function getCategoryAncestor($cat,$index=0){

$parentCatList = get_category_parents($cat,false,',');
$parentCatListArray = @split(",",$parentCatList);
$topParentName = $parentCatListArray[$index];
$charReplace = array(" " => "-", "(" => "", ")" => "");
$topParentSlug = strtolower(strtr($topParentName,$charReplace));
$catAncestor['ancestor'] = $topParentName;
$catAncestor['ancestor_slug'] = $topParentSlug;
return $catAncestor;

}

// How to use :
// if you have this category (by term ID) structure : 1 > 2 > 3
// to get ancestor of a category ID 3

$ancestors = getCategoryAncestor(3);

// to get parent of a category ID 3

$ancestors = getCategoryAncestor(3,1);

I know this code is premature, it’s only works when you didn’t modify the category slug. But at least it is working in almost all my projects :p.

According to codex.wordpress.org:

Actions: Actions are the hooks that the WordPress core launches at specific points during execution, or when specific events occur. Your plugin can specify that one or more of its PHP functions are executed at these points, using the Action API.

You can find more complete explanation about this hooks in http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API and right now I only give simple example to create custom hook that would give us benefit if we want to build wordpress plugin.

1. Initialize Our Hook

You can put this code in any of your plugin files

function my_first_hook(){
// initialize hook
do_action('my_act_first_hook');
}

2. Adding Action

function my_first_action(){
echo 'This is my first hook';
}
add_action('my_act_first_hook','my_first_action',5);

remember : ’5′ at the end of the add_action is priority. 5 mean lower than 4 to execute and the default value is 10

3. Execute it

Now, we only need to call our function from the first Step in every your php files

my_first_hook();

This function will produce

This is my first hook

That’s all we’re finish. “Really? how about if I want to append other text to my hook?”. All you need is only create another function and call it via add_action. Here it is how to do this :

function append_another_text(){
echo '. Append new text';
}
add_action('my_act_first_hook','append_another_text',6);

Code above will produce

This is my first hook. Append new text

See the ’6′? change it to lower number than 5 and your text will appear before the original one. “Cool, But how about if I want to pass argument into this hook?”. Good question, all you need is only change your code a bit. here it is

function my_first_hook($arg){
do_action('my_act_first_hook',$arg);
}
function my_first_action($arg){
echo 'This is my first hook with '.$arg;
}
add_action('my_act_first_hook','my_first_action',5,1);

and call it to your php files

my_first_hook('Argument');

And the code above should produce

This is my first hook with Argument

Not too complicated right?.

“How about if i want to completely remove the original text and change it with the new one?”.

There is also answer about that one. You only need to call remove_action. Here it is how to do this.

1. Remove previous action

function remove_text(){
	remove_action('my_act_first_hook','my_first_action');
}
add_action('init','remove_text');

2. Create your new brand new function

function brand_new_text_action(){
echo 'Brand new text';
}
add_action('my_act_first_hook','brand_new_text_action');

That’s it, want to see real action in form of plugin? you can download it here Action Hook in Action | size : 4.75 kB

Thank You, hope this article is usefull for us

The contest is looking for designers and developers to invent new ways to display news content, new ways to integrate comments and social media into the user experience, and new ways to adapt site design to mobiles and tablets.

The contest is free to enter and open until October 5th 2011. Interested parties can visit http://contest.sourcefabric.org to find out more.

Installation

The plugin is simple to use:

1. Download `rh-ym-status.zip` you can download here RH Yahoo! Messenger Status WP Plugin | size : 66.22 kB
2. Unzip
3. Upload `rh-ym-status` directory to your `/wp-content/plugins` directory
4. Enable the plugin via plugin managament page
5. Go to widget area and fill your Yahoo Name(s) and Yahoo ID(s) to show your Yahoo! Messenger status in widget area

Screen Shot

Download

For bugs reporting, please send your email to wp.plugins@ronggur.com. And feel free to leave any comments
Thanks!

1. Get Page ID by name, slug or title

<?php
function rh_get_page_id($name)
{
global $wpdb;
// get page id using custom query
$page_id = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT ID FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE ( post_name = '".$name."' or post_title = '".$name."' ) and post_status = 'publish' and post_type='page' ");
return $page_id;
}
?>

2. Get Page Permalink by name, slug or title

<?php
function rh_get_page_permalink($name)
{
$page_id = rh_get_pageid($name);
return get_permalink($page_id);
}
?>

3. How To Use

<?php
// get by title
echo rh_get_page_permalink('Your Page Name');
// get by name or slug
echo rh_get_page_permalink('your-page-name');
?>

Enjoy.. I hope it useful and works for you

Just add this codes to your wp code I usually put in in functions.php

<?php

// Filter wp_nav_menu() to add additional links and other output
function custom_nav_menu_items($items, $args) {

 $search = '<li id="search">';
 $search .= custom_searchform();
 $search .= '</li>';
 $items = $items .$search;

return $items;
}
add_filter( 'wp_nav_menu_items', 'custom_nav_menu_items', 10, 2 );

function custom_searchform(){
 $search = get_search_query();
 if($search) $search_text = $search;
 else $search_text = "Search";

 $form = '<form method="get" id="searchform"  action="'.get_bloginfo('home').'">';
 $form .= '<fieldset>';
 $form .= '<input type="text" value="'.$search_text.'"  name="s" id="s"  />';
 $form .= '<input type="hidden" id="searchsubmit" />';
 $form .= '</fieldset>';
 $form .= '</form>';

 return $form;
}

?>

Method above will add search form to all wp menu. So how about if I only want to add to specific menu location?

