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Timestamp, Date, time, and timestamp format specifiers

axew3 — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:42:26 +0000

An item of type TIMESTAMP is a series of one to twenty single-byte numeric digits that reflect a specific moment. The meaning of each digit is determined by the mask that you specify when declaring the item.

The following characters are available, in order, when you specify the mask:

yyyy: Four digits that represent the year. The range is 0000 to 9999.
MM: Two digits that represent the month. The range is 01 to 12.
dd: Two digits that represent the day. The range is 01 to 31.
HH: Two digits that represent the hour. The range is 00 to 23.
mm: Two digits that represent the minute. The range is 00 to 59.
ss: Two digits that represent the second. The range is 00 to 59.
f: Zero to six digits that each represent a fraction of seconds; the first represents tenths, the second represents hundreds, and so on.

The default mask is yyyyMMddHHmmss.

Date, time, and timestamp format specifiers

The formats
of dates, times, and timestamps are specified by a pattern of letters, each
representing a component of the date or time. These characters are case-sensitive,
and all letters from a to z and from A to Z parse
to a component of the date or time.

To display letters in the date, time, or timestamp without that text being
parsed as a component of the date or time, enclose that letter or letters
in single quotes. To display a single quote in the date, time, or timestamp,
use two single quotes.

The following table lists the letters and their values in a date, time,
or timestamp pattern.

Letter	Date or time component	Type	Examples
G	Era designator	Text	AD
y	Year	Year	1996; 96
M	Month in year	Month	July; Jul; 07
w	Week in year	Number	27
W	Week in month	Number	2
D	Day in year	Number	189
d	Day in month	Number	10
F	Day of week in month	Number	2
E	Day in week	Text	Tuesday; Tue
a	AM/PM marker	Text	PM
H	Hour in day (0-23)	Number	0
k	Hour in day (1-24)	Number	24
K	Hour in AM/PM (0-11)	Number	0
h	Hour in AM/PM (1-12)	Number	12
m	Minute in hour	Number	30
s	Second in minute	Number	55
S	Millisecond	Number	978
z	Time zone	General time zone	Pacific Standard Time; PST; GMT-08:00
Z	Time zone	RFC 822 time zone	-800
C	Century	Century	20; 21

The number of each letter used consecutively in the pattern determines
how that group of letters is interpreted and parsed. The interpretation depends
on the type of letter. Also, the interpretation depends on whether the pattern
is being used for formatting or parsing. The following list describes the
types of letters and how different numbers of those letters affect the interpretation.

Text: For formatting, if the number of letters is less than 4, the full form
is used. Otherwise, an abbreviation is used, if available. In parsing, both
forms are accepted, independent of the number of pattern letters.

Number: For formatting, the number of pattern letters represents the minimum number
of digits. Zeroes are added to shorter numbers to make them the designated
length. For parsing, the number of pattern letters is ignored unless it is
needed to separate two adjacent fields.

Year

For formatting, if the number of pattern letters is 2, the year is truncated
to 2 digits. Otherwise, it is interpreted as the Number type.For parsing,
if the number of pattern letters is not 2, the year is interpreted literally,
regardless of the number of digits. For example, the pattern MM/dd/yyyy assigned
the value 01/11/12 parses to January 11, 12 A.D. The same
pattern assigned the value 01/02/3 or 01/02/0003 parses
to January 2, 3 A.D. In the same way, the same pattern assigned the value 01/02/-3 parses
to January 2, 4 B.C.

For parsing, if the pattern is yy,
the parser determines the full year relative to the current year. The parser
assumes that the two-digit year is within 80 years before or 20 years after
the time of processing. For example, if the current year is 2004, the pattern MM/dd/yy assigned
the value 01/11/12 parses to January 11, 2012, while the
same pattern assigned the value 05/04/64 parses to May 4,
1964.

Month: If the number of pattern letters is 3 or more, the month is interpreted
as the Text type. Otherwise, it is interpreted as the Number type.

