The newLISP on Rockets blog
Popular blog posts
Recent forum posts
Discussion Forum
Discussion forumLinking a blog to a forum...
Post #: 59
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2012-11-06 15:17:32.000
Author: Rocket Man
Blogs and forums are two different things, but they don't have to be.
I'm adding a forum to the Rockets blog, where any registered user will be able to post on any topic. Each new blog post will appear on the forum, and any comments added in the forum will be reflected in the blog itself. But the inverse is not true-- any new forum post will not appear on the blog. This allows other users to start discussions and interact with each other without interrupting the blog itself.
The way I do this is to add a new column called "PostType" that can be either "Blog post" or "Forum post". The former will be retrieved by the main page, while the latter is retrieved by the forum page.
I'm also using my new (display-table) function to display the forum posts.
Views: 4093
Tables and Avatars...
Post #: 53
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2012-11-02 23:27:05.000
Author: Rocket Man
A couple of additions today...
First, a Table function that prints some nicely-formatted HTML tables.
(display-table list-of-headers nested-list-of-data "optional form styling")
striped - alternates rows in grey
bordered - adds borders and rounded corners to the table
hover - enables hover state on table rows when mousing over
condensed - more condensed style of table
This is a neat way of displaying tabular data in a pretty way, just by passing in lists.
The other thing is that I've changed the formatting of comments to include user avatars to the left of each comment. Unfortunately I didn't have time to get avatar uploading working. That will have to wait for next week! Comments (4)
Views: 4150
I've got a Rocket!
Post #: 52
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2012-11-01 21:42:04.000
Author: Rocket Man
Some sites have a mascot. Okay, we have a rocket, let's call him Rocketty. Done.
Now all we need is a theme song.
This is another UBB code enabling the user to embed YouTube videos. Just use the tags [ youtube ] and [ /youtube ] (without the spaces) and in between, put the alphanumeric string of that video (eg: rJppnG1tflU)
Views: 4712
Editing!
Post #: 51
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2012-11-01 17:17:39.000
Author: Rocket Man
So, now we have the final U in CRUD done, and I can finally edit posts. YOU can't edit comments yet, but that's coming soon, probably tomorrow.
That's fun. EDITING ROCKS! It's also a really neat macro that makes it pretty easy to do SQL update statements.
Here's another neat thing: Basically, I use the exact same statement to create and update a post:(update-record "Posts" Id PosterId PostDate PostSubject PostContent) ; It's the U in CRUD!(create-record "Posts" Id PosterId PostDate PostSubject PostContent) ; It's the C in CRUD!
There's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes to translate the above into two very different SQL statements. Basically the Id in the first is to CHECK for Id's value, and in the second statement it is to SET Id to that value. I like the symmetry,
Views: 4917
Parameterizing SQL queries
Post #: 50
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2012-10-31 00:37:48.000
Author: Rocket Man
Sometimes SQL injection comes in tricky forms. Often attackers will add on extra junk in the URL to try and confuse SQL into doing something it wasn't intended to do. For example, if the URL for page 2 is:
http://newlisponrockets.com/rockets-main.lsp?p=2
an attacker might try something like
http://newlisponrockets.com/rockets-main.lsp?p=2 OR 1=1
to try and break the code or inject some other SQL into the query by adding these commands with spaces.
I've added a function called (force-parameters) that makes it easy to prevent this. For example, to get the page number from the URL, I used to call ($GET "p"), which in this case would return "2 OR 1=1".
Now, I use the code:(set 'current-page (force-parameters 1 ($GET "p"))) ; we only need the first part, ignore anything else
which takes only the first parameter from the URL. You can add as much extra junk after it, but it will only take the "2".
Views: 3736
Testing UBB code
Post #: 49
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2012-10-29 23:21:47.000
Author: Rocket Man
Just a little bold and italics and underlines
and some code samples:(format-for-web str-input-text)
The above code now translates these UBB codes into HTML. Actual HTML is converted to its literal equivalent to avoid cross-site scripting issues.
Views: 4542
Welcome emails for new users!
Post #: 48
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2012-10-29 21:41:28.000
Author: Rocket Man
When I started this little thing a month and a half ago, I didn't expect anyone to notice it right away. The Internet is a big place and Rockets is, for now, quite small.
But a few people have found their way here (welcome guys!) and so I now need a way to send some welcome emails for new users.
I've added a function called (send-mail), which sends an email to a given address. Behind the scenes it uses the Unix command sendmail, so you will need to have that installed on your server (simply type "sudo apt-get install sendmail" on Ubuntu or Debian).
To avoid emails falling into spam traps, you need to be sending from a valid email address that has the same domain as the server that is sending it. The (send-mail) function will take care of all the headers and things automatically.
For example, for new users, I simply use:
(send-mail UserEmail "newlisponrockets@newlisponrockets.com" "Rocket Man" "Welcome to the newLISP on Rockets blog!" welcome-email)
where welcome-email is the string of the body of the email.
Views: 4071
Documentation!
Post #: 46
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2012-10-23 00:02:56.000
Author: Rocket Man
Documentation is something I have a particular fondness for. I actually got my start in the software industry as a technical writer, so I appreciate it when things are well-documented. Of course now that I am a developer I find writing documentation to be a chore!
The way I've done documentation in Rockets is to automatically generate it from the comments in the core file that contains all of Rockets' functions. However in order for this to work I had to go back and clean up and standardize all the comments, something that I had been putting off. Oh well, sometimes chores need to be done!
One thing I always disliked about most programming documentation is the requirement to understand and translate some weird meta-language or syntax for the usage of each statement. Usually it was easier to just look at the example and figure out what the author meant. So for Rockets, all my usage statements are in fact examples, albeit using names and strings that describe their actual function. So for example (open-database "database name") is both the usage and the example of opening a database.
Views: 4097
How to make a custom 404 Not Found page
Post #: 45
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2012-10-22 21:33:43.000
Author: Rocket Man
This is something really simple, the perfect assignment for a Monday morning.
Go to your site's root directory (usually /var/www) and edit the .htaccess file (type sudo nano .htaccess)
Add the following line to the end of the file:
ErrorDocument 404 /rockets-404.lsp
Now any 404 (page not found) errors will redirect to this page instead of displaying the generic Apache error.
Views: 3801
Commenting is live!
Post #: 44
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2012-10-19 23:28:16.000
Author: Rocket Man
This would be a PERFECT message to test out adding comments to.. if you know what I mean. Hint, hint.
Comments (13)Views: 4224