Just a quick note, and then maybe another post later today. I changed around the comments of this site to use Livefyre. Having two comment systems (Intrinsic WP comments and the Facebook comment plugin) was just a little too much. If you had comments in older posts and now they…
For today, lets dive back into some code, well data modeling at least. When you set up an application that connects to a database, you need to understand the data that will be working in the application. This is the data that will be edited, added, read and even scrutinized…
So I was doing something for work the other day where I was incorporating some Facebook social plugins. They wanted the Facepile, the Like button, the Activity Feed. All are very easy to implement. They do not require any type of Application for the generic install of the plugin. Facebook…
So as I am sitting here trying to get caught up on the StephenHird site, I am thinking a little more about it. It seems like it is just a huge issue right now and am not able to complete what I really want to complete on the site. So…
This is a simple question. I am shocked when I hear business units tell me they do not need to use social media in order to help out their campaigns. It is really quite frustrating. Part of the reason to have a campaign is to get the word out on…
I have been taking the last week to review my posts and see what I have written. And I must say I am really long winded at times. So in an effort to make more posts, and to keep them more targeted, I am going to do my posts with…
So it has been a couple of weeks since I have posted. But now we need to set up some base code before we can go forward with the details and then adding in the Facebook Graph API. In the last post, the Data model was set up. We have skills and certifications as standalone tables. Skills with the levels and areas tables connected together. We also have the main glue of resumes, connected to covers and tasks which itself is connected to jobs. A lot of tables to create the resume section, but will keep some of this information all together. We need to create some code so that we can get all this information.
If you Baked each object, and used the Bake methods to create the model, and associations, as well as the controllers an views, you will have some code ready to use and ready to go. After you have Baked these items, the sample code that is created is ok to begin with. However, we want to take advantage of a very important technique, and the is the centralization of code, and prevent code duplication. There is one other thing that gets to me, and this is more of an OCD thing for me in code, and that is the way that Cake does the edit check in the controller. In the base created code, it creates a section of code that checks for an ID. If it is not passed, then it redirects the page elsewhere. Like so:
function edit($id = null) {
if (!$id && empty($this->data)) {
$this->Session->setFlash(__('Invalid resume', true));
$this->redirect(array('action' => 'index'));
}
. . . .
}
So in this code segment, if one gets to the edit form, and an ID is passed, and the form is not filled in, then it will display the actual form. And if the ID is not passed in, then it redirects to the Index page. For examples, if the site name was test.com:
www.test.com/resume/edit/2 – will result in the form being shown
www.test.com/resume/edit – will result in a redirect and the error message
Now here is where my OCD kicks in a little. . . .
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So in this post, I will cover what I did for a data model on the resume part of the site. When I was looking into this part, I was looking to see what I needed, or what needed to happen for this to be effective and capable of doing what I wanted. So I started to look at my own resume, and some of the other sites out there that do this. In any application, it is important to understand exactly what data needs to be captured and why. I think that is where most people usually skimp on, is the why. They think once the data is identified, then that is all they need. but it is not so. One need to understand the “why” of the data in order to properly map and design the DB schema.
Take for example a simple address. It consists of a name it belongs to, number, street name, may or may not contain an apartment/suite number (address line 2), city, state and zip code. Now if we have this information we could maybe say that the name is part of a “Persons” table, and they would be linked to the “Address” table where each field is contained. And normally that may work. But why are you collecting this data in the first place? Is it a basic business application to store customer shipping addresses? Or is it for the city planning, emergency response and police units? Could it be for a post office application, or even political boundary application for a government unit? Each one of these questions may alter the way the data is stored, drastically. For a basic customer database, you could get away with two tables, and in the “Address” table you have one field for address1, address2, and so on. For a city-use application, that may not be normalized enough, and you may have to switch out to three or four tables, and break up address fields into three or more including one field for the number, one for the street name, one for the direction of the street, and one for the type of street. And they may be linked to other tables that contain that data. So just knowing that you have the data identified is not the end. You need to understand the “why”.
So, now we go on to this resume application. And remember, I am building this for me, and only me. I am not building a resume repository so others can create theirs and post it online and via Facebook. This is applicable to me. So I need to find the data that will work for me. I also need to find the data that will work for the people looking to hire people like me. What do they want to see, and why? So after I searched through to see where that would be, I came to the following conclusions. . .
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Now that I have jumped almost 2 weeks without a post, as I have been super busy, this should have been a real easy item to post, but I wanted to make sure that this is done correctly. This is probably one of the easiest methods to add some great Facebook functionality in your site. This revolves around comments to a page. In my example, I am posting topics to discuss. This is mainly just a small little blurb that I will enter via an admin form on the site, and then list the different topics for everyone to select one. Once they select it, they can view the details of the topic and then comment on it using the Facebook API/Social plugin. So as always, lets go through a basic plan for this idea.
1. The model is Topic, with a table in the DB labeled “topics”
2. Only the admin has access to add or edit the topics
3. All comments on this topic will be done through the Facebook API/Social Plugin Comments
4. Topics will have a title that will also double as the Unique ID (to be explained later)
5. Topic titles, or themes, will not be allowed to be edited, to be explained why later
6. Administration of the comments will be done by the Facebook Application admins, which differs from the site admins
7. Start Dates will determine if the topic is allowed to be visible yet
8. End dates are optional, and will be built upon later with more advanced FBML/FB JS libraries
And there it is, some basic ideas behind the whole idea. So now lets get into some of the items called out in Numbers 4 and 5
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OK, I finally got my data models set up and working. I have the initial CakePHP set up on the site, it is using v1.3, and now I am ready to set it up for the Facebook integration, and start to add the integration. When we first set up the application on the Facebook side, I chose to do an “iframe” version of the application, as I want Facebook on my site, and be able to have integration with some of the great Facebook tools on the site, and be able to “promote me”. And remember this is just a way to show a possible real world example of how to integrate these things with your site. Actual applications may vary, but this is the base to integrate. At least, as of this posting it is the base, it may change in the future.
So lets go ahead and dive into it. If you do not have the application ID for your Facebook application, you can get it at the following:
http://www.facebook.com/developers/apps.php
The next thing is to grab the API and code from Facebook. This can be found at the following page:
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/
This is the main page, and you will need to scroll to the bottom of the page. This will list different APIs that are available. I am going to be using the PHP and JavaScript SDKs. This will provide the back end that I will want, and will also provide a positive user experience on the front end. So be sure to download both SDKs.
After that, now we need to start getting some stuff set up. In this post, I am just going to explain how to get this set up, and working right now. It is important that we get the correct items working, and so we will be working with the “pages” area for the JS SDK, and creating a very simple controller for the PHP SDK so we can get set up and running. I am just using, for right now, the base CakePHP CSS styles and layouts. All we need is a page to display some of the basic items to ensure that we have installed the SDKs in the proper locations. So lets go.
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