wp-SwimTeam

I’ve been doing some research into Meet Manager and its ability to import an SDIF entries file.  Since so many teams use Meet Manager, getting data into it is pretty much of a requirement.

I posted previously on this topic but this year, as I was preparing our entries for the Cary City Meet, I did some experiments.  Hy-tek now makes a demo version of Meet Manager available.  The demo version is limited to six (6) events which makes it useless for doing much real work but it is fine for some simple experiments like I wanted to do.

What did I learn?

Meet Manager is really picky about SDIF.  This really isn’t a surprise.  The first thing I ran into was SDIF files (which are ASCII) that go through e-mail as simple attachments rarely will read into Meet Manager successfully.  There is something about line endings that Meet Manager is unusually sensitive too.  This issue can be avoided by zipping an SDIF file before sending it via e-mail.  You can actually load the zip file into Meet Manager directly, Meet Manager will unzip it for you.

The real compatibility issue comes from D0 and E0 SDIF records which don’t have a seed time.  Meet Manager simply does not like records without a seed time (blank) even though the SDIF specification indicates this is legal.

To get past this issue, the SDIF file must contain either “NT” or “00:00.0″ (right justified) in the seed time field AND the course code.  Meet Manager will accept both formats as “no seed time”.

Unfortunately Meet Manager still does not read heat and lane information from the SDIF record.  This is really a nuisance.  As near as I can tell the only way to get heat and lane information into Meet Manager is via a .CL2 file (maybe) or via a .HY3 file (definitely).  Of course both of these file formats, which are similar to SDIF, contain the Hy-tek proprietary checkum for each record.

I would really like to solve this problem as it would make interchanging data so much easier.

Rants, SDIF Hy-Tek, SDIF

I had another go-round with GoDaddy yesterday which resulted in another goofy e-mail.  I posted the fsockopen() example they had asked me to which timed out and GoDaddy responded with this:

Dear Mike,

I sincerely apologize for any confusion or frustration. You will need to specify the proxy in your coding. Applications that need to make outbound connections (port 443) will need to be made “proxy aware”. This will require additional coding to varying degrees, depending on the application. You will need to know the ip address and port of the proxy server in order to correctly modify your code. The ip of the proxy server is 64.202.165.130 and connections will be made on port 3128.

You will need to use this when coding with PHP:
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPPROXYTUNNEL, TRUE);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_PROXYTYPE, CURLPROXY_HTTP);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, http://64.202.165.130:3128);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, FALSE);

I hope this information helps.

Please let us know if we can assist you in any other way.

Sincerely,
Lindsay C.
Online Support Representative

Right back to the cURL requirements which really don’t make any sense for fsockopen().  It really doesn’t matter as I chnaged the code which manages the Google Maps so it no longer needs it.

Development, Rants cURL, fsockopen, GoDaddy

Over the past few days I have had a back and forth e-mail dialog with GoDaddy Support regarding their PHP support (or lack there of).  Some of their responses are just silly.  Since they don’t support allow_url_fopen, I wanted to use cURL.  Well, apparently cURL isn’t supported with their Windows hosting service and even with that, requires a proxy configuration.  So then I decided to use fsockopen() since GoDaddy states it is supported for all PHP hosting plans.

Well fsockopen() times out when I try using it.  I got the following from GoDaddy support:

Dear Mike,

We apologize for the confusion.  While fsockopen() is supported you would need to be on an account that fully supports PHP.  You would need to switch to a Linux Hosting account.  If you do not wish to switch to a Linux Server, you would need to use custom coding.  Unfortunately, we do not provide coding or scripting support through this forum. I recommend performing a search on a search engine. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Please let us know if we can assist you in any other way.

Sincerely,
 
John B.
Online Support
Technician 

What kind of nonsense is this?  No where is it stated that it isn’t supported.  So respond to them and ask for a list of what is and isn’t supported with respect to running PHP under Windows.  This is what I got back in response – it is just nonsense – it points to me to a Linux configuration, how helpful is that?  Not only does it point to the wrong platform, but what it reports would indicate that what I want to do is supported!

