Accessing Google Analytics API with Zend Framework
After a long time Google finally released the API which allows the read access to the Google Analytics accounts. Since I needed it to perform some analytics and included it into one of my projects written with Zend Framework. Zend framework provides a massive library collection which you can use to access Google services, but unfortunately it does not provide the interface for accessing the analytics yet. Therefore I decided to share the code.
SMPT authentication with Zend_Mail
It's been a long time since I wrote my last post. Well, I was busy working and getting familiar with Zend Framework. Since the Zend Framework documentation is not really helpful when it comes to send emails using SMTP, I decided I show you how I accomplished that.
Zip code search using jQuery and Google maps – displaying results in a defined radius
Last time I wrote about handling a Google map event, which is triggered, when a user moves around the map. I only mentioned that I had to use this solution for one of my projects, which goal was to display companies branches in a certain distance radius. I decided that it probably will be really interesting for all of you, how to display all company branches according to user input, therefore this time I will show you, how to retrieve the addresses of the places from a MySQL database, based on the zip code and radius provided by a user. I will also split this example in two parts. Todays part will only handle retrieving the results, displaying a simple navigation and markers on the map. In the second part we will push our project a little bit farther and we will allow our user to display the directions from the zip code he or she provided to the branch of his or hers choice.
Google Maps and jQuery – calculating distance between two points
It has been a long time since I wrote my last example, but I've been really busy. Lately I got a request to write an example about calculating the distance between two points using KML file. What I will show you in this example is how to provide an user two drop down fields, which will be build according to provided KML file. Choosing each field will show a marker on the map. Changing the drop down field will cause removal of an according marker and placement of it in a new location. Also the markers will have two different colors, so an user can differentiate between starting and ending point. As the last functionality we will add a button. After an user clicks on the button, our function will calculate the rout and display the distance in kilometers. Let's start with a simple class which we will use to display drop down field and retrieve the coordination of requested place.
Symfony – no error message on empty values in not required fields
It's been a long time since I wrote my last post, but I kept myself busy with work. I'm just working with another web 2.0 project (yes, there will be another web 2.0 project 
, which was written using symfony framework. I need to admit that my previous experience with different frameworks was pretty good, but symfony is different and I'm really excited about it. In a way it is similar to CakePHP using MVC patter but it has features, which I couldn't find in Cake. I mean symfony has its pros and cons but I find it really easy to build database models and modules using CLI and ORM. Propel is probably not the best abstraction layer, but I was reading on Doctrine site (which I personally find better than Propel) that it will be included in the new 1.2 release. I don't want to write a lot about symfony here, but rather solve a validation problem I encountered during development.
Class for retrieving region, city and geolocation
For one of the social platforms I was creating I had to provide profile display according to the location from which the request was made. There are plenty services in the internet, which provide you an accurate database, which will translate IP address into region, city and geographical lengths. I didn't want to spend any money for this kind of service, so I decided to find a free solution for this task. However, none of the services existing in the internet provides you 100% accuracy, the one that I've found locates my IP correctly. It would be nice, if you could give me some feedback, if this class is working for you as good as it works for me. This example requires URL file-access to be enabled on your server, because we will request the XML data through URL call. In this example we will also use SimpleXMLElement class, which should be enable by default in PHP5, to translate our XML file into an object. We will then recurse received object into a suitable array.