protected $lang;
	function __construct() {
		parent::__construct();
		$this->lang = $this->uri->segment(1);
	}

Instead you will want to do this:

	protected $language;
	function __construct() {
		parent::__construct();
		$this->language = $this->uri->segment(1);
	}

See what I did there? ‘lang’ to ‘language’.

As it happens $this->lang, when in a CI constructor, will name-conflict with any native CI system library that needs to tap into something similar to $CI =& get_instance(), with a subsequent $CI->load->lang('some_library') call.

Thank me not.

Important: The following assumes you are using PHP5+ and CI 2.0 or newer.

The problem

You have your product pages all nicely set up with an “Add to Basket” button. When that button gets clicked, via some jQuery $.get magic in my set-up, the product and its specifications gets added to the Cart object. If however your product’s name has any accents in it (e.g. “Verre à Bière”), CodeIgniter will by default silently refuse to add that product to the cart.

The solution

Create a file in application/libraries and call it “MY_cart.php”. In that file, paste the following code:

< ?php
if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');

class MY_Cart extends CI_Cart {
    function __construct() {
        parent::__construct();
        $this->product_name_rules = '\d\D';
    }
}

This will override CodeIgniter’s default set of allowed characters, and extend it with whatever accent you can think of. If you’re not using Javascript to add items to the cart, that should do the trick and you can stop reading now.

However, as mentioned, I’m using jQuery’s $.get method to add items to the cart, so that the page doesn’t have to reload each time an item gets added (it’s what the cool kids refer to as “Ajax”). Here’s an example of the script I’m using for this:

$(function(){
	$('#addButton').click(function(){
		$.get("path/to/add_to_cart",
		{
			id: $('input[name=id]').val(),
			name: $('#name').val(),
	   		qty: $('#qty').val(),
		       	price_option: $('#price_option').val()
		 },
		 function(data) {
			$('#addedMsg').html(data.html).show();
			}, 'json'
		); // end get
		return false;
	});
});

Notice that I’m passing on the value of a hidden formfield with id “name” to this function. Now, here’s the pitfall: Javascript will convert accented characters to their equivalent Unicode string (while, for legacy reasons, I’m having to use the iso-8859-1 charset). As a result, CodeIgniter will gladly add my item to its cart, but since it’s passed through Javascript, the accented characters come out as “gibberish”, once you have to display them in your cart view.

The solution here is to pass the regular product name (accents and all) to the jQuery function, and then do the following in the php script which actually adds the item to the cart. Instead of something like:

$data['name'] = $this->input->get('name');
//proceed to insert in cart

Do this:

//run the name variable through the ascii_to_entities() function
$data['name'] = ascii_to_entities($this->input->get('name'));
//proceed to insert in cart

Note that for this you will have to have CodeIgniter’s Text helper loaded.

Almost there

What we’ve accomplished so far: CodeIgniter’s Cart class accepts our accented product names, and although we’ve passed the names through Javascript, the correct characters still show up within the Cart object. But how about displaying items in a cart overview? If you link back each item to its product page, you will have to construct that link such that it re-instates the ascii characters instead of their respective entities:

base_url().'/controller/'.sanitize_title_dashes(entities_to_ascii($items['name']));

Note that I’m using sanitize_title_dashes() (see the WordPress core) as a method to obtain URL’s which are restricted to an “a-z0-9″ realm of characters – thereby omitting any characters that had previously been turned into entities! Using entities_to_ascii() allows them back into the url. Phew.

Wrapping up

While it may look a bit messy, the above solved the problem for me. I love CodeIgniter very much, and it’s sped up my webdevelopment significantly. It being mildly US-centric though in the way it handles accented characters in URL’s and Cart processing leaves a bit to be desired. The up side is that through its extensibility, you can make things work – allbeit with a bit of angry fist shaking. Having these workarounds present out of the box from within CodeIgniter would be nice. But that’s another can of worms…

By the way, pre-order now and you’ll get a free set of postcards with our illustrations printed on them.

Chuffed, I am!

Frank Zappa on Varèse:

[...] the thing that is fantastic about what he wrote for normal instruments is that he got sounds out of them that nobody had dreamed of before. For instance, “Deserts”, which is probably the starkest of the pieces in terms of the way they deal with the raw material, there’re special overblown chords that produce difference tones, which you wouldn’t be able to get any other way – you know what I’m talking about? If you take two intervals and play them very loudly on a woodwind instrument – for instance, this one spot where two piccolos are playing either a Major second or minor second apart, very high octave – when you blow it real hard you hear a third note that’s not there. To know in advance what’s going to come out and to plan your composition to achieve effects like that was something that people just hadn’t thought of doing before.

