I will keep this short and sweet!

if you want to access all your databases

GRANT ALL ON *.* TO username@'yourhostnameorip' IDENTIFIED BY 'PASSWORD

if you want to access a particular database

GRANT ALL ON databasename.* TO username@'yourhostnameorip' IDENTIFIED BY 'PASSWORD

“The Web Application project ‘MyWebApp’ is configured to use IIS.

To access local IIS Web sites, you must install the following IIS components

IIS 6 Metabase and IIS 6 Configuration Compatibility Authentication”

This happens when a project created using Visual Studio 2008 is imported opened using Visual Studio 2010. To solve this issue do the following

1) Open your CSProj file in a text editor

2) Replace the following lines

<UseIIS>True</UseIIS>

with

<UseIIS>False</UseIIS>

and

<IISUrl>http://localhost/site</IISUrl>

with

<CustomServerUrl> http://localhost/site </CustomServerUrl>

Here is the situation break-down.
*Facebook is deprecating FBML this year, 2011.
*FBML is most often used to create facebook page tabs. Since facebook is deprecating FBML it no more makes sense.
*Facebook documents say developers need to go with Iframe apps from now on and not FBML.
*So in order to create a facebook page tab, one needs to create a facebook application(IFRAME) and add the app as a page tab.
*BUT, iframe is not allowed inside page tabs, as in tags such as body , any custom Javascript is not allowed inside a page tab.

So its a messy situation. Is there any solution to this problem? the answer is NO. Going still with FBML is the only solution.

I had to spend hours and hours to find out that there is no solution to this problem as of now. The only way is to go with FBML even though Facebook suggests against doing it. And thats exactly why i am posting this. So you guys save time.

There is a super easy way to add a facebook application(IFrame) to your page as a tab. Just an URL with the following format will do.

http://www.facebook.com/add.php?api_key={your_facebook_app_key}&pages=1&page={page_id}

Here is an example. You will know what i am talking about

http://www.facebook.com/add.php?api_key=d702312c39692db23db1f5b321051191&pages=1

And now an another problem with facebook Iframe app as your page tab. I am very sure most of the time you will need to access the visiting user’s information. But hey guess what? You cannot access it. Period. (if your page tab is a facebook application).

You will need to prompt the user for permission to access it. I have not tried doing it. I just used FBML even though its against what Facebook suggests. Facebook has seriously messed this up and i hope they will sort this entire FBML vs IFrame thing soon or else developers might go crazy.

Went crazy but now fine,

Keyan

Folks,

We are looking for freshers who love working with web development in a start-up environment. We say ‘web-development’ because he or she should be willing to work with HTML, Javascript, CSS, Ruby on Rails and PHP. Yes. from UI to server side stuff. It will only help you in staying ahead of your contemporaries working in MNCs. Believe me its good for you.

And to be fair, we don’t expect you to know everything from HTML, JS, CSS to RoR and PHP. You would qualify if you know HTML, CSS and PHP and have a great deal of love for web apps. The rest of the stuff you can learn here.

Lets talk about the company now. ByteAlly officially became a private limited in February 2010. We have clients across US, Europe and India. We primarily develop anything that can run on the web, but our main focus for the next year or so would be on Social media marketing and analytics which is a fascinating segment to work on.

So shoot us an email at putchuttni@byteally.com if you are interested along with your resume, twitter ID(if you have one), blog urls (if you have any). Oh yes, we would like to know you better before we have some face time.

Cheers,
Karthikeyan Mani
CTO/Managing Director/Chef/ Car driver
ByteAlly Software Solutions private limited.

www.byteally.com

byteally careers

First of all the blokes at paypal need to organize their documentation well. I spent more time trying to figure out the currencies  supported by PayPal web standards pro for reals than i spent on the actual integration. There seems to be a confusion amongst fellow developers too regarding the currencies supported by PayPal Website Payments Pro.

Paypal website payments pro US supports only AUD,CAD,EUR,JPY,GBP,USD

while Paypal website payments pro UK and Canada supports

AUD,CAD,EUR,JPY,GBP,USD,CHF,SEK,SGD,PLN,NZD,NOK,DKK,CZK

So my fellow developers from switzerland , denmark,  hungary, new zealand, poland, norway, singapore and sweden, im sure your currencies smell lovely! but its sad PayPal does not support them yet with Pro US accounts. Hmmm.

And going now to the actual integration, i found out today that with Direct Payment when you are authorizing or paying with a new credit card, the billing address is necessary otherwise the API will return the error

“Please enter a complete shipping address”

So be sure to send that in as well to the API. If you are using ActiveMerchant gem for ruby on rails to integrate PayPal the code below is for your reference.

response = gateway.authorize(100, credit_card,{ :ip => "127.0.0.1",:billing_address => {
 :name     => "vin dibly",
 :address1 => "#3, The street where no milkman arrives, Mullholand drive",
 :city     => "Los angeles",
 :state    => "California",
 :country  => "US",
 :zip      => "90001"}}

 )

And please note that the value for country should be the Iso2 country code and not the country’s name.

