wp-SwimTeam

A new release of wp-SwimTeam is now available for download.  It is also available via automatic update from the WordPress plugin repository.  This release fixes a couple of bugs and adds two new features, one of which addresses functionality that was coded but never exposed correctly.

1. Fixed bug in wpst_meet_report short code.
2. Fixed bug in Add/Update Club Profile due to invalid URL field(s).
3. Added showmaplinks option to wpst_meet_report short code.
4. Added URL sanitatization to Google Maps and Mapquest URL fields on club profile.
5. Added notes to use Google URL shortner for URLs that don’t validate.

I am not sure when it was added but MapQuest now generates “shortened” URLs when mapping an address, I wish Google would do likewise.  The URLs that Google Maps generates tend to be a mile long and full of characters.  My suggestion is to use Google’s URL shortener to generate a simple URL that can be saved within WordPress easily.  That is what I am doing for the MacDolphins web site.

The phpHtmlLib library which wp-SwimTeam depends on has also had a minor bug fix which I found testing URL validation.  This plugin can also be updated t v2.6.2.3546 using the WordPress plugin updater or can be downloaded and installed as in the past.

A new release of wp-SwimTeam is now available.  This release addresses a number of issues encountered when running on a server with PHP 5.3.5 installed.  This release requires the phpHtmlLib plugin to be updated to v2.6.2.3545 or later.

Make sure you backup your database before installing this update.  This update also fixes some database table issues, deleting fields and columns which have been deprecated.  Please report any issues you find, I have tried to test everything but I may have missed something!

wp-SwimTeam plugin – updated 2/20/2011 @ 18:11

Update:  Bad link fixed!  2/21/2011

An update to the phpHtmlLib plugin which wp-SwimTeam depends on is now available.  This update addresses a number of issues found running against PHP 5.3.5, the latest release of PHP.  There are number of changes between PHP 5.2.x and 5.3.x which were exposed and have been addressed.  This update is ABSOLUTELY necessary for anyone running on a server which has PHP 5.3.x installed.

wp-SwimTeam plugin – updated 2/20/2011 @ 18:11

I’ve been working on wp-SwimTeam over the past couple days and fixed a lot of minor issues and a couple of bigger ones and one critical one in phpHtmlLib.  The change in phpHtmlLib is absolutely required to support WordPress 3.0 and later so it will be necessary to update the phpHtmlLib plugin in addition to the latest update.

This upcoming release of wp-SwimTeam is ONLY being tested against WordPress 3.0.x (3.0.4 in my case).  It may work fine with 2.9.x but I do not plan to test it.  This upcoming release also tweaks the database, dropping columns that are no longer used.  This is primarily an issue with the Users and Swimmers table where there were some remnants left from the previous implementation of optional fields.  Make sure you backup your database prior to installing!

The release should be available in the next day or two.

Recently I have been working on a new Swim Team related project which at some point I will likely integrate into wp-SwimTeam but for now, it is a standalone application.  Pretty regularly I receive e-mail from people who want to post their meet results online in some form or fashion.  Most of the time these results come from Hy-tek in the form of a ZIP file or a CL2 file.

Generating or posting a static web page with some results on it is pretty straight forward and most swim software can do this in some form or another.  Storing the results in a database and presenting them as part of a web site isn’t something readily available as near as I can tell.  It would be nice to be able to upload a season’s worth of results and allow swimmers and parents to review their times and see the trends.  This is basically what I am working on.

At this point I can import a SDIF meet results file and extract the meet data from it.  I have some other infrastructure complete as well and will begin working on extracting and processing all of the result records in the next day or two.

I’ve based this project on two external PHP libraries.  I am using  the 2.x thread of phpHtmlLib, which I also use for wp-SwimTeam and ADODB.  This is my first time using ADODB and so far, there haven’t been any issues.  I decided to use it because I needed a database abstraction layer and phpHtmlLib has a ADODB data source widget which makes it very easy to present data to a user.

WordPress 3.0 is expected to be out sometime in May.  I figured I ought to do some basic testing to see if changes to WordPress would have any significant impact on wp-SwimTeam.

I have a Linux Virtual Machine which I have set up such that I can always run the bleeding edge of WordPress – right out of the Subversion repository.  When a new version of WordPress is ready to come out I update my Linux VM with the current state of WordPress and the current state of wp-SwimTeam and run some tests.

I started doing this a couple weeks ago and got busy and never finished it.  This morning, I got back to it.  It turns out, it didn’t run very well.  Both wp-SwimTeam and phpHtmlLib plugins were calling deprecated WordPress functions.  In releases prior to 3.0, there were no warnings about calling a deprecated function but 3.0 has a new warning feature.  The way it is implemented, the warnings actually caused a failure with phpHtmlLib which resulted in WordPress not successfully loading.

I have fixed the problems in both plugins and committed the changes.  However, I have not released new builds yet so until I do, I advise sticking with the 2.9.x release of WordPress.  I expect a new build later this week at the latest.

I have released a new version of the phpHtmlLib plugin for download.  This is a minor update which fixes an issue when WordPress is installed in a sub-directory.  The icons for the widgets would not be displayed when WordPress was installed this way.

I have noodled on how to handle wp-SwimTeam’s dependency on phpHtmlLib on several occasions.  Today I was at the gym with my mind wandering while I was on the elliptical machine, I started thinking about it again.

I am considering pulling it into the plugin as SVN external.  This would allow me to ensure it is always installed.  Doing this will greatly simplify the download and installation process for the end user as well which ultimately will make it easier to support users of the plugin.  The more I think about it, the better idea I think this is.  I need to read up on SVN externals!

I haven’t made much progress over the last few weeks as I have been working on a project at work which was taking a lot of my free cycles.  Fortunately the project at work also uses phpHtmlLib so some of the work I did for the work project will roll out to this project as well.

Even though I haven’t put a lot of active cycles into wp-SwimTeam, I have been looking for some ideas on how to deal with event ordering better.  Event ordering was one of the last things I checked in and I went back and used it and it is clunky.

I have concluded that Event Ordering and ultimately heat sheet management needs to be AJAX based so drag and drop can be implemented.  I want to implement something similar to this jQuery Portlet demo.  Since I have never done anything with AJAX (other than a Google Maps implementation), this is new ground for me.