Boy, was i ready for saturday though! I guess my body was still used to sleeping for 10 hours every night. Instead i’ve been up by 7am everyday and out the door by 7:30. Yesterday i finally got to sleep in a bit, lounge around in my PJ’s, and then finally in the afternoon leave the house. Josh and I went up to Louisville so Josh could test drive a Infiniti G35. A very nice car! After that we went and ate pizza and drank beer at Za’s where we met up with some friends, one of whom neither of us had seen in years! After pizza and beer we went and saw Daybreakers, which was ok. It’s nothing to rave about, and I feel the previews mislead the audience to thinking the movie was something else. But exploding vampires are always nice.

Tomorrow starts week two! Hopefully nothing will go wrong, and the roads will stay clear!

I’m going to go step by step on how I got my WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP) Stack to also incorporate Oracle support. I’m assuming you already have a properly working Apache Webserver running with PHP enabled.

PHP and the Oracle: A layman’s story

1) Uninstall any existing copy of the Oracle Client, unless it’s needed for other functionality. (We had an Oracle 9i Client at work, which was installed on many of the machines, but wasn’t needed in this case, and i couldn’t find any documentation online to get it to work with PHP…)

2) Install the Instant Client provided at the Oracle site. Make sure to choose the proper options, like your architecture, and whatever client you wish; i used ‘Instant Client Package – Basic’ — because it stated it had all the required files for OCI connections, which is what i was using for my Oracle<->Webserver calls.

3) Edit your PATH Environment Variable. Add the directory to where you installed your instant client to the end. For Example, I installed to C:\oracle\instant_client, so i added ‘;C:\oracle\instant_client’ — note the preceding ‘;’, this is needed if the end of your PATH already doesn’t have it. It’s the delimiter for the different directories added to your path.

You only need to add the main directory to which you installed, the php_oci extension will look for the dll’s in that main directory. Also make sure you don’t have the trailing ‘\’ at the end. Depending on your windows installation it might not like that… — Windows can be so picky when it want..

4) Open your php.ini file and uncomment the line ‘;extension=php_oci8.dll’ — uncomment means take off the ‘;’ before the ‘extension=’.

5) Create a phpinfo file. Something simple like this will work.

<?php
phpinfo();
?>


Once you’ve created the file and placed it on your webserver, browse to it. Scroll through, if it’s properly set up, you should see a category called “oci8″.  If not, make sure that anywhere where PATH is referenced, it shows your updated PATH — with your Instant Client Directory added. If it’s not there you may need to restart your Windows server. I was having issues with my PATH properly updating and was forced to do this.

Setup should be complete now.  Next is testing.

6) Try to connect to your Oracle server. I personally use the OCI. Something like this should work:

<?php
$user = "username";
$pw = "password";
$db = "(DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS_LIST = (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = your.host.domain)(PORT = 1521)))(CONNECT_DATA=(SID=yourSID)))";
$conn = ocilogon($user,$pw,$db);
?>

You don’t need a TNSNAMES.ORA, but can use one (as far as i know). To use one just create the file in the root of the instant client installation.
If you don’t get a fatal error you should be good to go now. You now have the functionality to connect to Oracle databases. I’d love to hear how others have done this. Maybe there’s a better way to do it than what i did.

Some good resources for PHP and Oracle:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/oracle_php_cookbook/index.html
http://www.orafaq.com/wiki/PHP_FAQ

Maybe i’ll go do that now..

I got the log in system working, so i might as well take a break.. my brain hurts

First here are some things you’ll need.
1) A host – some place on the web which is willing to let you have some space to put the killboard and the database that goes along with it.
2) A mySQL database backend (preferably at the same place as the host)
3) A schema on said database where the tables needed for the killboard to go.
4) PHP – your host must support PHP (PHP 5 is the most current as of this writing).

Ok, so lets get started!

First things first, you’ll want to make sure you have permissions to create new schemas on your database. What i usually do is create a user just for that one schema and then give it everything but grant privileges. If you have no idea what i’m talking about, i’d say to take a look here. That should get you started on your way to using mySQL and learning how to administer it.

You’ll need to log into your mysql console (if you have remote access to your host). From a terminal window in linux, or command prompt in windows, you’ll issue this command

#/> mysql -u root -p
you’ll be prompted for your root password. enter it and press enter.