If you happen to work with PayPal website payments pro please be sure to go through the following link. Will be helpful

https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_api_WPWebsitePaymentsPro

We are glad that Promotage has been selected as one of the 20 finalists for Seedcamp Mumbai 2010. Seedcamp Mumbai is a one day event aiming to connect the 20 best web-tech, mobile and software talent with some of the leading entrepreneurs, developers, and experts from the Indian, Asian, and European tech ecosystems.

Here is the link to the list of other startups that have been selected.

Congratulations to the team. Its been a great ride so far and we are hoping to make it bigger.

We are also thrilled to see three other companies from Chennai making it to the final list. Looking forward to meeting them at Seedcamp.

Cheers,

Keyan

created_at, updated_at. Is there any table without those two columns when it comes to applications?. We usually store the GMT for such fields. Storing the datetime in GMT makes internationalization a cake walk. Sometimes there might be a need to calculate future dates too. And here is how you do it using RoR(ruby on rails).

Calculating the current GMT

time_stamp = Time.now()
gmt_stamp = time_stamp.gmtime
gmt = Time.gm(gmt_stamp.year,gmt_stamp.month,gmt_stamp.day, gmt_stamp.hour, gmt_stamp.min)
"#{gmt.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')}"

The above function returns the gmt in a format that is supported by some of the major SQL databases(mySQL, MS SQL)

Now, calculating a future datetime in GMT

 time_stamp = Time.now()
 gmt_stamp = time_stamp.gmtime
 future_gmt = Time.gm(gmt_stamp.year,gmt_stamp.month,gmt_stamp.day, gmt_stamp.hour, gmt_stamp.min) + length.to_i.months
 # to calculate by days + length.to_i.days
 # by hours + length.to_i.hours#minutes length.to_i.minutes
 "#{future_gmt.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')}"

We recently had a requirement where we had to find the “verification” status of any given paypal account. This might be very useful to reduce the risk of online frauds. I was searching for a Ruby on rails plugin for PayPal’s adaptive accounts API. Neither did i have the time nor the patience to go through the search results. Looking at the GetVerifiedStatus Adaptive Accounts API it looked damn straight forward. So i went ahead to implement it with my own code.

Its pretty simple. I used the httpclient gem, which is pretty cool, to make the http request. You can install it by doing

 gem install httpclient

I also use the xmlsimple gem to process the response from the API. Makes things a lot easier.

 gem install xml-simple

Once you have the gems installed, these are the parameters you got to watch out for

The end point for Sandbox is

https://svcs.sandbox.paypal.com/AdaptiveAccounts/GetVerifiedStatus

And the production end point is

https://svcs.paypal.com/AdaptiveAccounts/GetVerifiedStatus

The entire code. Here you go!

def verify_paypal
   #include the gems needed
    require 'httpclient'
    require 'xmlsimple'
   #set the header of the request
    header =  {"X-PAYPAL-SECURITY-USERID" => "tok261_biz_api.abc.com",
               "X-PAYPAL-SECURITY-PASSWORD" => "1244612379",
               "X-PAYPAL-SECURITY-SIGNATURE" => "lkfg9groingghb4uw5",
               "X-PAYPAL-REQUEST-DATA-FORMAT" => "NV",
               "X-PAYPAL-RESPONSE-DATA-FORMAT" => "XML",
               "X-PAYPAL-APPLICATION-ID" =>  "APP-80W284485P519543T"
                }
    #data to be sent in the request
    data = {"emailAddress" => params[:paypal],
           "firstName"=> current_user.first_name,
           "lastName" => current_user.last_name,
           "matchCriteria"=> "NAME",
           "requestEnvelope.errorLanguage" => "en_US"}
    #initialize the request
    clnt = HTTPClient.new
    #API end point(sandbox)
    uri = "https://svcs.sandbox.paypal.com/AdaptiveAccounts/GetVerifiedStatus"
    #make the post
    res = clnt.post(uri, data, header)
   #if the request is successfull parse the XML
   if res.status == 200
     @xml = XmlSimple.xml_in(res.content)
     #check if the status node exists in the xml
     if @xml['accountStatus']!=nil
       account_status = @xml['accountStatus'][0]
       #its pretty obvious from here init?
         if account_status.to_s() == "VERIFIED"
            render :text => "Account verified"
        else
            render :text => "Oopsy! Yet to be verified"
        end

    else
       render :text => "Gee! sorry! something went seriously wrong"
    end

  end

 end

Breaking it down. First the request header. PayPal expects the following parameters in the request header

