PHP quoted strings

In PHP, I've been wondering what's the difference between single quoted strings and double quoted string. How they differ each other. Doing some research, I've found out that double-quoted strings can have variables in it that is interpreted or parsed by the compiler while single-quoted strings ignores variables in it.

For example,

$name = "John Doe";
echo = 'Hello $name'; // This outputs Hello $name
echo = "Hello $name"; // This outputs Hello John Doe

As you can see, the first echo does not evaluate $name but instead it just displayed it directly. While the second echo evaluates the variable $name and displayed John Doe.


PHP strings can be specified not just in two ways, but
in four ways.

1. Single quoted strings will display things almost completely "as is." Variables and most escape sequences will not be interpreted. The exception is that to display a literal single quote, you can escape it with a back slash \', and to display a back slash, you can escape it with another backslash \\ (So yes, even single quoted strings are parsed).
2. Double quote strings will display a host of escaped characters (including some regexes), and variables in the strings will be evaluated. An important point here is that you can use curly braces to isolate the name of the variable you want evaluated. For example let's say you have the variable $type and you what to echo "The $types are" That will look for the variable
   $types. To get around this use echo "The {$type}s are" You can put the left brace before or after the dollar sign. Take a look at string parsing to see how to use array variables and such.
3. Heredoc string syntax works like double quoted strings. It starts with <<<. After this operator, an identifier is provided, then a newline. The string itself follows, and then the same identifier again to close the quotation. You don't need to escape quotes in this syntax.
4. Nowdoc (since PHP 5.3.0) string syntax works essentially like single quoted strings. The difference is that not even single quotes or backslashes have to be escaped. A nowdoc is identified with the same <<< sequence used for heredocs, but the identifier which follows is enclosed in single quotes, e.g. <<<'EOT'. No parsing is done in nowdoc.

Speed:

I would not put too much weight on single quotes being faster than double quotes. They probably are faster in certain situations. Here's an article explaining one manner in which single and double quotes are essentially equally fast since PHP 4.3 (Useless Optimizations toward the bottom, section C). Also, this benchmarks page has a single vs double quote comparison. Most of the comparisons are the same. There is one comparison where double quotes are slower than single quotes.

Source, Stackoverflow

ASP.NET MVC: Creating an ImageLink Extension

It come in my way that when creating an ImageLink in ASP.NET MVC, you cannot directly do something like

<%=Html.ActionLink("<img src=\"~/Content/img.png\" width=\"100\" height=\"50\" />", "Index2", "Home") %>

I'll try to explain this why this will not display an image link.  MVC will encode the string you entered in the linkText parameter of the ActionLink so all tags you entered there will be replace by a Url friendly character e.g. < will become %3C so when it this is displayed in the page, it is displayed as a string.

There is a way of using th ActionLink as the same way but you have string replace your linkText like this.

<%=Html.ActionLink("__IMG__", "Index2", "Home").ToString().Replace("__IMG__", "<img src=\"~/Content/img.png\" width=\"100\" height=\"50\" />")%>

which is very long for me.

Here's my way of doing it easily, by creating an Html Extension for ImageLinks

First Create an HtmlHelper file with a static class, you can put it in a Helpers Folder in your MVC Application.  All of your methods should be static.

public static class HtmlUIHelper
{
    public static string ImageLink(this HtmlHelper helper, string ImgPath, string altText, string actionName, string controllerName)
    {
        var imgTagBuilder = new TagBuilder("img");
        imgTagBuilder.MergeAttribute("src", ImgPath);
        if(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(CssClass))
            imgTagBuilder.AddCssClass(CssClass);
        imgTagBuilder.MergeAttribute("alt", LinkText);
        string imgTag = imgTagBuilder.ToString();

        string imgLnk = helper.ActionLink("_TEMP_", actionName, controllerName).ToString().Replace("_TEMP_", imgTag);
        return imgLnk;
    }
}

You can now call your extension in any View by Importing the Namespace of you class.

<%@ Import Namespace="MvcApplication1.Helpers" %>

And now you can call your Html Extension for an Image Link.

<%=Html.ImageLink("~/Content/img.png", "LinkImageClass", "Cool Stuffs", "CoolStuffs", "Home") %>

This is just a simple link, you can do more with it, you can add more overloads to it just like the ActionLink extension method of the built-in extensions of ASP.NET MVC.

ASP.NET MVC: Passing Data to Master Page without using ViewData

I've been working with MVC for a while now and my most common problem is when I want to put a Dynamic content on my Master Page depending on the Page that is being displayed. The most common thing to do here is that you don't want to put that Control/PartialView (.ascx) in your MasterPage instead you will create a PartialView and call it in each page that you want to place it with, and unfortunatelly, those pages are all of your pages that are using the MasterPage. So you have to place that control in all of your pages.

