
$friends=xml2array(file_get_contents($friendsurl));

foreach ($friends['users']['user'] as $friend){
    echo 
'<strong>@'.$friend['screen_name'].'</strong> ('.$friend['name'].') ';
    
$result=file_get_contents('http://twitter.com/friendships/exists.xml?user_b='.$username.'&user_a='.$friend['screen_name']);
    if (
eregi('true',$result)) { 
        echo 
'is following you.';
    } elseif (
eregi('false',$result)) {
        echo 
'is <strong>not</strong> following you.';
    } else {
            echo 
htmlspecialchars($result);
        }
    echo 
'<br>';
}

/** 
 * xml2array() will convert the given XML text to an array in the XML structure. 
 * Link: http://www.bin-co.com/php/scripts/xml2array/ 
 * Arguments : $contents - The XML text 
 *                $get_attributes - 1 or 0. If this is 1 the function will get the attributes as well as the tag values - this results in a different array structure in the return value. 
 *                $priority - Can be 'tag' or 'attribute'. This will change the way the resulting array sturcture. For 'tag', the tags are given more importance. 
 * Return: The parsed XML in an array form. Use print_r() to see the resulting array structure. 
 * Examples: $array =  xml2array(file_get_contents('feed.xml')); 
 *              $array =  xml2array(file_get_contents('feed.xml', 1, 'attribute')); 
 */ 
function xml2array($contents$get_attributes=1$priority 'tag') { 
    if(!
$contents) return array(); 

    if(!function_exists('xml_parser_create')) { 
        
//print "'xml_parser_create()' function not found!"; 
        
return array(); 
    } 

    //Get the XML parser of PHP - PHP must have this module for the parser to work 
    
$parser xml_parser_create(''); 
    
xml_parser_set_option($parserXML_OPTION_TARGET_ENCODING"UTF-8"); # http://minutillo.com/steve/weblog/2004/6/17/php-xml-and-character-encodings-a-tale-of-sadness-rage-and-data-loss 
    
xml_parser_set_option($parserXML_OPTION_CASE_FOLDING0); 
    
xml_parser_set_option($parserXML_OPTION_SKIP_WHITE1); 
    
xml_parse_into_struct($parsertrim($contents), $xml_values); 
    
xml_parser_free($parser); 

    if(!$xml_values) return;//Hmm... 

    //Initializations 
    $xml_array = array(); 
    
$parents = array(); 
    
$opened_tags = array(); 
    
$arr = array(); 

    $current = &$xml_array//Refference 

    //Go through the tags. 
    $repeated_tag_index = array();//Multiple tags with same name will be turned into an array 
    
foreach($xml_values as $data) { 
        unset(
$attributes,$value);//Remove existing values, or there will be trouble 

        //This command will extract these variables into the foreach scope 
        // tag(string), type(string), level(int), attributes(array). 
        extract($data);//We could use the array by itself, but this cooler. 

        $result = array(); 
        
$attributes_data = array(); 
         
        if(isset(
$value)) { 
            if(
$priority == 'tag'$result $value
            else 
$result['value'] = $value//Put the value in a assoc array if we are in the 'Attribute' mode 
        

        //Set the attributes too. 
        
if(isset($attributes) and $get_attributes) { 
            foreach(
$attributes as $attr => $val) { 
                if(
$priority == 'tag'$attributes_data[$attr] = $val
                else 
$result['attr'][$attr] = $val//Set all the attributes in a array called 'attr' 
            

        } 

        //See tag status and do the needed. 
        
if($type == "open") {//The starting of the tag '<tag>' 
            
$parent[$level-1] = &$current
            if(!
is_array($current) or (!in_array($tagarray_keys($current)))) { //Insert New tag 
                
$current[$tag] = $result
                if(
$attributes_data$current[$tag'_attr'] = $attributes_data
                
$repeated_tag_index[$tag.'_'.$level] = 1

                $current = &$current[$tag]; 

            } else { //There was another element with the same tag name 

                if(isset($current[$tag][0])) {//If there is a 0th element it is already an array 
                    
$current[$tag][$repeated_tag_index[$tag.'_'.$level]] = $result
                    
$repeated_tag_index[$tag.'_'.$level]++; 
                } else {
//This section will make the value an array if multiple tags with the same name appear together 
                    
$current[$tag] = array($current[$tag],$result);//This will combine the existing item and the new item together to make an array 
                    
$repeated_tag_index[$tag.'_'.$level] = 2
                     
                    if(isset(
$current[$tag.'_attr'])) { //The attribute of the last(0th) tag must be moved as well 
                        
