Connections

I’ve been working full steam on the next update. As with the past couple versions most changes are “under the hood”. I’ve been re-writing and making the code more and more modular. Right now I’m working on combining and moving all the queries to the cnSQL class. Once that is complete I’m going to start work on a new filter and sort classes. With this in place it should be easy to expand the ways to filter and sort the entry list. The big new feature coming will be category support which will, when complete, mimic WordPress in its implementation and management. The initial support will be the ability to add an entry to a category and a short code filter attribute.

The default template used when displaying entry embedded in a page/post does not render correctly in Internet Explorer 6. This is do to Internet Explorer’s poor ability when displaying content that use floats. In order to deal with that issue the next version of the plug-in will contain an alternate template that can be used. This template is based on a table layout which Internet Explorer can render correctly. The other major browsers will be able to render it just fine as well. To use this template use this short code (in brackets):

connections_list template_name='card-tableformat'

Well, I’ve finished renaming my PHP classes to make them a bit more unique as so to avoid conflicts with other plug-ins. I also scrubbed the code to make sure I’m using the same options instance throughout rather than creating a new instance of the class every time I needed it. I’m not certain, but I think that would cause less overhead.

Taking the time to rename all my classes to be a bit more unique to reduce the possibility of conflicting with another plug-in.

I’m not quite sure how to use PHP references yet or why would one want to use them. They are declared by using the ampersand character (&). Here’s the PHP Manual link.

I’ve come across reference usage in a few WordPress plug-ins and even use it mine. This I kind of understand. The reference was being set on the $this variable within an object like so &$this. What this is doing is setting up a reference to the current object so you will be using the current object rather than creating a new instance of the object. So far I’ve only seen this used in the function parameter of a WordPress function within an object. Here’s an example using the activation hook:

register_activation_hook( dirname(__FILE__) . ‘/connections.php’, array(&$this, ‘activate’) );

The second parameter is normally where you would set the function name as a string to call when the plug-in is activated. If I understand correctly, since my plug-in is an object I’m setting up a reference to my plug-in and the function to call within the array. If anyone can clear this up for me it’d be very appreciated.

When I first started coding PHP (a mere 9 months ago) I came across the @ character preceding an expression. My Google skills are pretty good but I couldn’t find what this meant and why it might have been used. I guess I couldn’t find my answer because I wasn’t sure what question to ask. So if this helps anyone here’s a link to the PHP manual explaining the operator for error suppression.

NOTE: In my opinion this should be avoided.

Just noticed a another bug. Role settings are reset during a deactivate/activate cycle.

Just noticed last evening when attempting to  show an entries details when using IE 8 standards mode, it doesn’t function. I’m surprised I’ve received no emails about the issue. Any way, this appears to be a bug with the jQuery framework. See this article, http://www.code-styling.de/english/jquery-132-causes-problems-at-ie-8. I’m going to re-work my jQuery code with his solution and push out an update.