#set the headers of the request
 #X-PAYPAL-SECURITY-USERID = <Your API username>
 #X-PAYPAL-SECURITY-PASSWORD = <Your API password>
 #X-PAYPAL-SECURITY-SIGNATURE = <Your API signature>
 #X-PAYPAL-REQUEST-DATA-FORMAT = NV
 #Please note that for sandbox you can use APP-80W284485P519543T
 # as the X-PAYPAL-APPLICATION-ID
 header =  {"X-PAYPAL-SECURITY-USERID" => "tok261_biz_api.abc.com",
 "X-PAYPAL-SECURITY-PASSWORD" => "1244612379",
 "X-PAYPAL-SECURITY-SIGNATURE" => "lkfg9groingghb4uw5",
 "X-PAYPAL-REQUEST-DATA-FORMAT" => "NV",
 "X-PAYPAL-RESPONSE-DATA-FORMAT" => "XML",
 "X-PAYPAL-APPLICATION-ID" =>  "APP-80W284485P519543T"
 }

In the above snippet if you notice, im sending the data as name value pairs in the request.

"X-PAYPAL-REQUEST-DATA-FORMAT" => "NV"

and consuming the response data in XML format.

"X-PAYPAL-RESPONSE-DATA-FORMAT" => "XML"

Please note that paypal sends and accepts data as NV,XML,JSON

Now comes the data to be sent along the request

data = {"emailAddress" => "vindibly@dibly.net",
 "firstName"=> "vin",
 "lastName" => "dibly",
 "matchCriteria"=> "NAME",
 "requestEnvelope.errorLanguage" => "en_US"}

All the parameters are required for GetVerifiedStatus call. firstName, lastName, matchCriteria. The parameter matchCriteria takes only the value “NAME” as of now and this is case sensitive. The API checks if the account is the name of “vin dibly” in case of our example. If that varies, status is returned as unknown. So we got to make sure the user provides or your system has the right first and last name of the user.

The rest of it

clnt = HTTPClient.new

sandbox url

uri = "https://svcs.sandbox.paypal.com/AdaptiveAccounts/GetVerifiedStatus"

Post the data with the header information to the API

res = clnt.post(uri, data, header)

check if the request is succesfull

if res.status == 200

#now parse the response content(which happens to be a XML in our case)

@xml = XmlSimple.xml_in(res.content)

make sure the node isnt nil and check the status value

 if @xml['accountStatus']!=nil

#yep this is where the status sits
 account_status = @xml['accountStatus'][0]

#you know what to do if its a verified account
 if account_status.to_s() == "VERIFIED"

#do your logic
 render :text => "Account verified"
 else
 render :text => "Oopsy! Yet to be verified"
 end

 else
 render :text => "Gee! sorry! something went seriously wrong"
 end
 end

It has been an amazing journey fo r us. We have grown rapidly. From being a solely owned business to becoming a private Ltd company. We wanted to rebrand our website and mark a new milestone for ByteAlly. One of the results of it is our new website!

What on earth do these stick figures with super cool hairdos mean!!??! What it is got to do with web development?. Is There a correlation.  These hairdos resemble that of George Harrison, Bob Marley, Elvis Presley, Tutankhamun (not an hairdo exactly, well sort of). Im sure many of you would have recognized it immediately. Well that’s what we are about. Our fundamental rule works in a simple but effective way, as in building global brands doesn’t require complex features but simple reachable solutions.

You do not need herculean power to see through our most striking features!

Its not often easy to recognize that important factor which makes the biggest impact amongst the target users. That’s where we come into play. We not only write chunks of code and come up with layouts and graphical interfaces, we also help you analyze your competition, understand the market, end users and guide you come up with a business product in the end rather than just a web application. To put it simply we know what it takes to make your end user use your product.

Okay, whats so special about us. Well the answer is simple. We are a small team. So during the pre-project  stages you wont be talking  to a so called ‘Project Manager’ who has no clue what ‘PHP’ or ‘Ruby Rails’ or a web server is. From beginning to the end, the communication is neat and straight. Its between you and our programmers. You may ask what a programmer might know about business? Well, at ByteAlly we don’t just hire programmers who knows just how to code, we hire people who can understand the business  side of the application they are building, which we believe is the greatest asset of our team. That’s why we are small, we don’t need that extra guy who tries to tell us what you discussed with him during the initial phases and messes it up. That’s why we choose to be small. And that’s exactly why we end up understanding our customer and his product inside out.

Since we use the word ’small’ very  often, it may make you wonder whether we can handle big projects. Only a small tightly knit team can handle complex projects. Infact we are currently working on a monster of a project.  This way we don’t rely on just technology to communicate. Our small environment and development methodology allows us to discuss and debate our work vigorously during production. Makes work a lot more engaging, does it not?

Most of the credit for our rapid growth goes to the OpenSource community. Imagine  a world without PHP or Ruby Rails or Python? We acknowledge their contribution and would love to give back to the community. That we chose as one of our prime agenda when our business venture became a private company. To share what we learn and give away as much as we take from the Open Source community. We are going to do that through our blog space, applications, and presentations. So please do stop by at our blog and our website when you can.

Cheerio!
Keyan,
Web programmer/Managing Director,
ByteAlly Software Solutions Pvt Ltd