Coincidentally with the HP scandal, I’m working on an email project, where thousands of emails are sent out every morning to important people. The sender’d like to know the open rate of the emails. The technique used is pretty standard using “web bug”. They implemented a 1×1 transparent gif image whose source url is something like mydomain.com?userID=1234&otherParam=asd. The problem is: the collected open rate is not at all accurate because many of the recipients are using Outlook 2003. To avoid cross-site scripting (XSS) and other possible vulnerabilities, by default, Outlook 2003 (also Thunderbird 1.5) blocks all external images and display them with great skeptical even when the user chooses to unblock the images. As the web bug image is not requested, the collected open rate is way low as most users don’t bother unblock the images (Outlook’s warning text about external images is too blended in so I guess most users don’t even see that feature)
After messing with our own code to keep track of the open rate for the emails, my work buddy and I were set out to use Readnotify.com. We found out about ReadNotify.com mostly through Google. Some sites (wikipdia, for example), said that Readnotify.com was used during the HP’s scandal. I thought that Readnotify.com must be doing some neat tricks to by-pass the strict restriction of Outlook 2003. I was wrong. **Readnotify.com could neither detect if the email has been opened in Outlook 2003 (or Thunderbird 1.5) with the images blocked.** Don’t waste your money on the subscription if your audience are mostly Outlook 2003 users, which happens to be the case of 99% of US corporates. I’m not sure if HP’s Patty had known about this when she probed the emails.
===== Here’s how Readnotify.com do it: =====
When you send an email to your-receipient@somedomain.com.readnotify.com, Readnotify.com will automatically appended some HTML code to the email. This works only for HTML-based emails. For text-only emails, Readnotify.com employs the traditional “read-receipt” mail header which the reciever has to agree to send back a “read receipt” to the sender, which is Readnotify.com, not the actual sender.
With that’s said, below is a copy-paste code segment that Readnotify.com appended to an email
![]()
background
=http://0320.185.64275/nocache/3589j7gxbgtw6P/rspr47.gif>
</p>
<p><br />
</p>
<p>… lots of junk character in here …</p>
<p><br />
</p>
<p></p>
</div alt="3589j7gxbgtw61."></body><br />
</html><br />
</code><br />
Because I chose to display the “confirmation banner”, this code will actually display a colorful banner asking user to click and confirm that s/he has opened the email. I can chose to hide by confirmation banner by selecting “none” in the Readnotify.com admin page and the image will be replaced by a transparent image. So here’s our first Readnotify.com web-bug.</p>
<p>I can’t help but notice that the appended HTML has strange line-breaks, I guess it’s meant to trick the internal brower of the email cient to interpret the HTML code. Readnotify.com goes even further, they embedded a wav sound-background. Oh man, I miss those happy-birthday emails with midi files on the backgrounds, back when I was still popular among teenage girls. Then Readnotify.com put a table in next with various external links to the tracking scripts, like a background for the
<td>. Too bad, none of these actually do the trick. Outlook 2003 and Thunderbird 1.5 effectively block all external request. </p>
<p>I’m not quite sure about the usage of those encoded characters towards the end of the email. Another HTML trap for the rendering engine? By the way, I named my test email “A friendly email-bomb” because I kept on email-bombing myself while testing out the email scripts.</p>
<p>===== Final remarks =====<br />
It would be great (or really bad-news) if Readnotify.com can work. It may works with older email clients, as my work buddy were using Outlook 2002, which doesn’t have the automatical image-block, Readnotify.com’s script works fine. However, when it comes to newer email clients such as Outlook 2003 or Thunderbird 1.5, I would say the programmers have done a good job at preventing any potentical XSS, thus making Readnotify.com useless.</p>
