Using the file_get_contents method is a easy and simple way to grab and parse stock market data using PHP. Yes this is a quick and easy way but for more robust options like setting custom User Agents and Timeout options you should try utilizing the cUrl function. It’s a lot of material to cover but it’s worth the time.
Category: Programming
JQuery Phone Number Mask
So it’s been ages since I’ve made a blog post but its been even longer since I’ve submitted anything to Github.
I was recently coding a project for work and needed or at least convinced myself I needed a date mask to better show people how to format the month and year for this search function I was building.
Somewhere along they way I decided to morph the date mask into a phone number mask. I didn’t spend much time with this so I’m sure someone could make it a 100 times better. But as for right now this was what I needed.
Plus it gave me a chance to submit a project to Github.
Thanks
I’ll add a link to a demo sometime after the Holiday’s
Merry Christmas
AngularJS Map Points
Hello Friend (mr robot quote)
Disclaimer.. So I’m new to AngularJ, but I’m really digging it so far.
I started putting this together late last night, I guess technically this would be considered a Single Page Application (SPA). I really don’t expect to be working on it past today. It was intended to be a simple project I could crush out quickly. It’s basically a application to help me get through my day to day at work.
Through out the work week I deal with a lot of coordinates and Google maps questions. Having a tool that can help me investigate location points is incredibly helpful. Sure I can use Google maps… but this gives me a excuse to do something more about AngularJS.
For about 2 years now I’ve been using Itouchmap.com/latlong.html. It’s a great tool but it can be a bit aggravating at times. Meaning the site has ads strategically placed along the rails of the site so there are times when you find your self accidentally move your cursor across a ad which then triggers a pop up video. Those things are the worst!
As far as the domain. I use Dynadot.com sometimes to purchases domains because Godaddy is becoming a bit too gangster for me. I still had a few dollars in my account and they had .co on sale for $5.99. I danced around with the idea of purchasing a .co for a long time. Yes it’s cheap but the renewals price in most times end up being something crazy. With .coms you can kind of bet on the price being the same if not close to the purchasing price the following year.
yada, yada, yada.. I went with Latlon.co for right now.
Tools used include:
Bootstap of course
Google Maps API because I found a AngularJS directive. (I really wanted to use Mapbox they have a great set of API’s)
Ipinfo.io to give me a users roundabout Latitude and Longitude via IP address.
Learning Swift
Finally my swift skills are coming along. This is a app idea I built over the weekend. There were a few things that I struggled with (i.e. setting the background color in the navigation bar) but for the most part I think I’m catching on. The idea is basically a demonstration on how to pull TV show listing using Swift and TVMaze’s APIs. I plan to post the source later tonight on GitHub.
TV Show Listing
TV Show Summary
Date Picker
I have a few more goals that I aiming to cross of my list.
- How to submit to the App store
- How to use the push notification feature
- How to swipe and delete items from a list.
My First Youtube Video
For many years I’ve trolled Youtube, Stackoverflow.com and other sites stock piling information and code on how to do certain things.
So I figured it was time for me to do my part and pay it forward. I decided to so by cranking out some “How To” videos.
This was my first attempt at screen recording and what I found out is that it’s not as easy as it looks.
1st, my audio sucked so I went out and bought some fairly cheap Logitech USB Headsets
2nd, Whenever I played back my video it was blurry. So it took me a few takes to figure out that I needed to change the resolutions to 1280×720
3rd, I’ve never used IMovie before so for me something as simple as trimming a clip took hours to figure out. Come to think of it I’ve owned my Mac for like 3 years now and I think this was the first time I’ve opened IMovie on purpose.
Overall it probably took me like 6/8 takes to get to a point where I thought I was done. I’m crossing my fingers hoping that as I do more it will get better.
Soooo my first video is a “How To” video explaining how to download and parse TV listing data using PHP and a very cool API made available by the people over at TVmaze.com.
The site and API’s are free and very easy to use. And like you’ll see from my video you can get something up and running within a few minutes.
