Tag Archives: Software Sagacity

Using Wget with Cookies

October 30, 2014 Andrew Palczewski 6 Comments

One of the powerful tools available in most Linux distributions is the Wget command line utility. With a simply one-line command, the tool can download files from the web and save them to the local disk. While this capability might initially seem only moderately useful (Why not just use Chrome or Firefox to download the file?) – most Linux servers are managed remotely through a tool called SSH. SSH normally offers only a command line interface without any graphical components, so all the server maintenance needs to be done through the command line. Wget is used constantly throughout the installation process to download files from the Internet and install new programs on the system.
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PHP, Be Not Proud

October 9, 2014 Andrew Palczewski 1 Comment

Over the years, PHP has been instrumental to progress in the field of web development. As one of the early pioneers of server-side web scripting, the PHP language grew to become the dominant programming language of open-source web applications. Its free and open-source codebase made it the default programming language on Apache and Linux, and the large number of excellent web applications built on PHP will secure its existence for at least the next fifteen years.
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Magento Custom Product Listing in the CMS Page

October 3, 2014 Andrew Palczewski Leave a comment

When developing applications on Magento’s Ecommerce platform, it’s occasionally necessary to customize the way products are displayed. While the default store layout has the product listing built-in, custom product listings can highlight certain products and attributes, or make it easier for customers to find their desired products. When integrated into a CMS page, the custom product listing will provide a robust and easy-to-maintain feature without the overhead of plugin development.
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Dynamically Hide Custom Options in Magento

October 2, 2014 Andrew Palczewski 1 Comment

Magento offers a stable and extensible platform for online store development. Its full-featured administration and reporting offer businesses the capability to leverage an open-source alternative to a fully custom system. The stock cart can often handle most of the store requirements through its built-in configuration options, while the open-source backend can be modified as necessary for more advanced customizations.
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Automatically Securing a Web Folder

September 15, 2014 Andrew Palczewski Leave a comment

Web applications often store dynamic data in folders together with the application. From WordPress to Magento, many open source apps default to intermingling the data with the application folder structure. Although this provides a simpler deployment and ease of installation for newcomers, it also provides a significant security loophole for exploit by hackers.
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Elements of an Enterprise-Grade Web Framework – Part 2: Existing Database Schemas

July 28, 2014 Andrew Palczewski 1 Comment

A powerful database schema is one of the key components of an enterprise application. Using the database to enforce business logic and ensure data integrity enables both flexibility and scalability in application design. By coding business logic in both the database layer and application layer, the database has the flexibility to then also be used by other applications and processes without fear of corrupting data. In addition, other systems can take advantage of stored procedures or views that make future development easier, instead of the platform lock-in created by storing all business logic in the application itself.
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PHP Form Sniffing – Full GET and POST Variable Simulation

June 4, 2014 Andrew Palczewski 2 Comments

When developing web applications, it is sometimes necessary to capture and replicate a particular request in order to debug and fix a problem. This is especially true when integrating with third-party applications, where it can be challenging and time-consuming to reproduce a specific scenario. If the errors are sporadic, capturing all relevant data to a file will allow the developer to review the log afterward to match the incident time with the suspect form parameters.
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