<p>I tested the Readnotify-generated email on Gmail, well, since Gmail runs inside a browser which have a much more liberal security settings, Gmail fails to filter out the embedded HTML code, so Readnotify.com was working just fine. My take on this: **Readnotify does work with regular web-mail clients** since it’s the browser that actually makes the request for the web bug files. However, in this case, do I need to spend money on Readnotify.com? Probably not - I can write my own tracker (I did, in 5 minutes using coldfusion)</p>
<p>I’m not entirely sure how effective the chairman of HP was able to use Readnotify.com to track her board members’ communications, but I guess it did not go very well. Another issue with Readnotify.com is that the appended code is very visible to the tech-savvy receipient: just view the headers or the source of the email. It’s just not avery elegant way to track people. But since some spammers/ phishers abuse the use of web bug images, we, legitimate developers, all now have to suffer from the restriction of email clients.<br />
</wiki></p>
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Inline Popup with YUI </a>
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October<br/>23<br/>2006 <br/><br/>
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<a href="http://alexle.net/archives/category/web-technolgy/ajax-web-20" title="View all posts in Ajax & Web 2.0" rel="category tag">Ajax & Web 2.0</a><br/> <a href="http://alexle.net/archives/category/web-technolgy/web-scripting" title="View all posts in Web Scripting" rel="category tag">Web Scripting</a><br/> <a href="http://alexle.net/archives/category/web-technolgy" title="View all posts in Web Technolgy" rel="category tag">Web Technolgy</a> <br/><br/>
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<p><wiki>I just recently completed a demo for a client of mine. The demo was a news portal with lots of links to external news contents. I wanted to spice things up a little, so I implemented a inline link-tip (or inline popup, however, this name may confuse you with the light-box type popup) using the [[http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/|Yahoo! User Interface Library]] (YUI). Thanks to YUI, the effect is now quite easy to be implemented.</p>
<p>Here’s a screencast of what the inline link-top looks like</p>
<p>{{ http://alexle.net/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/inline.gif }}</p>
<p>(If you want to see the actualy demo page or get the sample code, please scroll down to the end of the post)</p>
<p>===== The setup =====<br />
Here is the XHTML-compliant markup code for the content and the hover.<br />
<code html></p>
<div id="link1">
<a href="www.alexle.net" target="_blank" class="articleTitle" hoverId="hover1">www.AlexLe.net</a> has a few home-writen tutorials.<br/><br />
<a href="#">Link 1</a> to test if the hover is hidden properly.
</div>
<div id="hover1" class="inlinePopup" style="display:none"; >
AlexLe.net is the homepage of Alex Le. He’s cool. Check it out.
</div>
<p><!-- hover1 --></p>
<div id="link2" style="position: absolute; left: 100px; top: 50px">
<a href="www.slashdot.org" target="_blank" class="articleTitle" hoverId="hover2" >www.Slashdot.org</a>
</div>
<div id="hover2" class="inlinePopup" style="display:none";>
Alex reads Slashdot daily. He thinks it’s pretty neat. How about you check it out too?
</div>
<p><!-- hover2 --></p>
<div style="position: absolute; left: 80px; top: 80px">
<a href="www.slashdot.org" target="_blank" class="articleTitle" hoverId="hover3" >www.VentureBeat.com</a><br/>the blog of Matt Marshall <br/>tracking Sillicon Valley,VC, and Startup</div>
<div id="hover3" class="inlinePopup" style="display:none";>
Since Alex is an entrepreneur, he also reads VentureBeat on a daily basis to catch up with what’s going on in down there in Silicon Valley.
</div>
<p><!-- hover3 --><br />
</code></p>
<p>Basically we have a few DIVs, positioned either inline or absolutely to show how the inline link-tip works in both cases. Inside each container div, we have a link with a className of **articleTitle** and an extra attribute called **hoverId**. This extra **hoverId** attribute specifies the ID of the popup that we’d like to associate with this link.</p>
<p>Next, we setup the hover container div. The popup div has the className of ‘inlinePopup’ so that we can style it with CSS later on. Let’s take the div with Id ‘hover1′ as our example.<br />
<code html><br />
...</p>
<div id="hover1" class="inlinePopup" style="display:none"; >
AlexLe.net is the homepage of Alex Le. He’s cool. Check it out.