General time zone

General time zones are interpreted as the Text type if they have names.
For time zones representing a GMT offset value, the following syntax is used:GMTOffsetTimeZone = GMT Sign Hours : Minutes

Sign: Either + or -

Hours: A one-digit or two-digit number from 0 to 23. The format is locale independent
and must be taken from the Basic Latin block of the Unicode standard.

Minutes: A two-digit number from 00 to 59. The format is locale independent and
must be taken from the Basic Latin block of the Unicode standard.

For parsing, RFC 822 time zones are also accepted.

RFC 822 time zone

For formatting, the RFC 822 4-digit time zone format is usedRFC822TimeZone = Sign TwoDigitHours : Minutes

TwoDigitHours must
be a two-digit number from 00 to 23. The other definitions are the same as
the General time zone type.

For parsing, General time zones are also
accepted.

Century: Displayed as a Number type that shows the result of the following calculation:
full year divided by 100, with the remainder ignored.

The following table lists some examples of date and time patterns interpreted
in the U.S. locale.

Date and Time Pattern	Result
`yyyy.MM.dd G ‘at’ HH:mm:ss z`	2001.07.04 AD at 12:08:56 PDT
`EEE, MMM d, ”yy`	Wed, Jul 4, ‘01
`h:mm a`	12:08 PM
`hh ‘o”clock’ a, zzzz`	12 o’clock PM, Pacific Daylight Time
`K:mm a, z`	0:08 PM, PDT
`yyyyy.MMMMM.dd GGG hh:mm aaa`	02001.July.04 AD 12:08 PM
`EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z`	Wed, 4 Jul 2001 12:08:56 -0700
`yyMMddHHmmssZ`	010704120856-0700

The “Portable PHP password hashing framework” for wordpress

axew3 — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 12:22:41 +0000

The “Portable PHP password hashing framework” is a php class used in wordpress to generate password’s hash.

It is a separate project, and like many others wordpress features is included/combined in the code to create this blog written/coded by Matt Mullenweg.

The name of this php project is:

Portable PHP password hashing framework (Openwall Project)

Zikula SEO – the meta keywords function hacking

axew3 — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:06:19 +0000

There is an option in Zikula administration control panel that is needed to set the mode on how to display meta keywords for dinamically created pages.

This option can be found in: Global Settings Panels -> Owner Settings -> Dynamic meta-keywords

Scenario SEO and analysis :

By setting on Yes this option you’ll have meta keywords generated dynamically for each page and based /extracted on/from his content. More precisely, some functions are taking these words dynamically from articles, comments or from some other contest, as text, and it will go to be outputted for the requested page.

Under a superficial SEO analysis it can be not so good thing that our site homepage, will have time by time meta tag keywords changed and different because are generated dynamically.

This can be good for all others CMS pages in our site, that maybe will not go to change so much there contents time by time because are created for a scope (an article, a singular page, a tutorial etc) and will remain untouched except some addition of comments if there is a feature that allow this. The homepage instead, will go to change in many cases many times, because day by day his content will display in his blocks latest articles, latest forums entries etc. Keywords dynamically generated for the Zikula home page will go to be changed for this reason and spiders will find out any visit time, different keywords; in others words, it depend from what your home page will go to contain: if it will go to contain static contents than the dynamic keywords generation will go to output always the same words list and it is good: the words list will go to change instead, if the page will go to contain updated news etc, this is not good because your meta keywords list will go to be different each time.

Another SEO analysis, if you look to a dynamically generated keywords words list on Zikula, let we understand that there are many words that are not exactly words: the function that generate the list let pass also prepositions, grammatical articles, and even single letters if there are some in contents from where keywords list is token/generated, like: is, i, i’m.