This kind of approach is already a very good approach since you will only need to change one PartialView page and this will reflect all of the other Pages that is using that PartialView Page.

Now I've been thinking, what if I can put that in the masterpage so that I can only include it once and only in the masterpage. After surfing around the internet. I found this post in StackOverflow about passing a strongly typed data to the masterpage.

I will try to show here the implementation that I made.

Create a BaseModel for your MasterPage.

First thing is to create a BaseModel class that will be inherited with your MasterPage and this will also be inherited to all of your Pages that is strongly-typed.

public class BaseModel
{
    public string ProductIdRelations { get; set; }
}

You should inherit this in your MasterPage views

<%@ Master Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewMasterPage<Namespace.Models.BaseModel>" %>

You should access the Properties of your BaseModel by calling

<%=Model.RelatedProductId %>

Inherit BaseModel to all ViewModels of the pages.

You have to inherit your BaseModel to all of your ViewModels except for those PartialViews.

public class ProductViewModel : BaseModel
{
    public ProductModel Product { get; set; }
}

public class ProductModel
{
    public string ProductId { get; set; }
    public string ProductName { get; set; }
    public string ProductDescription { get; set; }
    public string ProductImage { get; set; }
}

Now in your Controller,

public class ProductController : Controller
{
ProductRepository prodRepository = new ProductRepository();

    public ActionResult Product(int id)
    {
        ProductModel productModel = prodRepository.GetProduct(id);
        ProductViewModel productViewModel = new ProductViewModel();
        // you can set here the RelatedProductId of your BaseModel
        productViewModel.ProductIdRelations = productModel.ProductId;

        return View(productViewModel);
    }
}

The View of my Product is inherting the ProductViewModel class

<%@ Page Title="Products" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<NameSpace.Models.ProductViewModel>" %>

In my next post, I will try to enhance this method by injecting IViewDataFactory as discussed in here

Adding jQuery intellisence in your javascript in VS2008

I've been developing Websites in Visual Studio and I am very fond of its intellisence.  Intellisence helps a lot in your skills and most of the time, makes you more productive.  One of the great thing also in VS intellesence is you can create a summary of the public or private method/class you made, where not just by showing it to you the methods/class but also providing you a brief summary of how the method/class works or what is the purpose of the method/class depending on how you or a built-in method is described in your summary.

But when I started to add some javascript codes to my project sometimes I forgot some functions or properties of javascript, specially those in jQuery and the once that I have created so I keep on changing page just to see what are those functions and/or properties.  So I search the web and found out this very helpfull blog of ScuttGu's on jQuery Intellisen in VS 2008

After I have completed the steps on how to Enable jQuery Intellisense in VS 2008.  It works terrific! But only in the same page as where I put my <script> block that calls out the jQuery js file.  Because whe I start coding a separate .js file, the jQuery intellisence is gone so I wonder why the jQuery intellisense will not show in the separate .js file.  And I found out a post of Reference JS file in Other JS File and Intellisence.  It works like a charm. 

So when I want to access an intellisense of jQuery in my Person.js file, I'll just add

/// <reference path="path-to-my-jquery.js" />

at the first line of my Person.js file.  If you want to add more intellisense in your .js file just add the reference path to your other .js file.

And in addition to that.  I've tried to add some summary to my functions and properties that I've created so I can review them without going back to the .js file where I wrote the functions.

Person.ComputeAge = function(yearToday, birthYear) {
    /// <summary>
    ///    Compute the age of the person
    /// </summary>
    /// <param type="Int">Current Year</param>
    /// <param type="Int">Birth Year</param>
   
    ...
    // my code goes here
    ...

}

so when I tried to access Person.ComputeAge() it will display a summary of the function just like the intellisense of Visual Studio.

At the Beginning

Hi, I've been thinking of sharing my knowledge of programming somewhere. I've been into programming for atleast 3 years now, and I think this is still not at the best stage but still I want to share what I have.

Anyways, programming is almost everything to me (except my wife, my hobbies, or maybe I'm just exaggerating). To say it safely, programming is my line of work. Without it, I have nothing to eat. The first job that I get is about .NET programming, and I got my first job when I'm still a student. I just know a little bit of .NET by that time, just the basics. At first I suck on it but eventually, I get to like it. And then, I get into PHP programming as my first professional job. Before I get my first job as a professional, I was thinking of applying as a teacher but I never have the guts yet.

So much for my life story. :)

The following would be some of the topics that I will be blogging with. Most of it will be in Web Application.

1. C#.NET
2. ASP.NET MVC
3. Commerce Server (hopefully I can give much information about this)
   
4. jQuery
5. javascript
6. PHP

Watch out for my post.. :D