</div>
<p><!-- hover1 --><br />
…<br />
</code><br />
For this technique to work, we have to explicitly add the **style=”display:none;”** for the popup div. Setting display:none in the inlinePopup CSS class definition will not work.</p>
<p>For the CSS styling, we can just add these rules to the page to make things a little nicer.<br />
<code css></p>
<style>
a.articleTitle {color:#CC0000; text-decoration: none;font-size: 14pt; font-weight: bold; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif}
.inlinePopup {position: absolute;width: 200px; border: 2px solid red; background-color:#FFFFCC; color: #CC3300; z-index:99;}
</style>
<p></code></p>
<p>===== The Javascript =====<br />
Here is the javascript to handle the inline popup/ tooltip. The idea is after the page has been rendered properly (window onLoad is fired), we scan through the DOM, look for any link with the className of **articleTitle**, then attach custom events for onMouseOver and onMouseOut to handle the display of the popup. And thanks to YUI, adding custom events and web2.0 animations is easier than ever.</p>
<p>First of all, we include the YUI’s library to our page<br />
<code html><br />
<head><br />
…<br />
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/yahoo-min.js"></script><br />
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/dom-min.js"></script><br />
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/event-min.js"></script><br />
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/animation-min.js"></script><br />
…<br />
</head><br />
</code></p>
<p>Then we insert some javascript codes. Let’s start with the pageInit() function first.<br />
<code javascript>pageInit = function() {<br />
/* Popup summary */<br />
/* We find all items with the articleTitle class */<br />
var els = YAHOO.util.Dom.getElementsByClassName('articleTitle', 'a');<br />
for( var i=0; i < els.length; i++ )<br />
{<br />
/* Get the hover div */<br />
sDivId = els[i].getAttribute('hoverId');<br />
sDiv = document.getElementById( sDivId );<br />
YAHOO.util.Dom.setStyle( sDiv , 'opacity', '0');</p>
<p> /* Unhide the Summary layer when mouse over/ out*/<br />
YAHOO.util.Event.addListener( els[i], "mouseover", hoverOver );<br />
YAHOO.util.Event.addListener( els[i], "mouseout", hoverOut );<br />
}<br />
}<br />
YAHOO.util.Event.addListener( window, "load", pageInit );<br />
</code><br />
We basically find all **a** (anchor) elements in the page with the className of **articleTitle**. Then we loop through the result **els** array and look for which popup div is associated with this link. As we stored the popup div’s ID in the hoverId attribute of the link, we can just grab the value by using the getAttribute(’hoverId’). And next, we set the opacity of the popup div to 0. With YUI, we don’t have to worry about the different syntax of different browsers. Only one single line of code to set the opacity! Next, we add our custom functions to the **a** element to handle the **onMouserOver** and **onMouserOut** events with the **YAHOO.util.Event.addListener( element, “eventType”, customHandler )**</p>
<p>==== Custom Event Handlers ====<br />
We can now implement our **hoverOver()** and **hoverOut()** handlers. Let’s start with **hoverOut()**<br />
<code javascript><br />
/* This function is to unhide the div, then do a smooth very web2.0 fade-in effect */<br />
function hoverOver()<br />
{<br />
var sDivId = this.getAttribute('hoverId');<br />
var sDiv = document.getElementById( sDivId ); </p>
<p> sDiv.style.left = YAHOO.util.Dom.getX( this ) +'px';<br />
sDiv.style.top = (YAHOO.util.Dom.getY( this ) + this.offsetHeight + 2 ) +'px';<br />
sDiv.style.display = '';<br />
var animIn = new YAHOO.util.Anim( sDiv, { opacity: { to: 1 } }, 0.25, YAHOO.util.Easing.easeOut);<br />
animIn.animate();<br />
}<br />
</code><br />
When the mouse hovers over the link, this hoverOver() function is triggered. However, at this very moment, we find out that we don’t have any reference to targetted popup div, so we go grab the popup div’s id from the hoverId attribute of the a element. Luckily, we can just reference to the a element as **this**. </p>
<p>=== Positioning the Popup & Adding Dramatic fading effect ===<br />
