Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'form' of undefined

In my code, that JavaScript error was caused by missing "name" attribute of an "input" tag, having jQuery.validation class "required".

For example:

input class="required" id="agree" type="checkbox" value="yes"
produces the error

input class="required" id="agree" type="checkbox" value="yes" name="agree"
works fine

Installing SphinxSearch with libstemmer from FreeBSD ports

Environment: Sphinx 0.9, FreeBSD

Problem:
Sphinx port has libstemmer options commented out in Makefile. With automatic upgrades, it loses stemming for anything except for default EN and RU.

Procedure of rebuilding the port with libstemmer

# (become root)
cd /usr/ports/textproc/sphinxsearch


Create file Makefile.local with this line:
CONFIGURE_ARGS+= --with-libstemmer


make clean
make
fetch http://snowball.tartarus.org/dist/libstemmer_c.tgz
cd work/sphinx-*/
tar zxvf ../../libstemmer_c.tgz
cd ../..
make
make deinstall
make reinstall
make clean

Do not forget to rebuild index if you did not use libstemmer before

__autoload and Zend

Environment: PHP 5.3.6, Zend Framework 1.11.6

This problem occurred when I needed to build a mixed environment where the existing code was "pure PHP" and new code was based on Zend Framework.

The "pure PHP" code's __autoload function stopped working as soon as Zend application ran.

Apparently, when there is a call to spl_autoload_register, __autoload is ignored.

The solution was to rename __autoload to OldAutoLoad and call:
spl_autoload_register('OldAutoload');

Note: after that, the OldAutoload was called first and then Zend's autoload. In order to let OldAutoload ignore Zend classes, I replaced require_once calls with @include_once.

PHP : "intl" extension, Windows, Apache

PHP Internationalization support ("intl") is bundled as of PHP 5.3.0 and does not require PECL:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/intl.installation.php

Things to check if it does not work under Windows/Apache:

1. php_intl.dll exists in the "ext" folder of the PHP root ( normally it's c:\Program Files\PHP\ext )
2. The php.ini file in c:\Windows folder has these lines:
   

   extension_dir="C:\Program Files\PHP\ext"
   extension=php_intl.dll

   (php.ini in c:\Program Files\PHP may work too, but I keep it in Windows folder so it's not accidentally removed when PHP is upgraded)
3. There are ICU .dll files in c:\Program Files\PHP:
   

   icudt*.dll
   icuin*.dll
   icuio*.dll
   icule*.dll
   iculx*.dll
   icutu*.dll
   icuuc*.dll

    (* is version number, for example icudt36.dll)
   
4. c:\Program Files\PHP is in the %PATH% (environment variables in Control Panel - System - Advanced - ...)
   Without that, the ICU dlls are not loaded by PHP as Apache module - no error message is displayed, but the extension is not in the phpinfo().

PHP namespaces and autoload on UNIX

The namespace "path" symbol is backslash. Therefore, the full class name looks like:
MyNameSpace\MyClass. We need to replace the backslash with slash in the __autoload function, in order for it to work under UNIX. Under Windows, it works either way.

function __autoload( $class_name ) {

# ------------------------------------

$class_name = str_replace( '\\', '/', $class_name );

require_once $class_name . ".class.php";

}

Enabling internal PHP fileinfo on FreeBSD

In a previous post (Upgrading to PHP 5.3 ...), I mentioned a PECL extension pecl-fileinfo-1.0.4

Apparently, installing that extension was a wrong move. The manual says:

This extension is enabled by default as of PHP 5.3.0. Before this time, fileinfo was a PECL extension but is no longer maintained there. However, versions prior to 5.3+ may use the  discontinued PECL extension. 

 Indeed, the PECL version did not work as expected, so I uninstalled it.


Then I discovered that on FreeBSD the internal version of fileinfo was NOT enabled by default.