Dear Mike,

As our Windows IIS 7 plans support PHP 5.2.5, please refer to the following link for a full list of supported PHP options:

•  http://gilahacker.com/info.php5

Please let us know if you have any further questions, comments, or concerns. Our service departments and telephone lines are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to accommodate your needs anytime.

You can reach us by phone to the following numbers:
(480) 505-8877 Technical Support, Sales and Service
(480) 505-8855 Billing

Or, you can send an email for speedy electronic service to the following address:
support@supportwebsite.com – Technical Support, Sales and Service

We look forward to serving you in the future.

Please let us know if we can help in any other way.

Regards,
Stacey P.
Online Support

It makes one wonder if their support people actualy read what is sent to them. So I responde back to them pointing out that their response was not very helpful and ask my question again as well as another request for what is and isn’t supported with PHP running under Windows.

My most recent response was a request for a code sample to see what isn’t working, hopefully this will resolve the issue once and for all, stay tuned!  The response also included a statement that they, GoDaddy, don’t have a document which articulates the differences between PHP support running under Windows and PHP support under Linux.

Dear Mike,

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Currently fsockopen() is supported on your hosting account. Please send us the full URL of a page we can duplicate the error you are having so that we can troubleshoot this error. Unfortunately, we do not provide technical support with third-party scripting issues. However if the issue is being caused by a misconfiguration on our server we would be happy to resolve this for you.

Unfortunately we do not have any documentation available that will show you the difference in the php configuration between out Linux and Windows accounts. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

Please let us know if we can help you in any other way.

Sincerely,
Jeremy T
Online Support Technician

Development, PHP, Rants fsockopen, GoDaddy, PHP

The members of the WordPress Hackers mailing list are really helpful and usually a very clever bunch.  I posted my dilema last night and received a couple suggestions, one of which was to abandon cURL and use Snoopy because it is embedded with WordPress and therefore would always be avaialble.

Sounds like a good idea so I check it out.  While I don’t care for the way the class is implemented (direct access to class variables), it if works, I don’t really care.  So I set it up and sure enough, it works in my development area.  Off the production server and nope, it doesn’t work either.  Snoopy depends on fsockopen which GoDaddy says is supported on all PHP hosting plans but it times out so I am guess what they have stated in their help system isn’t true.

Now I am not sure what to do other than to pursue a Javascript solution.  GoDaddy is quickly going on my “less than happy with” list.  I wonder if a Linux server would be any easier?

Development, PHP, Rants cURL, fsockopen, GoDaddy, Snoopy

The nice folks at WinSwim are interested in what I am doing with this plugin and have offered to host a demo site.  You can find it at:  http://wp.winswim.com  The demo site is running for the most part, if you are interested in trying it out, go ahead and register with the demo site then drop me an e-mail so I can change your permissions so you can actually do something other than register sample swimmers.

I say the demo site is running “sort of” because just about everything is working although there are a few bugs I know of (e.g. defining age groups).  The one thing which isn’t working and it is driving me nuts is the ability to display a Google Map.  This is a really nice feature that my own team used quite a bit this year.

I have encapsulated a class called Phoogle within wp-SwimTeam and it worked just fine in my development area and on the MacDolphins site.  Phoogle relies on a PHP configuration option known as allow_url_fopen which basically allows PHP to open a web page on an external site and read the content like it would a local file.  It’s a nice feature but one that a lot of web hosting providers turn off.  In fact, the host for the demo site has it turned off.

There is another technology called cURL which for all practical purposes, accomplishes what allow_url_fopen does although it is a little more involved.  I enhanced Phoogle to use cURL if allow_url_fopen is disabled and it worked just fine in my development area.  Great!  The change was pretty simple too.  Uploaded to the production server and nothing.  It doesn’t work there.  It turns out that GoDaddy (the web hosting provider) has a goofy cURL implementation which requires the use of a proxy.

