123 Web Messenger Integration with Joomla

Atul — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:19:56 +0000

You must be wondering why am writing this article when it’s already present on the 123 flash chat site. So before going into technical aspects for the integration I will share my small experience of integrating the web messenger. So initially we have to install the web messenger, I have mentioned the steps below and then make all the necessary settings. Once the messenger is installed you can see a facebook like chat bar on your site where you have installed it with a friend’s button, clicking which will display messenger but it doesn’t have the friends list integrated. We have to integrate the code for the users friend to be displayed in the web messenger. I integrated the demo code provided but it was not working due to a small issue in the code and I had to spend couple of days contacting the technically guys for the issue. 2-3 days continuously in touch with the technically guys but the response was not upto mark. During the time I was in touch with a girl named Mickey (from the providers sales team) who was really helpful and she was the one who got in touch with the technical guys and provided me a solution i.e. to replace a small block in the demo code for the friend list integration. I did it and it worked. Thanks to Mickey. 2-3 days is not more when on a safer side but if the delivery date is close then am sure the person can know the value of those 2-3 days. So just to save your time (contacting the technical guys and waiting for the reply incase of urgency) below is the process of integration of 123 Web messenger with Joomla.

Note – This is a paid version. In this article I will just provide you information about its installation on Linux server. Below commands are to be executed through the shell (putty / ssh)

Initially you will have to download the trial installation version of web messenger based upon your operating system (32 bit / 64 bit). To check the details about your operating system use the command
uname –a
Download the installation file using below command.
For 32 bit:
wget http://www.123flashchat.com/download/123webmessenger/123webmessenger.sh
For 64 bit:
wget http://www.123flashchat.com/download/123webmessenger/123webmessenger_x64.sh
Once you download the installation file execute the below command to install the service
For 32 bit:
sh 123webmessenger.sh
For 64 bit:
sh 123webmessenger_x64.sh
After executing the above command system will give you some prompts to complete the installation, follow those and complete the installation.
Now to start the server
cd <123webmessenger installation directory>/server
./wmserver start
To stop the server use the command
cd <123webmessenger installation directory>/server
./wmsrever stop
You have now installed the web messenger and started the server. Now comes its integration with Joomla. Before you proceed with the integration make sure you can visit the 123 webmessenger on the installed server using http://your ip:1560/
Make sure you open the ports 1560 and 1558 before you access the url.
Now download the joomla module from the url http://www.123flashchat.com/web-messenger-download.html and follow the below steps.
Step 1, Install the module in the Joomla admin panel
OPEN: Joomla Admin panel -> Extensions -> Install -> Upload Package File:
upload mod_webmessenger.zip
Step 2, Configure 123Webmessenger client
1). Copy 123WebMessenger client folder from <123webmessenger server installed directory>/client to /wmclient
2). Open /client/js/config.js, set webpath to /wmclient

Step 3, Integrate 123Webmessenger with Joomla user database
1). Open <123webmessenger server installed directory>/server/etc/groups/default/server.xml
Find None
Change it to URL
Find http://localhost/login_chat.php?username=%username%&password=%password%
Change it to /modules/mod_webmessenger/login_chat.php?username=%username%&password=%password%
2). Restart 123 Webmessenger server.
Step 4, Embed 123Webmessenger into Jommla
1). Open /templates//templateDetails.xml (The template name should be “rhuk_milkyway”)
Find
After Add webmesssenger
2). OPEN: Joomla Admin panel -> Extensions -> Template Manager -> choose the current template your’re using -> Edit HTML
Find
Before Add
3). OPEN: Joomla Admin panel -> Extensions -> Module Manager -> 123WebMessenger -> configure “Client location” to /wmclient
Change “Position” to “webmessenger” at left panel
Note: Replace <123webmessenger server installed directory> and with the physical address in your server.
Integration done, enjoy your webmessenger:)
Now for friends list integration download the sample code from below url
http://www.123flashchat.com/download/friendlist.zip
and in userdata.php file change to database connection to match your database credentials and change the queries. For displaying friends you can just change the query stored in variable $queryFriendSql
and in your 123 webmessenger server configuration file change which is located at <123webmessenger installed directory>/server/etc/groups/default/server.xml
change
destusername=%destusername%&friendgroup=%friendgroup%” charset=”UTF-8″ enable=”On”>