As our links can be rendered anywhere in the screen, we have to know where to put our popup div. The solution is to set the position of the popup div to the coordinates of the link. With YUI, it’s quite easy: **YAHOO.util.Dom.getX( this )** and **YAHOO.util.Dom.getY( this )** for the x and y values of the a element. But this will give us the top left corner of the boundary box of the link element, which means our popup would be placed **on top** of the link. So we add the offsetHeight of the a element to the top (Y) value of the popup, plus a few extra pixels as the ‘margin-top’. Now our div is positioned correctly. With this approach, we can place our link anywhere: whether it’s in a absolutely positioned container, or inline within a paragraph, the popup div is still positioned nicely below it.</p>
<p>That isn’t t too bad, is it? Now let’s add the fade-in effect. As we already set the opacity of the popup div to 0 when the page is loaded, we can just use the animation feature of YUI for the dramatically fade-in.<br />
<code javascript><br />
...<br />
var animIn = new YAHOO.util.Anim( sDiv, { opacity: { to: 1 } }, 0.25, YAHOO.util.Easing.easeOut);<br />
animIn.animate();<br />
...<br />
</code><br />
I use 0.25 second for the popup div to appear as I think anything longer will be quite annoying to the end-users (”whoever designed this dang page is wasting my time here”). Let’s keep our visitors happy. The YAHOO.util.Easing.easeOut is added so that the animation is eased out for a smoother appearance of our popup div.</p>
<p>Next, we added the **hoverOut()** handler to hide the popup div with an equally nice fade-out effect. But for **hoverOut()** to work correctly, we have to do some extra work towards the end. Here’s the code:</p>
<p><code javascript><br />
/* This function is to hide the div with a dramatic web2.0 fade effect */<br />
function hoverOut()<br />
{<br />
var sDivId = this.getAttribute('hoverId');<br />
var sDiv = document.getElementById( sDivId );<br />
var animOut = new YAHOO.util.Anim( sDiv, { opacity: { to: 0 } }, 0.25, YAHOO.util.Easing.easeOut);<br />
animOut.animate();<br />
animOut.onComplete.subscribe( hoverHide );<br />
}<br />
</code></p>
<p>Again, we get the reference to the popup div, then we fade it out by changing its opacity to 0. At this point, eventhough the user won’t see the popup div anymore, it’s not actually hidden. This means that the popup div is still covering up the space underneath it, thus link or clickable elements underneath won’t work (not clickable). We have to explicitly set the display of the popup div to none when the fade-out animation is finished to remove it from the page. We do this by using the **animOut.onComplete.subscribe()** to hand a callback method to the animation object. Our callback method will be called when the animation is completed and hide the popup div.</p>
<p>Here’s the one-line code for the hoverHide() callback function<br />
<code javascript><br />
/* Call back function used in hoverOut() */<br />
function hoverHide()<br />
{<br />
this.getEl().style.display = 'none';<br />
}<br />
</code></p>
<p>The **this** keyword now is interpreted as the animation object, not the link item. We use this.getEl() to get the reference to the targetted hover div, and set its style.display to ‘none’. Now everything’s working the way it’s supposed to. Yay!</p>
<p>===== Final Remarks =====<br />
Thanks to YUI, the code is truely multi-platform compatible. All the event handlings are done through the YAHOO.util.Event so we don’t have to deal with messy browser sniffing and special cases. The YAHOO animation is simple and flexible enough for us to customize the way we want. The inline popup is also robust enough as we can style it with CSS like adding some neat drop-shadow and round-corner effects. As you can see from the screencast above, the inline popup is working correctly in the extreme case of rapidly hovering in and out. Nobody would do anything that crazy in real life but it’s nice to see how the effect behaves in extreme cases. And I think one important feature of this technique is that we can implement it to any existing page with minimal code editing.</p>
<p>I hope you enjoy this small tutorial! </p>
<p>Cheers!</p>
<p>===== Code & Sample Page =====<br />
