Paul's Programming Notes PostsRSSGithub

Enabling SSL On Apache

This is a quick overview of the process of adding an SSL certificate to apache (for next time…):

  1. Generate your private key and CSR with:

    openssl req -new -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout yourdomain.key -out yourdomain.csr
  2. Request your certificate
  3. Save requested certificate onto server in a .crt file
  4. Download the intermediary/root cert from http://www.symantec.com/page.jsp?id=roots
  5. Make your site file in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ look like this:
<VirtualHost *:443>

    SSLEngine On
    SSLCertificateFile /home/youruser/yourdomain.crt
    SSLCertificateKeyFile /home/youruser/yourdomain.key
    SSLCACertificateFile /var/www/verisign.crt

    ServerName www.yourdomain.com

    DocumentRoot /var/www/yourdomain

An explanation of each of those certificates:

  • SSLCertificateFile - This is the certificate you received after your request.
  • SSLCertificateKeyFile - This is the private key you generated in step 1.
  • SSLCACertificateFile - This is the intermediary cert you downloaded from verisign.

Yii quickdlgs Without UrlManager Enabled 

EQuickDlgs::iframeButton(
  array(
    'controllerRoute' => 'controller/create',
    'dialogTitle' => 'Create New Record',
    'dialogWidth' => 800,
    'dialogHeight' => 600,
    'openButtonText' => 'Add Record',
    'closeButtonText' => 'Close',
    //'openButtonHtmlOptions' => array(...),
  )
);

With the code above, I was getting the following error:

The system is unable to find the requested action “create?qdsClass=EFrameJuiDlg”.

I had to change line 79 in EFrameJuiDlg.php inside the quickdlgs extension from:

$url .= '?' . http_build_query($this->urlParams);

to:

$url .= '&' . http_build_query($this->urlParams);

htmlspecialchars() expects parameter 1 - Yii (echmultiselect)

htmlspecialchars() expects parameter 1 to be string, array given C:\xampp\htdocs\yii\framework\web\helpers\CHtml.php(98)

The error only occurred when trying to apply the echmultiselect filter to the filter above the gridview.

Here’s what I did to fix:

  1. Went to the Yii framework folder and found the following file: yii\framework\web\helpers\CHtml.php

  2. Modified line 98 from return htmlspecialchars($text,ENT_QUOTES,Yii::app()->charset); to: return htmlspecialchars(print_r($text, true),ENT_QUOTES,Yii::app()->charset);

Then you need to implement the echmultiselect extension in the view (my example shows adding it for site_status):

  1. Added this php code to the view: $data= CHtml::listData(MyModel::model()->findAll(), 'blahblahblah', 'blahblahblah'); (but it should probably be in the model)

  2. Made my ‘columns’ array look like this:

'columns'=>array(
    'id',
    'blah',
    'blahblah',
    array (
        'name'=>'blahblahblah',
        'filter'=> $this->widget('ext.EchMultiselect.EchMultiselect',
            array(
                'model' => $model,
                'dropDownAttribute' => 'blahblahblah',
                'data' => $data,
                'options' => array('buttonWidth' => 80, 'ajaxRefresh' => true),
            ),
            true // capture output; needed so the widget displays inside the grid
        ),
    ),
    array(
        'class'=>'bootstrap.widgets.TbButtonColumn',
    ),
),

Error Handling In mysqldb - Python

Updated 2026-08-29: the original snippet interpolated the value into the SQL, closed the connection only on failure, and printed success from a finally block that runs on failure too.

I’ve had issues with queries failing and leaving connections open (enough to stall a server…). I know python’s oursql library supports using the WITH keyword, and I think it will close the connection when there is an unexpected error. However, I’m not sure if I’m ready to move to a different library for MySQL (it’s working well).

Here’s what I’m currently doing to close the cursor and connection, then re-raise the error:

import MySQLdb

conn = MySQLdb.connect(user="username", passwd="secret", db="database", charset='utf8')
cur = conn.cursor()

try:
    cur.execute("INSERT INTO testTable (userid) VALUES(%s);", (user_id,))
    conn.commit()
except Exception:
    conn.rollback()
    raise
finally:
    cur.close()
    conn.close()

Three things were wrong with what I had here before. The value went in with % string formatting, which builds the SQL by concatenation and leaves it open to injection, so it has to be passed as a parameter with a comma instead. The close only ran in except, so a successful insert leaked the connection, which is the exact problem I was trying to solve. And finally runs on both paths, so the old code printed “Insert Successful” even when the insert had just failed.

haufe.sharepoint Python Library - URLs With %20

I changed line 25 of the haufe.sharepoint library to fix an issue I was having with URLs which had %20 (the url encoded space character):

New Code:

location = urllib.quote(self.location(), safe=":/")

Old Code:

location = self.location()

Just try using a URL with %20 with haufe.sharepoint to see what I’m talking about.

urllib2.URLError Python SUDS library

To figure this out, you’re going to need logging. Turn on logging with the following:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2388046/can-you-help-me-solve-this-suds-soap-issue

import logging
logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO)
logging.getLogger('suds.client').setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
logging.getLogger('suds.transport').setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
logging.getLogger('suds.xsd.schema').setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
logging.getLogger('suds.wsdl').setLevel(logging.DEBUG)