Here we goes

<?php

# apply only ini 'header-menu' location

if($args->theme_location == 'header-menu'){
 $search = '<li id="search">';
 $search .= rh_searchform();
 $search .= '</li>';
 $items = $items .$search;
 }

?>

Finish,
-rmh-

1. Upgrade latest table

Since you’ll need to add ‘id’ on multiple record then we need to upgrade the existing table. Here is the full sql

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `vote` (
 `id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
 `desc` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
 `counter` int(8) NOT NULL default '0',
 `value` int(8) NOT NULL default '0',
 PRIMARY KEY  (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM  DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=3 ;

--
-- Dumping data for table `vote`
--

INSERT INTO `vote` (`id`, `desc`, `counter`, `value`) VALUES
(1, 'star - 1', 0, 0),
(2, 'star - 2', 0,0);

2. CSS

We still can stylesheet from the previous post. No need to modify it.

3. PHP files (index.php & update.php)

There are some code changes in this files. If in previous post we just need an html file to represent the star rating, now we need php file to do it. Here is full code for index.php and some simple code explanation in it

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>jQuery Tutorial : Simple ajax star rating</title>
<meta name="Keywords" content="Star rating, jQuery, ajax">
<meta name="Description" content="jQuery Tutorial : Simple ajax star rating">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en">
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow">
<script src="rating/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="rating/starrating.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<link href="rating/starrating.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" />
</head>
<body>
<?php
// include update.php
include_once 'update.php';
// get all data from tabel
$arr_star = fetchStar();
?>
<?php
// start looping datas
foreach($arr_star as $star){ ?>
<h2>Star Rater - <?php echo $star['id'];?></h2>
<ul class='star-rating' id="star-rating-<?php echo $star['id'];?>">
<?php /* getRating($id) is to generate current rating */?>
 <li id="current-rating-<?php echo $star['id'];?>" style="width:<?php echo getRating($star['id'])?>%"><!-- will show current rating --></li>
 <?php
 /* we need to generate 'id' for star rating.. this 'id' will identify which data to execute  */
 /* we will pass it in ajax later */
 ?>
 <span id="<?php echo $star['id'];?>">
 <li><a href="javascript:void(0)" title="1 star out of 5">1</a></li>
 <li><a href="javascript:void(0)" title="2 stars out of 5">2</a></li>
 <li><a href="javascript:void(0)" title="3 stars out of 5">3</a></li>
 <li><a href="javascript:void(0)" title="4 stars out of 5">4</a></li>
 <li><a href="javascript:void(0)" title="5 stars out of 5">5</a></li>
 </span>
</ul>
<?php } ?>
</body>
</html>

And this is for update.php

<?php
// connect to database
$dbh=mysql_connect ("localhost", "user", "password") or die ('Cannot connect to the database');
mysql_select_db ("database",$dbh);

if($_GET['do']=='rate'){
 // do rate and get id
 rate($_GET['id']);
}else if($_GET['do']=='getrate'){
 // get rating and get id
 getRating($_GET['id']);
}

// get data from tabel
function fetchStar(){
 $sql = "select * from `vote`";
 $result=@mysql_query($sql);
 while($rs = @mysql_fetch_array($result,MYSQL_ASSOC)){
 $arr_data[] = $rs;
 }
 return $arr_data;
}

// function to retrieve
function getRating($id){
 $sql= "select * from vote`` where id='".$id."' ";
 $result=@mysql_query($sql);
 $rs=@mysql_fetch_array($result);
 // set width of star
 $rating = (@round($rs[value] / $rs[counter],1)) * 20;
 echo $rating;
}

// function to insert rating
function rate($id){
 $text = strip_tags($_GET['rating']);
 $update = "update `vote` set counter = counter + 1, value = value + ".$_GET['rating']."  where id='".$id."' ";

 $result = @mysql_query($update);
}
?>

4. Javascript

// JavaScript Document
 $(document).ready(function() {
 // get rating function
 function getRating(id){
 $.ajax({
 type: "GET",
 url: "update.php",
 data: "do=getrate&id="+id,
 cache: false,
 async: false,
 success: function(result) {
 // apply star rating to element
 $("#current-rating-"+id+"").css({ width: "" + result + "%" });
 },
 error: function(result) {
 alert("some error occured, please try again later");
 }
 });
 }

 // link handler
 $('.ratelinks li a').click(function(){
 // get the parent id
 var idStar = $(this).parent().parent().attr('id');
 $.ajax({
 type: "GET",
 url: "update.php",
 data: "rating="+$(this).text()+"&do=rate&id="+idStar,
 cache: false,
 async: false,
 success: function(result) {
 // remove #ratelinks element to prevent another rate
 $("#ratelinks").remove();
 // get rating after click
 getRating(idStar);
 },
 error: function(result) {
 alert("some error occured, please try again later");
 }
 });

 });
 });

That’s it! hope it works for you . You can add some modification like notification, or loader while processing.