So if you find your looking for this type of data, you should definitely see the set of API’s TVmaze.com has to offer.
f.y.i. I have no theme or structured plan in mind for the videos i create. I only plan to do videos on technology I like and use.
New theme New Beginnings
Well since Google has been tipping it’s hat towards how it feels about mobile in regards to responsive friendly websites I thought I should perhaps change WordPress themes. So here we are a new theme, new beginnings. I was looking for something easy and simple and I think I’ve nailed it with this theme.
So what’s new.
- Killing off some websites (getMinified is gone)
- Updating my Skills and experience matrix
- Really loving Swift so far
- And oh I’ve added a new site to the mix (Bigtopnames.com)
I plan to blog more, my goal is to submit a post at least once a week.
I have a few ideas, working on a few new projects so things should start off pretty easily.. but lets see
Thanks,
Joseph
Updated Skills and Experience Matrix
So I’ve updated my Skills and Experience Matrix chart.
http://www.josephtinsley.com/2013/07/31/skills-and-experience-matrix/
I’ve added Twitter BootStrap under the Familiarity column.
I’ve been playing around with it but nowhere near where I would like to be.
For a while now I’ve been trying my best not to follow the herd.
So either I built my own framework or I used a framework that was off the grid (not so popular).
The journey so far has been pretty good.
I purchased the kindle version of “Getting Started with Bootstrap 3” to help jump start things.
You should get it, it’s awesome, plus it was only like $2.99
Anyhow I will have more to come regarding my BootStrap journey soon.
I’m currently re-doing this Domain management site I’ve been working on.
I’m expecting to have this completed within the next two weeks.
getMinified API
After 3 or 4 attempts in building out the getMinified API and its dashboard I think I finally have a finished product.
Everytime I thought things where thought out correctly, I found issues.
Either complexed issues with the code or simple UX issues.
I decided to pared back a bit on the features and focus primarily on the CSS part.
In the beginning the overall objective was to build out a simple but useful website that I could crank out within a weekend.
…Im about two weeks deep now #sadface
Screenshot of the Sign Up/Sign In dashboard
Screenshot of the Stylesheet listing dashboards
Building GetMinified.com – CSS and JS minifier
So this may be a crazy idea but at the time I thought it was pretty special.
I was working on a project and had to minify some CSS code.
I quickly became exhaust of the whole process.
Edit CSS, minify the code, republish to site. Make more changes to the CSS code, minify the code again , republish the code again.
Depending on how often you make these types of changes this process can get a bit tiresome.
So I thought, Oh crap why not make a API !
The idea was to basically allow developers to work on their code and at anytime save the changes. The API will dynamically return the compress version.
Boom! and thats how GetMinified.com was created.
I bought the domain for less then $5 from Godaddy using a coupon code. Then the next following day I crushed out the code.
Right now I’m fine tuning the backend but it seems to work as is.
I’m gonna create a API sign up page to collect emails so I’ll be able to notify users if the API updates.
Skills and Experience Matrix
I’ve been working in the tech industry for a few years now. Most of my career has been split between SEO and Web Development. There’s times when I’m not really aware of the skill sets I’ve picked up amongst the years. So I decided to build this matrix that would easily display what languages and technologies I’m familiar with.
| Languages | Databases | OSs | Software | Web Services | Familiarity |
| HTML | MySql | Win | Neatbeans | Twilio | Python |
| CSS | mongoDB | IOs | Dreamweaver | PostGRE | |
| JQuery | Linux | PHPAdmin | CodeIgnitor | ||
| JavaScript | RoboMongo | Yahoo | Twitter Bootstrap | ||
| PHP5 | MAMPPro | Bing | Swift | ||
| SQL | EasyPHP | ||||
| JSON | FileZilia | ||||
| XML | Git/GitHub | ||||
| Mercurial/Bitbucket |
The column labeled “Familiarity” are languages/technologies I’ve only worked with for 6 months or less.