Typically, once you’re logged into the mysql console you’ll issue these commands like so:

mysql > CREATE DATABASE killboard;
mysql > GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP ON killboard.* TO ‘user’@'localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘password’;

The schema name for the killboard in this example is ‘killboard’. Notice that i’ve used ‘user’ for the username and ‘password’ for the password for the user. You’ll want to change this to something else, unless of course you don’t mind leaving your stuff insecure. Also, it’s a good idea to leave the host as localhost, since that’s typically where the killboard and database will reside, there on the local machine. This will also keep anyone from using your login credentials from a remote system if they do happen to get your information.

If you don’t have remote access, you may have a cpanel or somesuch that you can log into. You’ll want to create your new database and user with that. Making sure the new user has permissions for the new database.

Once you have your schema set up (there should be no tables in it yet). You’re ready to get the files needed and upload them to your server space. You can get the latest version of the killboard here. If that doesn’t work (as they may have gotten a new host), you can always google for ‘Eve Dev Killboard’. That should get you good results.

After you’ve downloaded the full install (not an update, unless of course you’re updating your killboard, in which case why are you reading this, since you should already know what to do) you’ll want to untar the package, this can be easily done with WinRAR (for windows and my personal favorite) or using tar -zxvf (in linux). After the extraction is complete, you’re ready to upload the files to your host.

Before you commence with the uplaod, think about where you want to put your killboard. Will it be the first page everyone sees? or do you want to put it in another directory? Personally i like having everything in it’s own directory, so for sake of arguement we’ll use /kb (meaning the address will look like http://some.host.com/kb).

You’ve created your directory and uploaded all the files there, you’ll browse to http://your.host.com/kb/install. From there you’ll have on screen instructions, which should be easy enough to follow. You’ll need to know the schema name, username, and password for your database connection, and your Eve Corporation or Alliance name. Other than that it’s very automated and easy to use.

If you do have trouble and need assistance, you can head over to eve-id.net(or whatever site they’re at now, if that one is no longer valid) and go to the forums. Pretty much if you’re having an issue, someone else has already had it and there’s a solution there.

Once everything is complete, make sure to delete the install directory and follow all the other security suggestions the installer gives you.  Now you’re ready to start posting those kills! Good job!

Example Killboard (actually my corps’):Legion of Black Mesa’s Killboard
For the new Apocrypha updates check out this pack someone put together: Full Package Download [Current Ver: 1.6 Apoc 1.1 Content]

A good hint: Keep an eye on the EDK Forums; mods, updates, and new features are being added all the time!

For you WordPress pod pilot bloggers: Killboard plugin for WordPress. Looks like a neat feature to add.

EDITS:

-I thought i should show an example of that the killboard should look like after it’s finished.
-I added in some more detailed instructions for the database creation. Sorry to those that read this before and didn’t get what i was talking about. I tend to be a bit vague sometimes.
-Thanks to the comment by Dave I’ve updated the permissions needed by the user to include UPDATE. It would be silly not to be able to update a record
-Added links to the EDK Forums, especially to the Apocrypha release pack.
-Added link to Zaine’s wordpress killboard widget plugin.

So far i’ve just been working on getting the website set up and running. I’m in the process of installing a wordpress blog for our dev blog, and comtemplating on using e107 for the news, forums, downloads section. I’ve also been thinking about building the whole sha-bang from scratch, but that’s pretty time consuming and i’m sure we’d rather have a prefab site up now, than a custom one three months from now. We can always customize as we go.

So, first thing for me, once everything is installed, is to get the rss_reader on there and ready for download Then from there i’ll start working on other stuff.

That’s all i got for now.

What the plugin does now:
-Allows users to choose an RSS feed from a dropdown list and have it display on the screen, no page refresh required!
-Admins can remove, edit, and add new feeds for users to choose from.
-Admins can add a menu (widget) which will show the latest feed (only one) from each of active feeds.

What the plugin does not do right now:
-Upgrade properly. If someone has a 1.0 version (which should be nobody), database tables aren’t created when a user would upgrade. I need to find out why this happens, and fix it. This should also eliminate any future problems.

I’ll let you all know when i’ve completed the plugin and have it uploaded to e107Plugins. It will probably be hosted on So!Soft first, which i’ll have to talk to Buzz about.