Click to enlarge:

Poster for a barber-shop singing camp aimed at (American!) teenagers. Gaby was in charge of the hairdo’s and the typography whilst I spent a Saturday afternoon drawing open mouths of various persuasions. Fun!

My favourite is the blue-scalped Goth, though it must be said the dorky “Will Someone Release Me From These Dumbass Glasses” kid has a certain je ne sais quoi as well.

I simply love the way she plunders my catalogue of minuscule doodles and dresses them up into something actually worthwhile publishing! Have a look:

… and my personal favourite:

Back in 2005 I set up Zappa Wiki Jawaka, a wiki (you guessed it) dedicated to (you guessed it) Frank Zappa. Grabbed the latest MediaWiki package and patiently went through all the loops of setting up a database, configuring php files, customizing, etc.

No more than one month later, Dreamhost made MediaWiki a one-click install. Instead of having to fiddle around for hours, you now had your own wiki at the push of one button — and were able to upgrade it at the push of that same button. Alas, there I was, stuck with my own homegrown 1.4.2 install which didn’t allow for one-click upgrading.

Adding insult to injury, along came the spam- and vandalbots. My poor outdated wiki was taking a constant beating, and there was nothing I could do about it, because every single extension I tracked down required a more recent version. There was only one solution: bite the bullet and upgrade.

Here’s what I did:

1. Make a back-up of all the wiki’s current files
2. Make a copy of the database for testing purposes
3. Set up a new subdomain running PHP5.2 for testing purposes
4. Did a one-click install of Mediawiki 1.11.0 on the testing domain from within Dreamhost’s admin panel
5. Pointed the install to the outdated database, hoping it too would be upgraded in the process.

No dice. The installer ran okay for about half a second, then choked, complaining that it couldn’t find a certain table within the database.

MediaWiki’s online manual to the rescue: a huge forest of words and links where you tend to get lost within a minute or so. A couple of hours and liters of cafeine later, I came across a page that looked like it had the answer. It said: go to your maintenance folder, look for two files (upgrade1_5.php and update.php) and run them.

Hurrah! I quickly pointed my browser to upgrade1_5.php and was greeted with the following message: “this script must be run from the command line”.

Uh oh. Command line. Wargames, anyone?

We’re now a couple of hours later, I’ve got some basic shell commands under my belt from various tutorials and I’m staring at the Terminal. Time for the real magic:


ssh me@mydomain.com
me@mydomain.com password: mypassword
$[server] ls
$[server] cd wiki.killuglyradio.com/maintenance/
$[server] php upgrade1_5.php
$[server] php update.php


… upon which I re-ran the installer, and was greeted with a shiny “Installation complete!” message.

Hello, one-click upgrade!

My drawings in a movie that features Paul Buff, Motorhead Sherwood, Don Preston, Frank Zappa and Weird Al Yankovic — it’s all downhill from here ;-)

Take the number 78 for instance.

Let’s have a look at how this is written/pronounced in other languages that I’ve more or less mastered:

• Dutch: achtenzeventig
• English: seventy eight
• Spanish: setenta y ocho
• German: achtundsiebzig

Pretty straightforward, right? A seventy and an eight or an eight and a seventy. Now for our French friends: they thought it would be better to conceive it thusly:

soixante-dix-huit

That’s a sixty, a ten and an eight. To write the number 78 you have to start at sixty, and then add 18. It’s the equivalent of saying “sixty ten eight”.

But wait! How about the number 97! Here, the number is broken down into quatre-vingt-dix sept. In English that translates to “four twenty ten seven”. Yes: the number 80 is composed of 2 numbers itself. Having established the 80, you then add 17 to that, and you’ve successfully processed 97 in your mind, and are now ready to write it down.

Except of course, at this point the person on the other end of the line has already rattled off the last number. Which was 94. Or 79.

The funny thing is that in the French language there are other perfectly legal ways of naming a number within the aforementioned range: septante (seventy) and nonante (ninety). Walloons (the french-speaking part of Belgium) use this.

But the French? Noooo. As the English refuse to drive on the right side of the road, so the French refuse to name numbers the way the rest of the world had envisioned it.

Now if you’ll excuse me: the phone is ringing…

Old Shoes and Picture Postcards

Asylum Years

Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night

Warm Beer And Cold Women

Foreign Affairs

This One’s From The Heart

Swordfish Trombones

Frank’s Wild Years

The Large Print Giveth And The Small Print Taketh Away

Who Are You Now?

What’s He Building In There?

The Long Way Home