Kevin's blog

Performing Ranged Solr Searches Against CCK Fields

I just recently encountered a use case where I needed to perform ranged searches in Drupal against a Solr back-end. This ended up being far easier than I ever anticipated. Here's a quick walkthrough of the steps involved to expose a CCK field to Solr and then explicitly use it when conducting searches. This was done using a Solr 1.4 engine and http://drupal.org/project/apachesolr 6.x-1.0-rc5

This took me a while to figure out and ended up being quite simple once complete ... I hope it saves someone the headache I got from trying to figure it out! So here we go ... in 3 simple steps.

Scripted MySQL Database Backups

In a perfect world you would be able to rely on the promise of automated systems to keep recent backups of your data. In many environments you are promised this functionality but it can sometimes fail. I wrote the mysql database backup script for those of us that sleep better at night with extra insurance.


#!/bin/bash

DB_BACKUP="home/cyberswat/db_dumps"
DB_USER="root"
DB_PASSWD="passwd"
DB_NAME="my_valuable_database"

### End of user editable variables ###

TIMESTAMP=`date +%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M-%S`

rm -rf /$DB_BACKUP/09
mv /$DB_BACKUP/08 /$DB_BACKUP/09

Quick Drupal API Reference in Komodo

Komodo provides a solid IDE for Drupal work that constantly surprises me with hidden tidbits of usefulness. One of the latest tricks I've been using provides the ability to perform quick lookups against http://api.drupal.org/ with a simple keyboard command. By default, this functionality is set to lookup functions against php, but because php help presents itself in tooltips I find it useful to redirect searches for Drupal.

Keystone Double Black Diamond Downhill Mountain Biking

I got to go do some down hill mountain biking with Tyler and beeradb over labor day weekend. It was completely sick ... Here's a video of the route I was riding ... check it out about 6:28 into it ... that was my favorite part.

Something bit my hand on one of the berms ... here's the end result hehe

From Labor Day Bike Ride

This was sooo fun ... can't wait to do eet again!!!!!

From Nothing to Everything with Ubuntu, Drupal, and Komodo Debugging

I've been using ActiveState's Komodo for a few weeks now in response to my frustrations with Eclipse. As with any IDE there was a short relearning of my ways that was necessary, but I am happy to report that I really like this IDE. The last bit of functionality I've been wanting to tie together is directly related to debugging Drupal in Komodo. Here's the steps that I took to get a Drupal development environment with debugging in Komodo on a clean installation of a 64bit Ubuntu 8.04.

A good deal of this may be redundant if you already have your environment established, but it is recorded here nonetheless to help others become proficient at what we do. While I prefer command line interfaces I am going to lean towards providing gui tools to allow newer devs options. If you don't need or want all of the minute details skip to step 6 and get straight into configuring for debugging.

Dev Friendly Apache Configuration for Drupal

I like to develop against local virtual hosts when I work with Drupal. Here is the apache httpd.conf configuration that has served me the best so far. The first VirtualHost is the default .. .simply replicate the second VirtualHost entry and edit accordingly. A simple edit of /etc/hosts to enter the virtual host name that matches the virtual host entries in the httpd.conf and a quick reload by apache and you are good to go. I particularly enjoy the independent logging for each site.

ssh passwordless login

  1. Generate a public/private key pair in your dev environment. Hit enter to accept the defaults. You will only ever need to run this once ... proceed to step two if you've already done this.
    $ ssh-keygen -t rsa
  2. Copy keys to remote server. Substitute server in the code below with your target machine.
    $ ssh server "mkdir ~/.ssh; chmod 0700 ~/.ssh"
    $ scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub server:~/.ssh/authorized_keys2

DrupalCamp Colorado is happening! July 26 and 27

It's official! The next Drupal Camp Colorado is happening the weekend of July 26th and 27th in Denver. Come join us in the mountains for two full days of Drupal wisdom and knowledge. We are going to host a mix of sessions and BOF's geared towards both the new Drupalers out there as well as the experienced veterans. Come join companies such as pingVision, Growing Venture Solutions, Aten Design Group, Blue Tent Marketing, Deproduction, and Civic Pixel among others.

We All Know

To bad nobody listens

DBUG Drupal Camp Logo Contest

All great Drupal Camps leave participants thinking "what a great value" and "why not more" so to that end we have begun organizing a DBUG Camp in Denver/Boulder area of Colorado towards the last weekend in July. Many details will be forthcoming in the upcoming weeks, but for now I'd like to direct your attention to our Open Call for Logos ... yep, that's right ... we need help getting that killer logo put together so now is the time for you graphical types to shine!

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