After a much trial and error and a couple e-mails with GoDaddy support, all I have accomplished is a partial cURL request.  I am unable to get a complete response which prevents the map from being displayed.  I then got another e-mail from GoDaddy telling me that cURL is only supported on their Linux hosting environments not under Windows (even though it is enabled in PHP.ini).  Bleh.  ;-(

I think for now when I find a short code, I will check the allow_url_fopen setting and if it is off, will issue a warning during the short code processing.  There is probably a way to interact with the Google Maps API via Javascript, I guess I will need to look into that.  It is really too bad, the Phoogle solution was really simple to use.

Bugs, Development, Google Maps, Rants cURL, GoDaddy, Google Maps, Javascript, Phoogle

While it isn’t really relevant to the wp-swimteam plugin, it is related to swim team.  Our team is using WinSwim for meet management which relies on Crystal Reports for generating reports.  I have been customizing reports for our team and am working on one which requires me to really poke into Access.

I have done quite a bit of work with MySQL so it is frustrating to encounter SQL constructs which Access doen’t support.  Right now I am struggling with how to determine if a table in Access already exists and if it does, I want to drop it.  What a PITA.  Access doesn’t support the DROP TABLE IF EXISTS construct which MySQL (and others) support.

If you know how to do this, please tell me how in the comments! 

Rants Access, MySQL, WinSwim

I have posted on this subject before but after spending a bunch of time with WinSwim this weekend I want to talk about it again.  I really like WinSwim.  Gary Wood (the author) provides top notch support.  I have run into a few bugs and his turn-around time to fix them is phenominal, usually within a day or so.

The last one was a wierd one though.  I was unable to run any of WinSwim’s reports.  I installed it on my wife’s computer and they ran fine.  WFT?!?  I provided a slew of data to WinSwim Support and got an e-mail back from Gary explaining that in his opinion, what was happening was I likely had Hytek’s Meet Manager installed (I do) as it uses an old version of Crystal Reports, the same Report Module which WinSwim uses.  Because WinSwim expects the newer version, they won’t work.  Bleh, what a mess.  I am still trying to figure out how to rectify this situation.  I can’t imagine what I’d do without Gary’s support.

Rants, Software

Today I finished the first pass on generating an SDIF file for the roster.  I sent it to Hy-Tek and it doesn’t import.  Great.  Apparently they don’t seem to support all of the SDIF specification, just some of it.  No mention of that anywhere on their web site.

On the plus side, I found a better version of the SDIF specification on the WinSwim web site.  If I can get WinSwim to digest the SDIF file I generated, I may push our team to use it.

Development, Progress, Rants, SDIF, Software

I have been trading e-mail with a support guy at Hy-Tek regading Team Manager’s ability to import SDIF.  After our dialog, I am not sure Team Manager can import the roster I am trying to generate.  It can import results but based on the samples Hy-Tek sent me, it isn’t clear if it will deal with the D1 and D2 records or not.  Since they won’t send me an evaluation version, only the Lite version which doesn’t support SDIF import, I have to sending them my SDIF file for them to import and see what I get back.

I am also looking at WinSwim which actually looks like a better solution for most club swim teams.  WinSwim also offers a really useful SDIF Checker which will help me out greatly.  Using the checker, I should be able to send Hy-Tek what I believe is a good SDIF file.

It really boggles my mind that Hy-Tek is the defacto standard when their tool is so hard to use and to get data in and out of.  Convincing our team that WinSwim may be a better choice for us will be no small feat.

Rants, SDIF, Software

I haven’t had a lot of time to work on the plugin but got back to it last night and am really trying to get the roster export completed.  It isn’t hard but it is tedious as there is lots of data to output in the SDIF format.  I am close to being done and found an inconsistency with the D1 record.  It allocates 12 characters for the USS# field however the USS# field is 14 characters long.  Since it looks like it is only mandatory for submitting data to USS, I may omit it.  I also sent an e-mail to Hy-Tek to see how they handle it, we’ll see if they respond.  For now I think I will omit it and move on.  I need a copy of Team Manager to test with – that is my next dilema.

Development, Progress, Rants, SDIF