Here is the relevant part of Makefile found in /usr/ports/lang/php5:

CONFIGURE_ARGS= \
                --with-layout=GNU \
                --localstatedir=/var \
                --with-config-file-scan-dir=${PREFIX}/etc/php \
                --disable-all \
                --enable-libxml \
                --with-libxml-dir=${LOCALBASE} \
                --with-pcre-regex=${LOCALBASE} \
                --with-zlib-dir=/usr \
                --program-prefix=""

 I created a Makefile.local file with just one line

CONFIGURE_ARGS+=--enable-fileinfo

After rebuilding PHP, this test showed that fileinfo is enabled:

$ php --rf finfo_open
Function [ function finfo_open ] {

  - Parameters [2] {
    Parameter #0 [ $options ]
    Parameter #1 [ $arg ]
  }
}

Upgrading to PHP 5.3 ports on FreeBSD

Environment:

FreeBSD

php5-5.2.12         PHP Scripting Language
php5-curl-5.2.12    The curl shared extension for php
php5-dom-5.2.12     The dom shared extension for php
php5-gd-5.2.12      The gd shared extension for php
php5-iconv-5.2.12   The iconv shared extension for php
php5-mbstring-5.2.12 The mbstring shared extension for php
php5-mysql-5.2.12   The mysql shared extension for php
php5-openssl-5.2.12 The openssl shared extension for php
php5-pcre-5.2.12    The pcre shared extension for php
php5-pdo-5.2.12     The pdo shared extension for php
php5-pdo_mysql-5.2.12 The pdo_mysql shared extension for php
php5-session-5.2.12 The session shared extension for php
php5-simplexml-5.2.12 The simplexml shared extension for php
php5-spl-5.2.12     The spl shared extension for php
php5-xml-5.2.12     The xml shared extension for php
php5-xsl-5.2.12     The xsl shared extension for php
php5-zip-5.2.12     The zip shared extension for php
php5-zlib-5.2.12    The zlib shared extension for php
pecl-stem-1.5.0     A PECL extension which provides word stemming

Task:
Upgrade all ports to php5-5.3.2

1. Some of the functions are deprecated in PHP 5.3. I had to replace all occurrences of split() with explode() or preg_split() and mysql_escape_string() with mysql_real_escape_string(). Note that mysql_real_escape_string() requires second parameter - DB connection.
2. Attempt to upgrade ports with `portupgrade php5*` did not work. Some of the extensions do not exist anymore in PHP 5.3, and `pkgdb` was quite confused. I had to delete all php5 ports and then install them again.
3. PHP 5.3 installed extensions into a new folder /usr/local/lib/php/20090626. My php.ini had reference to the old one, /usr/local/lib/php/20060613. Had to change that manually.
4. pecl-stem-1.5.0 was not marked for upgrade (pkg_version). However, I had to rebuild it, because it was incompatible with the new PHP libraries.
5. `php -i` complained about undefined timezone. I had to add date.timezone="America/New_York" to php.ini.
6. I checked which extensions are now "included with PHP by default" (in docs on http://php.net and in /usr/ports/lang/php5-extensions.Makefile), and installed some of them, in addition to what I had before. There was also a nice "fileinfo" extension that I thought could be useful. Here is the list of extensions after upgrade:

php5-5.3.2_1        PHP Scripting Language
php5-ctype-5.3.2_1  The ctype shared extension for php
php5-curl-5.3.2_1   The curl shared extension for php
php5-dom-5.3.2_1    The dom shared extension for php
php5-filter-5.3.2_1 The filter shared extension for php
php5-gd-5.3.2_1     The gd shared extension for php
php5-hash-5.3.2_1   The hash shared extension for php
php5-iconv-5.3.2_1  The iconv shared extension for php
php5-json-5.3.2_1   The json shared extension for php
php5-mbstring-5.3.2_1 The mbstring shared extension for php
php5-mysql-5.3.2_1  The mysql shared extension for php
php5-openssl-5.3.2_1 The openssl shared extension for php
php5-pdo-5.3.2_1    The pdo shared extension for php
php5-pdo_mysql-5.3.2_1 The pdo_mysql shared extension for php
php5-session-5.3.2_1 The session shared extension for php
php5-simplexml-5.3.2_1 The simplexml shared extension for php
php5-xml-5.3.2_1    The xml shared extension for php
php5-xmlreader-5.3.2_1 The xmlreader shared extension for php
php5-xmlrpc-5.3.2_1 The xmlrpc shared extension for php
php5-xmlwriter-5.3.2_1 The xmlwriter shared extension for php
php5-xsl-5.3.2_1    The xsl shared extension for php
php5-zip-5.3.2_1    The zip shared extension for php
php5-zlib-5.3.2_1   The zlib shared extension for php
pecl-fileinfo-1.0.4 A PECL extension to retrieve info about files
pecl-stem-1.5.0     A PECL extension which provides word stemming