You can download the sample code of this tutorial here.<br />
* [[http://alexle.net/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/inlinePopup.zip|Inline Popup Source File]]</p>
<p>The same code can be accessed here<br />
* [[http://alexle.net/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/inlinePopup/|Demo Page]]<br />
</wiki></p>
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Installing Subversion with Plesk 8.0/ CentOs 4.3 as Subdomain </a>
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September<br/>25<br/>2006 <br/><br/>
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<a href="http://alexle.net/archives/category/uncategorized" title="View all posts in Random Walk" rel="category tag">Random Walk</a><br/> <a href="http://alexle.net/archives/category/web-technolgy/server" title="View all posts in Server" rel="category tag">Server</a><br/> <a href="http://alexle.net/archives/category/web-technolgy/web-scripting" title="View all posts in Web Scripting" rel="category tag">Web Scripting</a><br/> <a href="http://alexle.net/archives/category/web-technolgy" title="View all posts in Web Technolgy" rel="category tag">Web Technolgy</a> <br/><br/>
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<p><wiki><br />
After much procrastination and personal interruptions (you can tell, I haven’t been blogging that often lately) , I’ve managed to install Subversion running as a subdomain with Plesk 8.0 and CentOS 4.3. I’m very excited because now I officially have a place to house my various projects. Before, I’ve been using my buddy, Long Giao,’s box in … Vietnam as the SVN server. One thing for sure, I did try my best to avoid installing Subversion by myself because I know that I’d be frustrated due to my lack of linux skills. Anyway, I did it, all by myself. So here’s how it goes.</p>
<p>(I think this guide is probably the only how-to guide to setup SVN as a subdomain with Plesk 8.0. There’s one other article you can find with Google but it’s in German. Oh well.)</p>
<p>==== My pre-SVN configuration ====</p>
<p> * Plesk 8.0<br />
* CentOS<br />
* Root access via SSH<br />
* Subdomain setup via Plesk 8.0 Administrator page. In my case, I used svn.my-domain.com as the sub domain<br />
* A folder /var/svnrepo/ is used to house my SVN repository.</p>
<p>After you created the subdomain for your domain, you can proceed to the next step: installing Subversion</p>
<p>==== A. Installing Subversion ====</p>
<p>To install subversion, all you have to do is SSH into the box as the root user. (# denotes the root prompt)</p>
<p> * <code bash>#yum install subversion</code>This command will painlessly install the subversion package to the CentOS.<br />
* <code bash>#cd /etc/httpd/modules</code>Change the current directory to the modules folder of Apache, where all the plugins of Apache are installed.<br />
* <code bash>#yum mod_dav_svn</code>This command will install the mod_dav_svn to apache<br />
* <code bash>#svn --version</code>This command will ensure that you have successfully installed subversion. (At the current time of writing, the version of this SVN package is 1.1.4, while the current version of SVN is 1.4 — maybe another article on how to upgrade SVN?)<br />
* <code bash>#mkdir /var/svnrepo</code>This is our root repository.<br />
* <code bash>#svnaddmin create /var/svnrepo</code>This command will create a subversion repository in the /var/svnrepo folder.<br />
* <code bash>#chmod -R 777 /var/svnrepo</code>Changing the permision of svnrepo folder to allow Apache/Subversion to have read/write rights. Without changing the permissions, you will get an error when you are trying to access the repository via your browser.</p>
<p>==== B. Configuring Apache ====</p>
<p>So with the painless installation of Subversion, now we can configure Apache to begin to serve our repository. First of all, you will need to make sure that Apache is loading the mod_dav_svn.so file. Personally, I like to use mc (Midnight Commander) for text-editting ((( *) I can use VI but it’s not on my list of user-friendly software so I opt for a more “notepad-like” text editor. If you don’t have Midnight Commander installed, run **#yum install mc** and that should take care of it. The nto run Midnight Commander, just type in #mc. If you use Putty like I do, use **#mc -a** instead to get a nicer frame instead of the weird ASCII characters.)).</p>
