Drush - Backup and Migrate command documentation

Drush is an amazing command line tool for administrating Drupal. Backup and Migrate is a Drupal module which simplifies the process of backing up and restoring your Drupal database(s). When I found out that Backup and Migrate now includes Drush support, I was really excited, but then I could not find any documentation for it anywhere (at the time of writing, the documentation link on the module page was broken). Eventually I thought to try the command line, and found everything I needed in the drush help output, so thought I would post it here in case it helps others.

Commands
bam-backup - Backup the site's database with Backup and Migrate.
bam-backups - Get a list of previously created backup files.
bam-destinations - Get a list of available destinations.
bam-profiles - Get a list of available settings profiles.
bam-restore - Restore the site's database with Backup and Migrate.
bam-sources - Get a list of available sources.



bam-backup
Backup the site's database using default settings.

Examples:
drush bam-backup - Backup the default databse to the manual backup directory using the default settings.
drush bam-backup db scheduled mysettings - Backup the database to the scheduled directory using a settings profile called "mysettings"
drush bam-backup files - Backup the files directory to the manual directory using the default settings. The Backup and Migrate Files module is required for files backups.

Arguments:
source - Optional. The id of the source (usually a database) to backup. Use 'drush bam-sources' to get a list of sources. Defaults to 'db'
destination - Optional. The id of destination to send the backup file to. Use 'drush bam-destinations' to get a list of destinations. Defaults to 'manual'
profile - Optional. The id of a settings profile to use. Use 'drush bam-profiles' to get a list of available profiles. Defaults to 'default'



bam-backups
Get a list of previously created backup files.

Examples:

drush bam-backups manual - List of backup files currently in the destination called "manual"

Arguments:
destination - Required. The id of destination to list backups from. Use 'drush bam-destinations' to get a list of destinations.



bam-destinations
Get a list of available destinations.



bam-profiles
Get a list of available settings profiles.



bam-restore
Restore the site's database with Backup and Migrate.

Examples:
drush bam-restore db manual "LCC-31.03.2011-14.01.59.mysql.gz" - restore the default database using the given dump file, which can be found in the destination called "manual"

Arguments:
source - Required. The id of the source (usually a database) to restore the backup to. Use 'drush bam-sources' to get a list of sources. Defaults to 'db'
destination - Required. The id of destination to send the backup file to. Use 'drush bam-destinations' to get a list of destinations. Defaults to 'manual'
backup id - Required. The id of a backup file restore. Use 'drush bam-backups' to get a list of available backup files.



bam-sources
Get a list of available sources.



Closing Notes
I'm not sure if this is out of date or something, but in my experience you provide the name and not the id for all of the arguments.

Drupal 6 - Drush warning about orphaned actions

When I was executing drush commands, I got a warning similar to this:

WD actions: 2 orphaned actions (comment_unpublish_action, comment_publish_action) exist in the actions table. Remove orphaned actions

Solution is to use a badly-documented Drupal feature which automatically removes all orphaned actions. Simply visit the following hidden URL on your drupal site: yoursite.com/admin/settings/actions/orphan, and it will remove any orphaned actions and forward you to the Manage Actions page, where you will see they are no longer listed!


REFERENCES
https://drupal.org/node/445922#comment-2977526

Drupal 6 - Webforms: Loading GIF on Submit

If you have a slow mail server, then submitting webforms can sometimes appear to do nothing for a while. For me, this is anywhere between 2 and 8 seconds, but I have read about a lot of other people in similar situations. While the problem is with the mail server, sometimes there's nothing that can be done about this, and a simple solution to keep the user calm is to add a little loading animation. No Ajax involved: the GIF is simply shown when the user clicks submit, and then after the wait, they will be taken to the success page.

1) Grab the right GIF animation from this amazing site: http://ajaxload.info/ and put it here: /sites/all/images/loading.gif

2) The CSS: make it so that the GIF is used when a certain class is applied to an input element

input.form-submit.loading-gif {
 background: url('/sites/all/images/loading.gif') 50% 1px no-repeat;
}

3) The jQuery script: in your theme dir, create js/submit-loading.js which will apply the CSS class to the submit button when it is clicked

$(document).ready(function()
{
    // preload image
    (new Image()).src = "/sites/all/images/loading.gif";
    
    $(".webform-client-form").submit(function() {
        // select the button
        var $button = $(this).find("#edit-submit");
        // remove the text, but persist the width of the button
        var $buttonWidth = $button.outerWidth();
        $button.attr('value', '').width($buttonWidth);
        // display the loading gif and disable the button
        $button.addClass("loading-gif").attr('disabled','disabled');
    });
});

4) Add the script only to the right page with a bit of PHP in your theme's template.php. See #2 in my article: Different ways of adding JavaScript to a page

PHP Logging on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid

PHP CONFIGURATION
Enable PHP logging by setting up the appropriate variables in your php.ini. If you don't know where your php.ini file is, try the command: locate php.ini, mine was here: /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini:

error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_DEPRECATED
log_errors = On
error_log = /var/log/apache2/php_errors.log

EXTRA: if you want to show PHP errors on screen, set:

display_errors = On

To finish, we restart apache: sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart


PERMISSIONS
Then find out what your apache user is called: ps aux | grep apache (mine was www-data), and ensure that user has full permissions on the log file directory (/var/log/apache2/). The best way to do this is ensure the user has group access i.e. either add the user the group currently assigned to the directory, or change the directory's group to one that the user is in! On my system, the directory had the group: adm, and so I added www-data to that group (see /etc/group). You then need to give the directory full permissions for group access: sudo chmod 770 /var/log/apache2/

To register these changes, we need to log out and back in again.