How to change this for a better SEO your zikula pages

It is possible to apply a little patch to SEO our Zikula, in this way:

Files to be edited: 2

themes/themeName/templates/modules/home.htm

system/Theme/plugins/function.keywords.php

If your Zikula home page contain blocks like latest news, last articles etc. than you’ll need to edit the home.htm file in this way:

Search for this line of code (near the top)

” />

change the above instruction that you can find near to the top of the file in the head code declarations (in the Seabrize theme which you can find on any Zikula default download it can be found at line 7 of the home.htm)

Of course, change values for the content attribute with terms you need.

On Zikula templates we have the home.htm and the master.htm: the home is used to output the homepage for the used template, the master instead will output all others CMS’s pages. The configuration for templates on Zikula is normally more than sufficient as is, but there are many others advanced features that can be used to customize templates by adding more layout for different contents . The config folder inside the templates folder of your theme, contain the necessary to add these layouts instructions, but it is not the only one possibility for Zikula themes (Zikula use Smarty as template engine so you can also use all Smarty features in Zikula): this is not the argument of this tutorial and for this SEO hack modification this is more than what is necessary to know and understand.

Now to avoid the problem of singles letters for keywords list, it is necessary to edit the file function.keywords.php

search in the file for this code:

if (file_exists($stopword_file)) {
$stopwords = file($stopword_file);
$stopwords = array_map(‘rtrim’, $stopwords);
$keywords = array_diff($keywords, $stopwords);
}

immediately after add this code:

$dk = array_keys($keywords);
foreach($dk as $d) {
$ln = strlen($keywords[$d]);
if ($ln < 3) {
unset($keywords[$d]);

this will go to eliminate all words composed by less than 3 letters. Change the value of 3 to 4 or 5 if you like to eliminate all words, for example, that aren’t composed of a minimum of 4 or 5 letters (i think 3 or 4 is the best choice).

This is true that there is a file that you can compile and where you can list all unwanted words one by one, but of course this way is more speedy and you can decide to cut off any insignificant word from your dynamic keyword list.

The generated keywords list is also very long in most of pages, which is also not a good SEO choice. It is possible add this piece of simple code to limit the words number to a certain value (add this immediately after the above code or in place of the above code if you like to add only this part and like to use the external file with unwanted words list):

$ca = array_count_values($keywords);
if( $ca > 45 ){
$keywords = array_slice($keywords, 0, 45); // return output of 45 words

Error on wordpress after the auto update: how to solve

axew3 — Fri, 29 May 2009 19:42:18 +0000

There is a feature in wordpress that is very useful: the auto update to the latest version of wordpress when it has been released in a new version. Unfortunately can happen that in change, after that automatic update process has finished, we have error 500 from any blog’s page. The error 500 can come out in wordpress after the automatic update because the process go to renew any single file and setting for each file the CHMOD permission to 644 (only read). This can cause the 500 error and to solve it is only necessary to reset the CHMOD to the correct value for each wp file on your server, which value can be 755 or 777, it depend from your server’s settings.

Mediawiki: exadecimal values for archived mysql data

axew3 — Wed, 20 May 2009 21:29:57 +0000

Many of the values archived on /for the Media Wiki software on a default installation and that constitute the environment data sources for this application written in php are encoded in hexadecimal, so for example the field related to the users options look like this sequence (the string need to be considered on one single line without spaces and tabs: it has been split on several lines to do not breack out html tables):