<p> * Open the file **/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf**<br />
* Search for **mod_dav_svn.so** in the Modules section. If you don’t find this line in **httpd.conf**, then check the folder /etc/httpd/conf.d/ for other .conf files. I have a subversion.conf file here which is included in the main **/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf** at initialization time. In this subversion.conf file, there are these 2 lines to make sure that Apache loads the SVN modules:<br />
<code apache>#File: /etc/httpd/conf.d/subversion.conf<br />
LoadModule dav_svn_module modules/mod_dav_svn.so<br />
LoadModule authz_svn_module modules/mod_authz_svn.so<br />
</code>Cool! Apache does load the Subversion modules. Now we need to configure our subdomain created using Plesk earlier to use with Subversion. But let’s go over how Plesk organizes our file system.</p>
<p>==== C. Working with Plesk: The primer ====<br />
If you’d like to by-pass the web-based administration page of Plesk and do some advanced customization, then here is how Plesk is organizing the files system:</p>
<p> * Web-docs (your domains) are stored under **/var/www/vhosts/**<br />
* Custom configuration for your domain is stored under **/var/www/vhosts/[you_domain_name]/conf/vhost.conf**<br />
* The **httpd.include** file in **/var/www/vhosts/[you_domain_name]/conf/** will be overwritten everytime you use the web-based Plesk to update your domain configuration. Hence manual updates of this file is NOT advisible. Your changes will be lost, so why bother. If you want to customize the domain, create a **vhost.conf** file in the conf/ folder instead.<br />
* Similarly, for sub-domains, the main .conf file are **/var/www/vhosts/[you_domain_name]/subdomains/[you_subdomain_name]/conf/vhost.conf**. All you have to do is to create this vhost.file and it will be automatically included in the main httpd.conf file of apache.</p>
<p>Also,</p>
<p> * Only **Root users** can create vhost.conf files.<br />
* After you make changes to the conf files, you have to tell Plesk to reload the new configuration. To do so, run<code bash>#/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/websrvmng --reconfigure-vhost --vhost-name=</code></p>
<p>For more information, please consult the [[http://download1.swsoft.com/Plesk/Plesk7.5/Doc/plesk-7.5r-admins-guide-html/apas02.html|Plesk’s Admins Guide on sub-domain customization]]</p>
<p>==== D. Customizing Sub-Domain configurations ====</p>
<p>As I created a subdomain “svn” for my site, makefun.us, I had to create a vhost.conf file under **/var/www/vhosts/makefun.us/subdomains/svn/conf/vhost.conf**. Also, my repository is under **/var/svnrepo/**, so here is the content of the vhost.conf file</p>
<p><code apache><br />
#svn.makefun.us -- vhost.conf file<br />
<location /><br />
DAV svn<br />
SVNPath /var/svnrepo/<br />
AuthType Basic<br />
AuthName “Makefun.us Subversion Repository”<br />
AuthUserFile /etc/svn-auth-file<br />
Require valid-user<br />
</location><br />
</code><br />
First of all, with **DAV svn** we ask Apache to hand over to the mod_dav_svn module when there’s a request to **http://svn.makefun.us** (the location /). Then we specify the **repository’s root** at **/var/svnrepo/**. Then we specify that this is a private repository by asking Apache to provide **Basic Authorization** (which means the authenticated password will be transmitted as text via the wire). Well, we name our private zone the “Makefun.us Subversion Repositor” and the user accounts are stored in **/etc/svn-auth-file**. Finally, to access the repository via the web, the user must be able to authenticate — as we only allow valid-user to access (Require valid-user)</p>
<p>Next, I created a new user account for myself so that I can access the repository:</p>
<p><code bash>#htpasswd -c /etc/svn-auth-file my_user_name</code></p>
<p>At this point, you can either restart Apache by running **#server httpd restart** or just use the **websrvmng** of Plesk to pick up the new configuration. I just restarted Apache.<br />