- View Demo

- Download zip file jQuery Tutorial : Simple ajax star rating with php (extended) (1086)

google search new interface

This interface isn’t officially launch, so you need do simple trick to view it.

1. Visit http://google.com
2. On your url address field type in this code

javascript:void(document.cookie="PREF=ID=20b6e4c2f44943bb:U=4bf292d46faad806:TM=1249677602:LM=1257919388:S=odm0Ys-53ZueXfZG;path=/; domain=.google.com");

3. Refresh your browser

I get this trick from gizmodo

1. Controller

Create controller and named it “preview”, we also need function in it to call the image class. See the script below

<?php

class preview extends Controller {

function preview()
{
parent::Controller();
$this->load->helper('url');
}

function index($height='50',$width='50')
{

// we will need to pass the height and with of the image
$arr_data['height']    =    $height;
$arr_data['width']    =    $width;
$this->load->view('preview', $arr_data);
}

function get_photo($height,$width){
$path = [ absolute path to your image ex : /public-html/dock/image.jpg ];
$this->load->library('image_lib');
$imageinit['image_library']     = 'gd2';
$imageinit['quality']            = '90%'; // set quality
$imageinit['dynamic_output']    = true;     // set to true to generate it dynamically
$imageinit['source_image']         = $path;
$imageinit['maintain_ratio']     = false;
$imageinit['width']             = $width;
$imageinit['height']             = $height;
$this->image_lib->initialize($imageinit);
if(!$this->image_lib->resize()){
echo $this->image_lib->display_errors(); // print error if it fails
}
}
}

?>

“get_photo” function is where we will generate the image dynamically. We call this function in <img> html tag in “view” file.

2. View

Here is the view code where we will call “get_photo” function

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Code Igniter : Image on the fly</title>
</head>
<body>
<img src="<?php echo base_url().'index.php/preview/get_photo/'.$height.'/'.$width.'' ?>" title="image on the fly" alt="image on the fly" />
</body>
</html>

That’s it

• View demo
• Download source (only controller and view) : Image on the fly with codeigniter (240)

1. CSS Property

By adding ‘-moz-border-radius’ for FF or ‘-webkit-border-radius’ for Safari, ucan create round corner element. Comparing to other maybe this one is the lightest and easiest way to create round corner element. Here is some example how to use it

applying bottom left

-moz-border-radius-bottomleft:7px;

applying bottom right

-moz-border-radius-bottomright:7px;

applying top left

-moz-border-radius-topleft:7px;

applying top right

-moz-border-radius-topright:7px

applying all corner

-moz-border-radius:7px;

So far i only know that this technique only works for Firefox and Safari. Remember that ‘-moz-border-radius’ is works for Firefox and ‘-webkit-border-radius’ for safari

view demo (all corner)

2. Javascript

By using some javascript function or plugin we can create round corner element. So far if i need it i use jquery corner you can download this plugin here http://malsup.com/jquery/corner/jquery.corner.js?v1.99. The best thing using this plugin, you can create diffent shape for corner, not only round. And it have good browser compatibility.

Here is basic sample how to use it.

jQuery(document).ready(function(){

$("#nav li").corner("7px");
});

view demo . For complete example, please visit the official site.

3. Image and CSS

In this part we use images as background to create the menu. We slice rounded images into 2 parts. First is for the left side and the other is for the righ side (see picture)

One of the image will wider than the other, in this example we create the left side wider than the right one.

Images slice for menu

As you see at image above, we will put the wider background in <li> and make the left side menu looks round. Then we put the right side in <a>. Don’t forget to make <li> and <a> have the same height so the round corner will look perfect (use padding to adjust it). Here is the the css code

ul,ol{
padding: 10px 10px;
margin-left:10px;
}
ul li {
list-style: decimal inside;
list-style:none !important;
}

#nav {
margin:0;
padding0;
overflow:hidden;
float:left;
position:relative;
}
#nav li{
float:left;
margin:0;
text-align:center;
height:32px;
margin-right:10px;
background:transparent url('images/menuleft_bg.jpg') left bottom no-repeat;
}

#nav li a{
margin:0;
height:16px;
display:block;
vertical-align:middle;
padding:8px 10px;
background:transparent url('images/menuright_bg.jpg') right bottom no-repeat;
}

view demo

Thats it, thanks for visiting my sandbox