Also in your userdata.php file change
private function setFriendGroup()
{
if(isset($_GET['friendgroup']))
{
return $_GET['friendgroup'];
}
else $this->outputErrorMessage(“Wrong parameter input”);
}
=========================
change to
========
private function setFriendGroup()
{
return $_GET['friendgroup'];
}
And that’s it you can see you Joomla user friends in the webmessenger.

ISO8583 message transaction method using PHP

Nikhil — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 12:01:07 +0000

Recently we have worked on API system which has sensitive data and we decided to do not send this without encryption to prevent hacking and fishing attempts. To fulfill this requirement we decided to go with ISO 8583, ISO 8583 specifies message structure, format and content, data element and values of data elements. So we have decided our own formats to send and receive messages.

ISO 8583 allows you define your message format and communicate between different systems best example of ISO 8583 is ATM machine, banks defines their own formats to send data between two systems. The response, authorizing or declining the transaction, needs to be returned via the same route to the terminal.

There are 3 main parts in each ISO 8583 message

1. Message type indicator (MTI)
2. Bitmaps
3. Data elements

Message type indicator (MTI): This is 4 digit number contains ISO 8583 version, class of message, function of message & who begins communication.

Bitmaps: This is a binary field in message which tells which data element is present in message. There may be 2 or more bitmaps in a message. Primary bitmap indicates data elements from 1 to 64, same like this secondary bitmap contains 65 to 128 and tertiary bitmap contains 129 to 192 (this is rarely used).

Data elements: This is the main part of message which contains your data in numeric format. Range of these numbers is from 1 to 128, each number have different meaning in message.

Example of ISO8583 message: 0102800000000000000000000000000001E0026nikhilt@gmail.com008cue009110722180006123456

To implement ISO 8583 in PHP I refer JAK8583 class.

Convert Microsoft document to text, PDF or XML

Nikhil — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 09:46:31 +0000

Few days ago we were working on a complex project to read MS Document file and parse content. Read too many articles and tried hundreds of programs but didn’t found expected output. After few days I have found one Linux package Antiword which converts MS Document to text, XML, PDF formats. One more benefit of this tool is its platform compatible, you can use this tool on Linux, Windows, Mac and many other operating systems.

To install this on Linux follow below commands,

wget http://www.winfield.demon.nl/linux/antiword-0.37.tar.gz
tar -zxvf antiword-0.37.tar.gz
yum search antiword
yum install antiword

After successfully installing Antiword use following commands to convert MS document. Following are few useful commands which you need to convert document.

To convert MS document to simple text use following command,

antiword -f /FILE_SERVER_PATH/test.doc &gt; / FILE_SERVER_PATH / test.txt

To convert MS document to XML use following command,

antiword -x db /FILE_SERVER_PATH / test.doc &gt; / FILE_SERVER_PATH / test.xml

Here are few more options to convert MS document,

-f formatted text output
-t text output (default)
-a Adobe PDF output
-p PostScript output paper size like: a4, letter or legal
-x XML output like: db (DocBook)
-m character mapping file
-w in characters of text output
-i image level (PostScript only)
-L use landscape mode (PostScript only)
-r Show removed text
-s Show hidden (by Word) text

Configuring Postfix Mail Server on Fedora Linux

Atul — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 11:33:08 +0000

You must have already read my previous post related to installation of Postfix Mail Server on Fedora. Now here is how you can configure Postfix Mail Server on Fedora.
If you want to know about installation of Postfix Mail Server you can refer my previous article which can be found at following url – http://www.cuelogic.co.in/blog/2011/08/installing-postfix-mail-server-on-fedora-linux/

The main configuration settings for Postfix are located in the /etc/postfix/main.cf file. Edit the file using putty or SSH.
The key options in the main.cf file are:
myhostname = mta1.domain.com
mydomain = domain.com
myorigin = $myhostname
inet_interfaces = $myhostname
The myorigin and inet_interfaces options use the settings we have created so do not need to be changed (although the inet_interfaces may be commented out by default so you should remove the # at the beginning of this particular line in the main.cf file).