$current[$tag]['0_attr'] = $current[$tag.'_attr']; 
                        unset(
$current[$tag.'_attr']); 
                    } 

                } 
                $last_item_index $repeated_tag_index[$tag.'_'.$level]-1
                
$current = &$current[$tag][$last_item_index]; 
            } 

        } elseif($type == "complete") { //Tags that ends in 1 line '<tag />' 
            //See if the key is already taken. 
            
if(!isset($current[$tag])) { //New Key 
                
$current[$tag] = $result
                
$repeated_tag_index[$tag.'_'.$level] = 1
                if(
$priority == 'tag' and $attributes_data$current[$tag'_attr'] = $attributes_data

            } else { //If taken, put all things inside a list(array) 
                
if(isset($current[$tag][0]) and is_array($current[$tag])) {//If it is already an array... 

                    // ...push the new element into that array. 
                    $current[$tag][$repeated_tag_index[$tag.'_'.$level]] = $result
                     
                    if(
$priority == 'tag' and $get_attributes and $attributes_data) { 
                        
$current[$tag][$repeated_tag_index[$tag.'_'.$level] . '_attr'] = $attributes_data
                    } 
                    
$repeated_tag_index[$tag.'_'.$level]++; 

                } else { //If it is not an array... 
                    
$current[$tag] = array($current[$tag],$result); //...Make it an array using using the existing value and the new value 
                    
$repeated_tag_index[$tag.'_'.$level] = 1
                    if(
$priority == 'tag' and $get_attributes) { 
                        if(isset(
$current[$tag.'_attr'])) { //The attribute of the last(0th) tag must be moved as well 
                             
                            
$current[$tag]['0_attr'] = $current[$tag.'_attr']; 
                            unset(
$current[$tag.'_attr']); 
                        } 
                         
                        if(
$attributes_data) { 
                            
$current[$tag][$repeated_tag_index[$tag.'_'.$level] . '_attr'] = $attributes_data
                        } 
                    } 
                    
$repeated_tag_index[$tag.'_'.$level]++; //0 and 1 index is already taken 
                

            } 

        } elseif($type == 'close') { //End of tag '</tag>' 
            
$current = &$parent[$level-1]; 
        } 
    } 
     
    return(
$xml_array); 
}

?>


Get your last tweet in PHP

I did have a script which pulled my last tweet, and added it to a speech bubble coming from a picture of me. I took it off since it took too long on a slow connection to get the image. However, this little nugget of code will pull the last tweet for you (or whoever you want) for your evil deeds:

$twitee = 'ajdixon';  // The person you want to grab the status of
$ch = curl_init();
$url='http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/';
$url.=$twitee.'.json?count=1';
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$tweet = json_decode($data);
$date = strtotime($tweet['created_at']);
$text = $tweet['text'];

This will give you the text in the $text variable, and a unix timestamp of when the message was posted. You can do a print_r($tweet); to see what other nuggets of wonder you can get about a tweet.

I had a problem where I did not have a json_encode function, so below is a substitute:


function json_decode($json)
{
$comment = false;
$out = '$x=';
for ($i=0; $i<strlen($json); $i++)
{
if (!$comment)
{
if ($json[$i] == '{') $out .= ' array(';
else if ($json[$i] == '}') $out .= ')';
else if ($json[$i] == ':') $out .= '=>';
else $out .= $json[$i];
}
else $out .= $json[$i];
if ($json[$i] == '"') $comment = !$comment;
}
eval(str_replace('[','',str_replace(']','',$out)) . ';');
return $x;
}

and this function gives you something along the lines of ‘30 minutes ago’:


function relativeTime($timestamp){
$difference = time() - $timestamp;
$periods = array("sec", "min", "hour", "day", "week", "month", "years", "decade");
$lengths = array("60","60","24","7","4.35","12","10");
if ($difference > 0) { // this was in the past
$ending = "ago";
} else { // this was in the future
$difference = -$difference;
$ending = "to go";
}
for($j = 0; $difference >= $lengths[$j]; $j++) $difference /= $lengths[$j];
$difference = round($difference);
if($difference != 1) $periods[$j].= "s";
$text = "$difference $periods[$j] $ending";
return $text;
}

So, a small bit of code such as:


echo $text.' ('.relativeTime($date).')';

Will show something like this:

This is the last tweet by @ajdixon! (32 minutes ago)

Oh the fun you can have with twitter is endless….