If everything works out correctly for you, if you point your browser to **http://svn.yourdomain.com**, you would see a prompt for username and password. Enter your just created account, you can access to your very own the SVN repository. How amazing is that?</p>
<p>==== Final Remarks ====</p>
<p>I hope that you enjoy this how-to and you are able to configure SVN with Plesk. Now after I’ve done it, I’d say the entire process should take you less than 15 minutes. As this is my first draft and it’s fairly late (3:38AM), there will be typos and errors. So your input is very welcome. Thanks!<br />
</wiki></p>
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ColdFusion CFQUERY Single Quote Bug & Solution </a>
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August<br/>29<br/>2006 <br/><br/>
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<p><wiki>While I was constructing a SQL string to run through a cfquery command, I found out about the bug in how ColdFusion’s cfquery handles quotes: </p>
<p><code cfm><br />
<cfscript><br />
sql = “SELECT * FROM someTable WHERE thisColumn = ‘thatValue’”;<br />
<cfscript><br />
<cfquery [all other connection junks]><br />
#sql#<br />
</cfquery><br />
</code></p>
<p>The server refused to work the script! Why? Because ColdFusion for some mysterious reasons automatically replace the single quote around ‘thatValue’ with 2 single quotes, e.g. ”that value”.</p>
<p>So how do you solve this? Wrap the sql string with a replace like this<br />
<code cfm><br />
<cfquery [connection junks]><br />
<cfoutput>#replaceNoCase(sql, “””, “‘”, “all”)#</cfoutput><br />
</cfquery><br />
</code></p>
<p>=== Update ===<br />
There’s another way to solve the doubled single-quote problem is to use the #preserveSingleQuotes# as shown in this article from Adobecrodia (or Macrodobe, whatever works for you)<br />
<code cfm><br />
<cffunction name="CFQUERY" access="public" returntype="query"><br />
<cfargument name="SQLString" type="string" required="yes"><br />
<cfargument name="Datasource" type="string" required="yes"><br />
<cfargument name="dbType" type="string" default=""><br />
<cfquery name="RecordSet" datasource="#arguments.Datasource#"<br />
dbtype="#arguments.dbType#"><br />
#preserveSingleQuotes(arguments.SQLString)#<br />
</cfquery><br />
<cfreturn RecordSet><br />
</cffunction><br />
</code><br />
(http://www.adobe.com/devnet/coldfusion/extreme/cftags_cfscript.html)<br />
</wiki></p>
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MsSQL GROUP BY DATE </a>
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August<br/>28<br/>2006 <br/><br/>
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<p><wiki><br />
Well, today is my first day working with MSSQL. It’s been quite a learning curve. Truthfully speaking, working with MySQL is so much easier because MySQL does provide a more flexible way of handling different data formats, especially with datetime.</p>
<p>In MSSQL, if we want to extract the date part from a datetime column, here is the (crazy!) conversion:</p>
<p><code sql><br />
SELECT (CAST(FLOOR(CAST(DateTimeColumn AS float)) AS myNewAlias) FROM someTable<br />
</code></p>
<p>On the other hand, in MySQL, the query is an elegant SELECT with the call of the appropriate formatting function.</p>
<p>Here comes another question, how do you actually GROUP the records by DATE? For example the dataset contains tons of UserName entries of different times but same date, here is the code that will group and count those entries</p>
<p><code sql><br />
SELECT UserName convert(char(10),DateTimeColumn ,111) as groupDate, Count(*) as hits FROM someTable<br />
GROUP BY UserName, convert(char(10),DateTimeColumn ,111)<br />
</code></p>
<p>Notice the repeating convert() in both the SELECT part and the GROUP BY part. If you do<br />
<code sql><br />
-- this query doesn't work in MsSQL!<br />
SELECT UserName convert(char(10),DateTimeColumn ,111) as groupDate, Count(*) as hits FROM someTable<br />
GROUP BY UserName, groupDate<br />
</code></p>
<p>then you will be yelled at with “invalid column name groupDate”.</p>
<p>More on MsSQL is coming as I’m working with it and … ColdFusion! (I’m slowly building up a CFSCRIPT and PHP comparison chart and hopefully will be able to release it soon)<br />
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