Once the /etc/postfix/main.cf file is configured with the correct settings it is now time to start up postfix. This can be achieved from the command line as follows:
/usr/sbin/postfix start
The postfix process should now start up.
To configure Postfix to start automatically at system startup, run the following command in a Terminal window:
/sbin/chkconfig –level 345 postfix on

You have successfully installed and configured the Postfix Mail Sever. Now you can send mail through your site.

Installing Postfix Mail Server on Fedora Linux

Atul — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 06:32:11 +0000

There are lots of things which need to be installed while setting up a new LAMP server i.e. php , mysql, apache etc.
Once you are done with installing the above basic and mandatory things one more thing which you will have to take care of is the mail server installation. This small article will guide you on how you can install a Postfix Mail Server on Fedora Linux.

By default, the Fedora Linux installer does not install Postfix. To verify if Postfix is already installed, use the following rpm command in a Terminal window:
If rpm reports that postfix is not installed, you can install it using below command.
yum install postfix
The yum tool will download and install postfix, and configure a special postfix user in the /etc/passwd file.

In the next article i will provide you a small introduction on how you can configure Postfix mail sever on Fedora.

Memcached for site optimization using PHP

Nikhil — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 08:22:44 +0000

We were facing problem of MySql query optimization for one of our product, page was taking more than a minute to respond. There were few join queries which were taking too much time for processing and we don’t have any way to remove those queries because of complex database structure. We were started thinking of increasing RAM memory of database server. But after few meetings and discussions we found one more option to get MySql Query result from cache and we have started searching caching systems and we found Memcached solution to solve optimization problem. Now we can render page in 10 seconds

Memcached is a memory caching system. It is often used to speed up dynamic database-driven websites by caching data and objects in RAM to reduce the number of times an external data source (such as a database or API) must be read. Memcached runs on Unix, Windows and MacOS and is distributed under a permissive free software license.

Memcached stores values in associative array in key-value pair. To add or read from cache program should connect to server, by default connection port is 11211. Memcahed system stores data in RAM memory, if your server run out of RAM memory then you will lose data. When you restart your server old data will be discard. You can’t assume that your data will be store permanently in Memcached.
To use Memcached on your server get latest version from http://memcached.org/ and install it. Once you are done with installation use following PHP code,

class clsMemCache
{
  public $objMamecache;
 
  function __construct($strServerIp = "YOUR_SERVER_IP",$strConnectPort="11211")
  {
    $this-&gt;objMamecache = new Memcache();
    @$this-&gt;objMamecache-&gt;connect($strServerIp, $strConnectPort);
  }
 
  function fnAddDataToMemCache($strKey,$arrValue)
  {
    if ($strKey != "" &amp;&amp; ((count($arrValue) &amp;&amp; is_array($arrValue)) || $arrValue != ""))
    {
      return @$this-&gt;objMamecache-&gt;set($strKey, $arrValue, false, 3600);
    }
  }
 
  function fnGetDataFromMemCache($strKey)
  {
    if ($strKey != "")
    {
      return @$this-&gt;objMamecache-&gt;get($strKey);
    }
  }
 
  function fnDeleteDataFromMemCache($strKey)
  {
    if ($strKey != "")
    {
      return @$this-&gt;objMamecache-&gt;delete($strKey);
    }
  }
}

Creating thumbnails for your video file using ffmpeg

Atul — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 10:39:33 +0000

If you are having a tough time finding a php script which can create thumbnails from your video file, your search ends here.
Below is a small php script which can help you create thumbnails for video files within no time.
Note – FFMPEG must be installed on your server for this script to work.

