Author Archives: Ben

SSRS – Updating Linked Report Page Properties

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Ben

Page property changes made to Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) reports are not passed on to linked reports. For example, changing a parent report’s page size from letter to legal will not change child linked reports’ page sizes to … Continue reading →

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PHP $_POST Empty After Setting post_max_size & upload_max_filesize

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Ben

$_POST was empty! Firebug showed that the web browser was submitting the form’s data to the server. Yet, for some reason, PHP was not putting the data into the $_POST array. If I switched the form’s action from POST to … Continue reading →

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Rake Package Task Fails with Status 127 on Windows

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Ben

The other day, I tried running a Rake Package task on a Windows system. Rake aborted with “Command failed with status (127): [zip -r Module.zip Module...]“. What could be the problem?

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Storing Incomplete (Partial) Dates in SQL Databases

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Ben

Complete (full) dates and unknown dates can easily be stored in a database table via a nullable date column. What about storing incomplete (partial) dates—where the month, day and/or year is unknown? How do we record July 10 (unknown year) … Continue reading →

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Unit Testing & Magento’s Autoloader

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Ben

If code written for Magento is executed outside of Magento—as occurs when running unit tests—Magento’s normal startup process (which registers its autoload functionality) is not run. Without the autoloader in place, the first time PHP encounters a request to initialize … Continue reading →

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Passing a Memo Field to SAGE Payment Soluations’ Gateway API

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Ben

In SAGE Payment Solutions’ virtual terminal, transactions have a memo field. However, the gateway’s HTTPS Bankcard Specifications API documentation doesn’t mention a way to programmatically set this field. Using the HTTPS POST API, is there a way to pass in … Continue reading →

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Show Insert File Instead of Record Audio Dialog – FileMaker Pro Container Fields

Posted on September 13, 2011 by Ben

Click on a container field in a FileMaker Pro form and you’ll be presented with a Record Audio dialog. To store a file or other non-audio content, you must right-click on the field and then choose Insert File (or Insert Image or … Continue reading →

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SET FMTONLY ON Changes SQL Control-of-Flow Statement Processing

Posted on August 30, 2011 by Ben

The other day, my friend Jonathan (of Camenisch Creative) surprised me by pointing out that SET FMTONLY ON changes the way Microsoft SQL Server processes control-of-flow statements (IF…ELSE…END, GOTO, RETURN, etc.) When SET FMTONLY is OFF (the default), SQL Server … Continue reading →

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Programmatically Setting a Magento Item’s Price When Adding It to Cart

Posted on July 29, 2011 by Ben

Using code, how would we give a Magento item a one-time special price then add that item to the shopping cart? The process is simple: Create an instance of the Magento product, give it a custom price by calling setSpecialPrice, … Continue reading →

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Can you force .Net garbage collection?

Posted on June 4, 2011 by Ben

Confusion exists on whether .Net’s GC.Collect() simply suggests or actually forces garbage collection (GC). Thankfully, developers don’t usually need to worry about such mundane details. However, in unusual circumstances—like WeakReference testing (which may rely on predictable, guaranteed destruction of unneeded … Continue reading →

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