TESTING
An easy way to generate a PHP error is to call an undefined function i.e. put this PHP code into one of your pages:

a_function_that_doesnt_exist();

Now when you visit that page, you will either get a PHP error on screen (if you enabled that), or your browser will just display a 403 error, but importantly, your new log file php_errors.log should have been created and had it's first error logged.


INLINE PHP CONFIGURATION
One other method worth noting is inline configuration. During development, you may decide you want to temporarily enable showing errors on the screen for a particular page. The easiest way to do this, is simply to add this line of PHP to the top of your PHP file:

ini_set('display_errors', TRUE);

Drupal 6: Different ways of adding JavaScript to a page

REMEMBER

• Always use drupal_add_js() as this lets Drupal handle it i.e. preprocess/cache it.
• All of the examples assume your JS is in a script file, but you can also include an "inline" script by sending it as a string for the first argument, and setting the second to "inline" e.g. drupal_add_js('alert("Hello!")', 'inline');
• If your script is in your theme directory, you can use path_to_theme() and then the relative path from there (with a preceding slash) e.g. path_to_theme().'/js/myscript.js'

1) Add a script to all pages
a) using template.php

drupal_add_js('sites/all/scripts/tweaks.js');

b) using your theme's .info file (the script needs to be somewhere within your theme directory)

scripts[] = script.js

2) Add a script to page(s) with a specific URL / URL pattern using template.php (the following will only add the script on site.com/my/page)
NOTE: if you are using URL aliases, you need to know the un-aliased version for this (see site.com/admin/build/path)

function mytheme_preprocess_page(&$vars) {
  if (arg(0) == 'my' && arg(1) == 'page' && arg(2) == null) {
    drupal_add_js(path_to_theme().'/js/myscript.js');
    $vars['scripts'] = drupal_get_js();
  }
}

OR use the following condition to add it to any pages that start with the URL site.com/my/page e.g. /my/page/1, /my/page/2, /my/page/2/edit etc.

if (arg(0) == 'my' && arg(1) == 'page') {...}

OR use the node ID

if (isset($vars['node']) && $vars['node']->nid == 23) {...}

OR apply to all nodes of a specific content type

if (isset($vars['node']) && $vars['node']->type == 'book') {...}

3) Add a script to a specific page by editing the page in Drupal, and setting the input format to "PHP code"

drupal_add_js('sites/all/scripts/tweaks.js');

4) Add a script to a block, which you can then setup to be included in a specific page or set of pages

drupal_add_js('sites/all/scripts/tweaks.js');

Also note that it is very similar to add stylesheets to pages. The function is drupal_get_css().


REFERENCES
http://drupal.org/node/304178
http://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/includes--common.inc/function/drupal_add_js/6
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/61735/include-css-or-javascript-file-for-specific-node-in-drupal-6

Installing Sass on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid

Sass is a CSS extension that enables you to use variables, nested rules etc. To install it, see their website. If like me, you just try the first command they give you before installing ruby, you will get this:

The program 'sass' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install libhaml-ruby1.8

Don't do as it says and install libhaml-ruby1.8, as you end up with an old version of Haml/Sass: 2.2.17. Instead, you first need to install Ruby and RubyGems, which is simple:

sudo apt-get install rubygems

Next, we install Sass using RubyGems (thanks for tip from Boyd Hemphill):

sudo gem install sass

You should now have Sass installed, but if you try to use it, you may still get the original "not installed" message. This is because annoyingly the RubyGems binaries directory is not automatically added to your PATH. To do this, I simply added the following to the end of my ~/.bashrc file:

export PATH=$PATH:/var/lib/gems/1.8/bin

Then restart your terminal and that should be it. You can check that it installed successfully, and that you have the latest version with the following command:

sass -v

I get the following output: Sass 3.1.15 (Brainy Betty). You can then follow the rest of the tutorial on their website to start compiling .sass files into .css files.

Additionally, see this blog post for a great walk-through in refactoring existing CSS to Sass.

Android Calendar - Duplicate Facebook Birthdays

Device: HTC Legend
OS: Android 2.2 Froyo (with HTC Sense)

In my calendar, I had 2 entries for every birthday on my Facebook calendar. If I went into the calendar options and hid the Facebook calendar, both entries disappeared. I've learnt that this calendar is populated by the Facebook for HTC Sense app.

The solution was to remove the account in my sync settings (Settings>Accounts & sync>Facebook for HTC Sense), do a full sync, and then re-add it the account. My contacts remembered all the facebook link information too, so after re-adding the account and doing a full sync, everything was back just the way it was (inc Facebook pictures in my contact list) except no more duplicate birthday events in my calendar!


REFERENCES
http://www.htcforums.com/android-applications-games/6762-duplicate-facebook-birthday-calendar.html