0x717569636b6261723d310a756e6465726c696e653 d320a636f6c733d38300a726f77733d32350a 7365617263686c696d69743d32300a636f6e7 46578746c696e65733d350a636f6e74657874 63686172733d35300a64697361626c6573756 7676573743d300a736b696e3d0a6d6174683d 310a7573656e657772633d300a72636461797 33d370a72636c696d69743d35300a776c6c69 6d69743d3235300a686964656d696e6f723d30 0a686967686c6967687462726f6b656e3d310a 737475627468726573686f6c643d300a707265 766965776f6e746f703d310a707265766965776 f6e66697273743d300a6564697473656374696f 6e3d310a6564697473656374696f6e6f6e72696 76874636c69636b3d300a656469746f6e64626 c636c69636b3d300a6564697477696474683d3 00a73686f77746f633d310a73686f77746f6f6c6 261723d310a6d696e6f7264656661756c743d3 00a646174653d64656661756c740a696d61676 573697a653d320a7468756d6273697a653d320 a72656d656d62657270617373776f72643d300 a6e6f63616368653d300a646966666f6e6c793d 300a73686f7768696464656e636174733d300a 6e6f726f6c6c6261636b646966663d300a656e6 f74696677617463686c69737470616765733d3 00a656e6f7469667573657274616c6b7061676 5733d310a656e6f7469666d696e6f7265646974 733d300a656e6f74696672657665616c616464 723d300a73686f776e756d6265727377617463 68696e673d310a66616e63797369673d300a65 787465726e616c656469746f723d300a657874 65726e616c646966663d300a666f7263656564 697473756d6d6172793d300a73686f776a756d 706c696e6b733d310a6a7573746966793d300a 6e756d62657268656164696e67733d300a7573 656c697665707265766965773d300a77617463 686c697374646179733d330a657874656e6477 617463686c6973743d300a77617463686c6973 74686964656d696e6f723d300a77617463686c 69737468696465626f74733d300a7761746368 6c697374686964656f776e3d300a7761746368 6c69737468696465616e6f6e733d300a776174 63686c697374686964656c69753d300a776174 63686372656174696f6e733d300a7761746368 64656661756c743d300a77617463686d6f7665 733d300a776174636864656c6574696f6e3d30 0a6e6f636f6e766572746c696e6b3d300a76617 269616e743d656e0a6c616e67756167653d656 e0a7365617263684e73303d31
while this is the text translation of the hexadecimal:

quickbar=1
underline=2
cols=80
rows=25
searchlimit=20
contextlines=5
contextchars=50
disablesuggest=0
skin=
math=1
usenewrc=0
rcdays=7
rclimit=50
wllimit=250
hideminor=0
highlightbroken=1
stubthreshold=0
previewontop=1
previewonfirst=0
editsection=1
editsectiononrightclick=0
editondblclick=0
editwidth=0
showtoc=1
showtoolbar=1
minordefault=0
date=default
imagesize=2
thumbsize=2
rememberpassword=0
nocache=0
diffonly=0
showhiddencats=0
norollbackdiff=0
enotifwatchlistpages=0
enotifusertalkpages=1
enotifminoredits=0
enotifrevealaddr=0
shownumberswatching=1
fancysig=0
externaleditor=0
externaldiff=0
forceeditsummary=0
showjumplinks=1
justify=0
numberheadings=0
uselivepreview=0
watchlistdays=3
extendwatchlist=0
watchlisthideminor=0
watchlisthidebots=0
watchlisthideown=0
watchlisthideanons=0
watchlisthideliu=0
watchcreations=0
watchdefault=0
watchmoves=0
watchdeletion=0
noconvertlink=0
variant=en
language=en
searchNs0=1

An useful, well done and simple Php function grabbed from php.net that convert hexadecimal to binary-string is this:
// Convert a hex-string to binary-string (the way back from bin2hex) - by Chaos79
function hex2bin($h)
{
if (!is_string($h)) return null;
$r=”;
for ($a=0; $a < strlen($h); $a+=2) { $r.=chr(hexdec($h{$a}.$h{($a+1)})); }
return $r;
}

echo bin2hex(‘Hello’); // result: 48656c6c6f
echo hex2bin(‘48656c6c6f’); // result: Hello

Note: you need to cut off the initial 0x characters from the passed hexadecimal value or the conversion will return nothing.

Wordpress: formatting posts or pages titles

axew3 — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 21:27:34 +0000

Do you know …
It is possible to format using html code any wordpress post’s title or page title.
A simple example? We like to wrap a phrase like this exactly in three lines:

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old.

You can write the sample title in this way:

Contrary to popular belief,<br /> Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. <br />It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old.