TodayISearched started with the idea of logging solutions that we had to search the internet for and recording their resolution. There have been many times when we have found a solution and needed it again 6 months – 1 year down the road and can’t remember for the life of us where we found it. This blog gives us the opportunity to catalog useful solutions that we can go back to. We thought it would be beneficial to share this with the rest of the world. We would like to invite you to participate in our blog. If you have a nagging problem that you cannot find a solution for (technical problem preferably) or want to share a solution you found while scouring the net, please shoot us an email todayisearched[at]gmail[dot]com. Your suggestion just might make its way onto our blog. Happy Searching!

The TodayISearched.com Team

Today I searched export chrome extensions and found a simple solution that gave me a backup of my extensions plus everything else. There is nothing worse than getting a new computer and your web browser is nothing like your used to. It would be nice to export all of your personal setting from chrome to your new computer, such as history, bookmarks, extensions, and cookies. The simplest way to back up your chrome data is to save your old profile over your new installed profile. The folder that contains your profile is “C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default” on vista\win7. Locations for other systems are located here. Fire up chrome on your new computer and you are back the same old browsing experience on your new computer in seconds.

Today I Searched how to add a word to the iPhone dictionary. My colleague had a problem that it would always suggest the name Rod for Rob. We could not figure out how to get it in the dictionary. I read that after you X out a suggested fix, the word you typed is supposed to be added to the dictionary. This did not seem to be working for some reason. I found the following suggestion on a Google search that I thought I would pass along. If you search for a word using the Google toolbar in Safari, it is also added to the dictionary. Use the following steps to get a word into the iPhone dictionary.

1. Open Safari
2. Type Word in Google Search
3. Search For Word

Below is the blog I found this tip on, thanks!

http://iphoneindia.gyanin.com/2009/05/26/iphone-tricks-add-words-to-iphone-dictionary-disable-auto-correct-and-auto-capitalize/

Today I Searched how to make an AJAX call to a URL on a different domain. My first attempt failed with a security error. I dug into the problem a bit and found out that PHP can be used as a proxy to fetch the web content.

AJAX Calls PHP Script On Your Domain -> PHP Script Fetches Content From Remote Domain -> PHP Script Returns The Remote Data Back To The AJAX Call

Below is a sample PHP script that I found and tweaked.

// Set your return content type
header('Content-type: text/html');

// Website url to open
$daurl = 'http://www.otherdomain.com/index.php?sku=' . $_GET["sku"];

// Get that website's content
$handle = fopen($daurl, "r");

// If there is something, read and return
if ($handle) {
    while (!feof($handle)) {
        $buffer = fgets($handle, 4096);
        echo $buffer;
    }
    fclose($handle);
}

Below is the AJAX call to load the content into a div using JQuery

$("#loadremotecontent").load('getprice.php?sku=322000');

The script could be further modified to pass in the entire URL as a parameter so it could be more generic. I would love to hear about other cross domain AJAX options if anyone has any other suggestions.

ObjectLab and Paul Zepernick (me) are proud to announce Flatpack 3.2. Flatpack serves as a Java tool box for writing and reading fixed width and delimited files. It is a very mature API that has been in existence since 2005.

FlatPack is currently used in the Apache Camel project and Apache ActiveMQ just to name a couple.

For those not familiar with FlatPack, I have provided a couple quick examples below. Column names in the flat files can be bound via a header record in the file, or through an XML mapping.

Example of reading a delimited file

    	Parser parser = DefaultParserFactory.getInstance().newDelimitedParser(
                new FileReader("DataFile.txt"),  //txt file or String to parse. Can Take any Reader
                ',', //delimiter
                '"'); //text qualifier

        //obtain DataSet
        DataSet ds = parser.parse();

        while (ds.next()){ //loop through file
            ds.getString("mycolumnName");
        }

Example of reading a fixed width file

	    //Obtain the proper parser for your needs
        Parser parser = DefaultParserFactory.getInstance().newFixedLengthParser(
        		new FileReader("map.fpmap.xml"), //fixed with column map
                new FileReader("DataFile.txt"));  //txt file or String to parse.  Can take any Reader

        //obtain DataSet
        DataSet ds = parser.parse();

        while (ds.next()){ //loop through file
            ds.getString("mycolumnName");
        }

Please check out the FlatPack website for more examples and complete documentation, or download now from Sourceforge.