Shell Tutorials
Package Your Firefox Extension into an XPI
Yesterday I detailed the file/folder structure of a Firefox extension. Once you have your extension ready for testing, you need to package everything together into an XPI file. Luckily there's a quick and easy way to do so.
Create a GitHub Merge Batch File
Before I start updating my local clone of the MooTools More or Core libraries, I need to update to the most current version on GitHub. Call me lazy, but I'm tired of typing the commands lines into msysgit all the time. I've created a batch file that does the work for me.
Read PDF and Word DOC Files Using PHP
One of my customers has an insane amount of PDF and Microsoft Word DOC files on their website. It's core to their online services so it's not as though they're garbage files up on the server. My customer wanted their website's search engine (Sphider) to read these PDF files and DOC files so that their clients could get at the documents they needed without going through a bunch of summary pages to get them. I was successful in the task, so let me show you how to read PDF and DOC files using PHP.
Using Cygwin’s dig To Retrieve DNS Records
One of the most difficult parts of my job is managing DNS settings. It's not that DNS is a particularly difficult thing to manage, but it's somewhat foreign to me because they don't teach it in school and there are huge consequences for messing things up. Not only can a business' website be down, but their email as well. Whenever I need to retrieve DNS records from a nameserver, I use Cygwin and dig.
Download A File Using Cygwin and wget
Using Cygwin's cURL package isn't the only way to download a file. You can also use Cygwin's wget command to download any URL.
Download A File Using Cygwin and cURL
I'm starting to like using Cygwin more and more. Command line scripting allows me to get the information without all of the hassle. Why should I open Firefox, type in the address, deal with the ads, and click 5 links before I can get to what I want when I can use command line to download what I want? Here's how you can download a file using the cURL package from the command line.
WHOIS Searches Using Cygwin’s whois
I used to do all of my WHOIS searches at a really popular website that I wont name here. I had to stop using the site because they decided to make you pay to use their tools. Next up was GoDaddy, who doesn't charge for WHOIS searches but does make you complete a CAPTCHA for each search. After hearing my bitching criticisms of GoDaddy's CAPTHAs, a friend of mine showed me how to use Cygwin to execute WHOIS searches.