/**
* RetriveThumbnail, extracts a thumbnail from a video
*
* This function loads a video and extracts an image from a frame
* @param $videoFile string input path to your video file
* @param $outputThumbnail string path where your thumbnail image will be saved
*/
function RetriveThumbnail($videoFile, $outputThumbnail)
{
$thumb_output;
$errors;
$returnval = 0;
// Delete the file if it already exists
if (file_exists($outputThumbnail)) { unlink($outputThumbnail); }
// Use ffmpeg to generate a thumbnail from the movie
$cmd = “ffmpeg -itsoffset -4 -i ‘”.$videoFile.”‘ -vcodec mjpeg -vframes 1 -an -f rawvideo -s 320×240 $outputThumbnail 2>&1″;
exec($cmd, $thumb_output, $returnval);
// Queue up the error for processing
if ($returnval != 0) { $errors[] = “FFMPEG thumbnail generation failed”; }
if (!empty($thumb_output))
{
foreach ($thumb_output as $line)
{
echo $line . ”
\n”;
}
}
if (!empty($errors))
{
foreach ($errors as $error)
{
echo $error . ”
\n”;
}
}
}

You just need to call the above function providing appropriate values for the video file and the destination folder for your thumbnail image and the script will create an image at the specified location for you.

Install phpmyadmin to operate MySQL from web

Onkar — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:23:28 +0000

In my last post, we saw how to setup a LAMP on AWS. Let’s have a look into how to install phpmyadmin on your linux server.

To install phpmyadmin to operate MySql from web browser, web server is needed.

Steps to install phpmyadmin

yum -y install phpMyAdmin php-mysql php-mcrypt
vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/phpMyAdmin.conf
Add IP address you allow on line #14
Allow from 127.0.0.1
Close Editor
Reload the httpd process
/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd reload

Once you are successfully run the above 6 steps, phpmyadmin is installed on your server.

Now we will see how we can access phpmyadmin.

Access to ‘http://(your hostname or IP address)/(alias name you set)/’ with web browser.

Alias name is by default ‘phpmyadmin’.

When you enter above url on browser, it will ask you the login credentials for MySql user.

You can enter MySql user login credentials, can able to see phpmyadmin dashboard.

Installing SSL on Amazon EC2 Server

Atul — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 10:24:17 +0000

If you are looking to configure SSL signed up using GoDaddy for Apache 2.x here are the steps to reduce your headache.

Initially you will need to create an CSR (Certificate Signing Request) which is required while registering SSL.
Steps for creating CSR are as below
Login to your shell using software such as putty / SSH and follow the below steps –
Create a directory /usr/bin/ssl/ where your csr files will be stored.
Type below command from the shell
1 . cd /usr/bin/ (/your path to openssl/)
which will change your directory to the one which is going to store the CSR files.
Then type below command on shell
2. openssl genrsa -des3 -out .key 2048
Replace with the name which you want.
3. openssl req -new -key .key -out .csr
Replace with the name which you want.
The above two commands will create a .key and .csr file at the location which you have specified above (i.e. in your current working directory).
Note – while creation of a CSR you will be asked the details about organization. Once you are done with this you can download the certificate from your provider.

Once the certificate is registered you will get two files with .crt extension. Place these two files in the same directory as the one which you have stored your CSR files.

Now for apache server configuration.
Go to /etc/httpd/conf.d folder through shell where you will find a ssl.conf file.
In ssl.conf file you will find below lines
SSLCertificateFile – replace the path of your SSL certificate file (from above e.g. /usr/bin/ssl/yourcertificate.crt)
SSLCertificateKeyFile – replace the path of your SSL key file (from above e.g. /usr/bin/ssl/key.crt)
SSLCertificateChainFile – replace with the path of 2nd .crt file which you got after registering the certificate. (its generally named as gd_bundle.crt) (from above e.g. /usr/bin/ssl/gd_bundle.crt)

Your are done with SSL setup. Let your users experience a secure browsing now

Dynamically logging-in to the video chat room

Atul — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 11:54:43 +0000

Once you create a room you can allow the users to login to the created room. Below is the code for same.