How would one concatenate strings from a column (multiple rows) into a single row using MySQL? I see its possible with MS SQL Server 2005 and above. Any incite into how to achieve this in MySQL would be much appreciated.

MS SQL Server 2005 - Example

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SELECT Web_Account_ID,
GroupNameConcat = REPLACE(
        (
        SELECT
                Web_Account_Group_Name_ID AS [DATA()]
        FROM
                tblWebAccountGroup WAG
        WHERE
                WAG.Web_Account_ID = WA.Web_Account_ID
        ORDER BY
                Web_Account_Group_Name_ID
            FOR XML PATH ('')
        ), ' ', ',')
FROM tblWebAccounts WA
ORDER BY Web_Account_ID

Query Results Example

Source: …

Background Knowledge

For some reason or another the priority menu in the edit task panel is not wide enough and therefore it cuts off the priority names. This can be easily fixed by modifying some inline CSS. Yes I agree this should be done within the skin’s CSS file, however there is nothing present in the CSS file to alter that I could find.

Solution

Edit /taskfreak/include/html/xajax_panel_edit.php at line #18 by changing the width value of “40px” to “125px” or to what you desired width.

Code Before

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<td>< ?php
$objTemp = new ItemPriority();
$objTemp->qSelect('priority',($objTask->priority)?$objTask->priority:3,'','','style="width:40px"');
?></td>

Code After

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<td>< …

Background Knowledge

TaskFreak! presently does not have a means via the web interface to present a complete list of tasks for which the current user is the project leader. I will show you how to add “My Projects” list based on bpiper’s solution with a slight difference. My solution is almost identical to bpiper’s but with a different approach to continue support of the supported interface languages. To do this each supported language file will require to be edited.

Thanks to bpiper for posting your solution.

Solution

1. Edit /taskfreak/include/language/en/freak.php starting at line #15. Add in a new array key/value at any point you desire like so “‘my_projects’ => ‘My Projects’,” (without double quotes), see below for example.

   Note: Each interface language file will be …

Background Knowledge

I’m trying to determine the difference in minutes between two timestamps. I’m using Pear::Date to do this. The issue comes into play when I noticed that the wrong timezone was being used by Pear::Date, UTC. If I do not use Pear::Date the timezone is set correctly.

I have tried using date_default_timezone_set() and it does set the timezone back, however I feel this shouldn’t be necessary as the default timezone should be used. I have been using date_default_timezone_get() to determine what timezone is being used.

It’s my understanding that Pear::Date uses UTC when it is unable to determine the default timezone. As far as I know I have the default timezone set correctly and with a …

In many programing languages it is possible to shorten if statements using what’s called the ternary operator. It is sometimes referred as the “one line if statement” or the “short if statement”. This can help at times to produce cleaner code, however use this operator wisely as it is not always best to be used for more complicated statements.

PHP Example of an if statement

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if($nFoo > 0)
{
   echo "I'm at the work.";
}
else
{
   echo "I'm at home.";
}

PHP Example using the ternary operator

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      echo $nFoo > 0 ? "I'm at the work." : "I'm at home.";

The expression (expr1) ? (expr2) : (expr3) evaluates to expr2 if expr1 evaluates to …

Solutions

Using PHP function intval().

Code example: echo intval(”05″);
Returned value: 5

Using PHP function ltrim().

Code example: echo ltrim(”005″,”0″);
Returned value: 5

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Background Knowledge

Since MySQL v4.1 timestamp and datetime data types are formatted “YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS”. Prior to MySQL v4.1 the timestamp was formatted as YYYYMMDDHHMMSS” and datetime formatted as “YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS”. Refer to MySQL Reference Manual for further details.

The Unix timestamp differs from MySQL. Unix’s timestamp is a integer value of seconds since January 1, 1970. For further explanation of Unix timestamps refer to Wikiepedia or UnixTimestamp.com.

Solutions

In MySQL you can use Unix_Timestamp() function.

Query Example: SELECT …

Background Knowledge

The MySQL database v4.0.23 is using the default character set of “Latin1″. When the database was created I had no knowledge of character sets other wise it would have been “UTF-8″.
The web pages are using a character set of “UTF-8″.

Problem

Data being queried from a MySQL database that contains French accent characters will not render correctly in the browser even after applying PHP htmlentities().

Example code: $string = htmlentities($string , ENT_QUOTES, “UTF-8″);

Solution

The queried data from the database was inputted using the character set “ISO-8859-1″. I …

One of the biggest complaints I’ve had with HTML_QuickForm is not producing valid XHTML Strict code. Well there is a simple solution to removing the name attribute of the HTML form element tag using remoteAttribute().

Example
$form->removeAttribute(’name’);

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I was trying to use the PHP calendar API and immediately received this error message, “Fatal error: Call to undefined function cal_days_in_month()”. This error message means PHP was not compiled with the calendar extension.

Solution

The only solution to this error message and other similar error messages relating to the PHP calendar API requires PHP to be compiled with the calendar extension by adding “–enable-calendar” to the “configure command” as stated in the PHP documentation on the Calendar functions page.

How to Tell if the Calendar Extension is Installed

You can verify weather or not the PHP Calendar extension was compiled at install by using the phpinfo() function. When viewing the output of phpinfo() look under “Configure Command” just below “Build Date” and if you do not see “–enable-calendar” present then all PHP …