PHP is a widely used server scripting language. It's vast capabilities and lightweight nature makes it ideal for web frontend developing, and while it is possible to create advanced structures in it, it's basic usage also easy to learn, which makes it a good starting point for beginners also. The data recorded, processed, sent or displayed by the application we build is need to be stored somewhere, however; our webpage is stateless without this data. We can store our data in many ways or even discard it after use, but the most standard way is storing it in a database designed for the sole purpose of storing data in a reliable way, and present it if needed, as fast as possible.
In this tutorial we will build a simple webpage to record and display user data. We will use a PostgreSQL RDBMS as backend, and develop our application in PHP that will run on an Apache Webserver. This way we can access our web application from any common browser to view or add to our user database. It is the nature of the web application that many users/operators can work with it simultaneously, all they need is a browser and network access to our application.
In this tutorial you will learn:
How to install needed packages for PostgreSQL connection in PHP
How to create the database side of the application
Although GNOME, in its 3.x iteration has been the object of many debates, due to its non-traditional desktop paradigm, it is probably the most used desktop on Linux. The default file manager included in GNOME is Nautilus (the application new name is "Files"). In this tutorial we will see how we can extend the file manager with functionalities provided by custom scripts.
In this tutorial you will learn:
How to use custom scripts to extend Nautilus functionalities
Originally developed by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994, PHP is one of the most used general-purpose programming languages. Originally born as a template language, during the years it evolved into a fully-featured language with proper OOP (Object Oriented Programming) support. Its latest incarnation, 7.x, introduced new features like return type declaration for functions and huge performance improvements. PHP is a
single inheritance language: this means that a class can inherit only for one parent or base class. To overcome this problem a feature was introduced in the language: traits. In this article we will see how to use it and how it works.
Firefox is one of the most used web browser in the world: it's a free and open source software built by the Mozilla foundation, and it's available for all the major operating systems. The browser has all the features that nowadays are considered standard: tabbed browsing, private navigation, a synchronization system and its functionalities can be extended using third party addons written in Javascript. In this tutorial we will see how to create, build and sign a simple web extension.
In this tutorial you will learn:
How to build and test a simple Firefox web extension
A shell is a crucial part of an Unix-based operating system and is the main interface we can use to interact with the system itself. Bash is without doubt the most used shell on the majority of Linux distributions: it was born as the free software replacement for the Bourne shell (bash is the acronym for Bourne-again shell) inside the GNU project. In this tutorial we will learn how some of the most useful bash expansions works.
In case you are not familiar with Bash yet, or you simply need to refresh your memory, then you are recommended to visit our Bash Scripting Tutorial for Beginners, before you dive into the Bash Shell expansions concept below.
Compared to XMLHttpRequest and the libraries built around it, like JQuery.ajax, the fetch API defines a more modern and cleaner way of performing asynchronous requests, based on the use of promises. In this article we will see some of the interfaces provided by the API, like Request and Response, and we will learn how to use the fetch method to perform various types of asynchronous requests.
In this tutorial you will learn:
How to send asynchronous requests using the fetch method
How to work with the Request and Response objects provided by the fetch API
In a previous article we talked about the various type of JOIN we can use in a MariaDB/MySQL database. This time, instead, we take a look at the UNION statement: how it works, how we can use it to combine the result of queries run on different tables, and what are its peculiarities.
In this tutorial you will learn:
How to use the UNION statement in a MariaDB/MySQL server
In this series of article about python and HTTP protocol, we work with HTTP requests and responses. In the first article we explore standard library functions such as urllib.request.urlopen or urllib.request.urlretrieve. In the second part we focus on the external "requests" library, which let us perform complex operations, writing less code.
In the previous article we saw how to perform basic HTTP requests using the python3 standard library. When requests become more complex, or we just want to use less code, and we don't mind adding a dependency to our project, it's possible (and sometimes even recommended) to use the external requests module. The library, which adopted the "HTTP for Humans" motto, will be the focus of this article.
In this tutorial you will learn:
How to perform HTTP requests with python3 and the 'requests' library
HTTP is the protocol used by the World Wide Web, that's why being able to interact with it programmatically is essential: scraping a web page, communicating with a service APIs, or even simply downloading a file, are all tasks based on this interaction. Python makes such operations very easy: some useful functions are already provided in the standard library, and for more complex tasks it's possible (and even recommended) to use the external requests module. In this first article of the series we will focus on the built-in modules. We will use python3 and mostly work inside the python interactive shell: the needed libraries will be imported only once to avoid repetitions.
In this tutorial you will learn:
How to perform HTTP requests with python3 and the urllib.request library
How to work with server responses
How to download a file using the urlopen or the urlretrieve functions
In this series of article about Ebay APIs and their use via python and the Ebay python SDK, we see how to setup our working environment and work with the Finding, Trading and Merchandising APIs.
This is the third article of the series dedicated to Ebay APIs and their use via python. In the first article we saw how to setup our working environment, creating a developer and a sandbox "test" account, generating our API keys and installing the python SDK.
In the second article we approached the Finding API, focusing on the findItemsByKeywords call. In this article we will introduce the Trading API.
In this tutorial you will learn:
What are some of the most useful "Trading API" calls
How to create an item by using the AddItem API call
In the previous article we saw how to perform the preliminary steps to prepare our working environment, create an Ebay developer and a sandbox account and generate the keys and credentials needed to execute API calls. In this new chapter we will create our first request and perform our first call focusing on the "Finding API"
In this tutorial you will learn:
What are the possible "Finding API" calls;
What are the parameters you can use to customize you call;
Ebay is one of the biggest ecommerce sites. Many people use it to search and buy products, and many stores use it to enlarge their audience and expand their business range.
If we want to operate programmatically on Ebay, for example to mass create or modify a set of items, or quickly confront prices, we must use the dedicated application programming interfaces. In this tutorial we will see how to prepare our working environment in order to use python to interact with the Ebay APIs.
In this tutorial you will learn:
How to create an Ebay developer account and generate APIs keys
What is the Ebay sandbox and how create a sandbox user.
