Taking data submited from ChronoForms in Joomla

Chronoforms is a good extension for building forms in Joomla.
There are good documentation in their site and is very easy to work with it.

But, how to interact with the data sent in the form build with Chronoforms ?

Here is an example.
Let's say that when we are sending an e-amil we want to make some changes if one variable has a value.
See in the picture

We know that for print a variable defined in Chronoforms we call it in this way 

{variable}

But for interact with it we do it in this way

$form->data['variableName']

Create your own Debian or Ubuntu repository and certified by your own *.gpg using Reprepo and Python

We are going to work in a Linux environment using tools like Python, Reprepro and GPG key. 

GPG key
With this we can sign our software and guarantee that we are using software from a trusted site.


Reprepro 
Powerful tool for generate  a Debian repository.

Python-pexpect Python's module for work with interactive applications.

Let's make it by step:

1- Create your own *.gpg key. 

TODO

2- Create a folder and name as packages, here we'll place all the *.deb.

mkdir /home/packages
cd /home/packages

3- Create a folder and name it as conf inside it create a file and call it distributions.

mkdir conf
gedit conf/distributions

We'll do this for distribution  lucid and the component main. Also we'll generate the Packages, Release, .gz y .bz2 files.  SignWith is the variable that says who is going to sign .


distributions file

Codename: lucid
Components: main
Architectures: i386 amd64
Description: My repository
SignWith: abelbmartinez@gmail.com
DebIndices: Packages Release . .gz .bz2

4- Make a folder and name it as repository, there we'll have our new repository.

mkdir /home/repository

5- Create a script file and name it as pycrearepo_lucid.py. Copy and paste all the code below.

pycrearepo_lucid.py file

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
'''
[EN]
This Script generate a DEBIAN repository using the tool 'reprepo'.
It works like this, first get all the *.deb from a folder, then obtain 
the size of all these packages, the list from all the sizes is 
ordered descendent, 'reprepro' interact more stable with 
'python-pexpect' adding packages in this way.

[ES]
Este Script genera un repositorio DEBIAN usando la herremienta 'reprepro'. 
La sintaxis es la siguiente, se obtinen todos los *.deb de una carpeta
luego se obtiene el tamaño de estos paquetes, el listado del tamaño de los
paquetes es ordenado de mayor a menor, ya que 'reprepo' trabaja junto con
'python-pexpect' más estable cuando se le adicionan los paquetes de esta manera.

Created on 04.06.2010

@requires: reprepro, python-pexpect

@author: Abel Bolaños Martínez
@contact: abelbmartinez@gmail.com

@author: Oscar Martínez Lopez 
@contact: oscar.martinez@etecsa.cu

@license: Public Domain
'''

import pexpect
import glob
import os
import time

#packages *.deb
packagesSources = "/home/packages/"
distribution = "lucid"
#repositorio
repoMirror = "/home/repository/"
#private key
gpgKeys = "/home/mirrorGPG/"
#Secret phrase from the private key
keyringPhrase = "yourSecretPhrase"


os.chdir(packagesSources)
#get all the *.deb
listPackages = glob.glob("*.deb")
dictSizePackage = dict()
#dict de {size:package}
for package in listPackages:
    dictSizePackage.update({os.path.getsize(package):package})
#sizes
sizes = dictSizePackage.keys()
#sort
sizes.sort()
#backToFront
sizes.reverse()

for size in sizes:
    time.sleep(1.5)#let's wait for 'reprepro' delete the 'lockfile'
    command = pexpect.spawn("reprepro -b . --gnupghome %s --outdir %s --ask-passphrase --waitforlock 2 --keepunusednewfiles includedeb %s %s" % (gpgKeys,repoMirror,distribution,dictSizePackage[size]))
    print " "
    print "Copying the package %s to repository." % dictSizePackage[size]
    i = command.expect(["Please enter passphrase:","Skipping inclusion of","The lock file './db/lockfile' already exists"],timeout=520) 
    if i==0:
        command.sendline(keyringPhrase) 
        print "Added to repository package %s with succeed." % dictSizePackage[size]
    if i==1:
        print 'Package already %s in the repository, not included.' % dictSizePackage[size]
    if i==2:
        print "Attention !!! : Database is locked now. Execute the Script again if the problem persist YOU must delete the file '%sdb/lockfile' and execute the Script again" % packagesSources

Variables packagesSources, distribution, repoMirror, gpgKeys, keyringPhrase must be filled.

• packagesSources: path to the packages.
  
• distribution: distribution to generate.
  
• repoMirror: the new repository path.
  
• gpgKeys: path to the GPG key for sign the packages.
  
• keyringPhrase: secret key phrase.
  

6- Completed!
7- At least you must create a package for share your public GPG key. Here you can learn how to make a simple deb package.
8- Publish it to the web and test it.

Mixing Bing ver. 7, JQuery and JQuery UI with a simple search box.

Working with the Bing API is not so difficult but the most important thing is waste sometime reading and looking the examples in the Big documentation. JQuery is another powerful tool for work more easier JavaScript.

In this example we are going to make that while we are writing in a TextBox, indeed is an Autocomplete, it search in the Bing and if there are more than one result we'll show it as a list of the Autocomplete.

Here is the code, for the easier way to test it, I mixed all in the same *.html.

These are the results:

Is mandatory  to use a Key from Bing to test this code. Make yours before start.

 







searchBox: