Javascript: Quick Date timestamp

I wanted to find a quick way to compare two dates. The easiest way is to use their unix timestamp. If the date exists as an object you can use .getTime() to retrieve the number of milliseconds that have passed since epoch time.

You can retrieve that number even faster with the following bit of code

+new Date

I found the tip here and wanted to surface it.

Sencha Touch: Problems with Date Time Picker

Part of a project I'm working on requires an form element that allows the user to select a date and time for the same field. Sencha Touch has a built in form field for selecting a date and it works really well. They don't have one that allows you to pick both the date and the time.

I found a plugin on Sencha's site that seemed to be just what I was looking for. There were a few issues with it.

#1 No install instructions.
This is the first plugin I've used and I couldn't find anything on Sencha's site that was helpful. After some digging I found instructions for another plugin that pointed me in the right direction.

1. Copy the ux folder to your app directory.
2. Open your app.js file and locate the Ext.Loader line. If there isn't a setPath method chained to setConfig add one. Add these key/value pairs to the object. They correspond to the Ext.define namespaces for DateTime.js and DateTimePicker.js located in the ux folder.
1. 'Ext.ux.field' : './ux'
2. 'Ext.ux.picker': './ux'

#2 Bugs

The first problem I had was the cancel button destroyed the picker. One feature of the plugin allows you to destroy the picker to save memory. It's missing a check for the destroy option and nukes it on cancel.

The second problem is if you press OK to the default date it doesn't actually read it properly. Deep in DateTime.js the getValue method looks through the items on the picker and grabs the slots. It calls getValue on each slot but returns nothing. You need to pass true for it to read the proper value.

I was able to find the original source on github. I forked the repo and fixed all the bugs I found. I submitted a pull request so hopefully I'll hear back from the guy soon so future users will have fewer problems.

UPDATE
The github version of the plugin has integrated my pull request that fixes the issues I ran into.

Sencha Touch: Submit the form with Go/Enter

I'm in the process of refactoring some code from my first Sencha Touch project. I followed a really great tutorial from Miami Coder used to build a login page. There are a few things I wish it did better in terms of separating view and controller code, but you learn that stuff on the road.

One thing I really wish it covered was submitting the form using the Go key on iPhone, or Enter key. It's reliant on pressing the Log In button and then letting the code grab the values and move on. I want to make two changes. I want to listen for the Go key and submit the form, and I want the code to exist in the Controller, not the View.

First let's set up the View.

                xtype: 'fieldset',
                itemId: 'login-form',
                name: 'login-form',
                items: [
                    {
                        xtype: 'textfield',
                        placeHolder: 'Username',
                        itemId: 'user-name-text-field',
                        required: true,
                        autoComplete: false,
                        autoCorrect: false
                    },
                    {
                        xtype: 'passwordfield',
                        placeHolder: 'Password',
                        itemId: 'password-text-field',
                        required: true
                    }
                ]
            },
            {
                xtype: 'button',
                itemId: 'login-button',
                action: 'login',
                // This is just a color style
                ui: 'action',
                text: 'Log in',
                cls: 'login-button'
            }

Now let's set up the Controller.

config: {
        control:{
            // Listen for the login button
            'button[action=login]':{
                tap: 'tryLogin'
            },
            // Listen for a field form submit
            'fieldset[name=login-form]':{
                action: 'tryLogin'
            }
        }
    }

I listen for events in the Controller instead of launching events through the Application from the View and listening for them elsewhere. The View is kept nice and clean and all the logic is in the Controller where it belongs. The Controller can grab a reference to the View and update whatever it needs.

'control' is my new favorite property. It's great for event listening. Once I found out I could tie a function to a button without listening for a command I never looked back.

Git : Tower on sale 50% off

A while ago I wrote an article about my search for a good git client. There are a lot out for OSX which is good because you have a choice, but not all of them are good.

After playing with a few clients I've settled on Tower. It's a really streamlined client that isn't cluttered with buttons. The one downside is that it wasn't cheap. It's normally $59. It's on sale today for $29.50. I highly recommend picking it up. Falls under getting what you pay for.

PHP: Zend Studio 10 Sale

Zend Studio is a fantastic PHP dev tool. I've used it for years and they keep making it better. It's built on top of Eclipse so it can be used as a plugin. I have it set up this way so I can work on my PHP API and Android client in the same tool.

It's on sale now for a limited time. Not sure when the sale ends, but it's totally worth picking up.

Javascript / IE8 : file fields created by javascript allows text entry

I ran into an issue in IE8 while creating file fields in javascript for a form. The newly created file field allowed text entry. It didn't matter if I used jQuery or created the field with createElement.

$
var fileField = $('',{
            'id': 'picker-2',
            'type': 'file'});

            $('#fields').append(fileField);

When the field was placed on the screen it allowed users to enter text. This isn't a huge issue, but this shouldn't happen. It doesn't happen when you create the file field through HTML. You can see an example here.

The solution to this problem is cloning the newly created field before appending it to the DOM.

var fileField = $('',{
            'id': 'picker-2',
            'type': 'file'});

$('#fields').append(fileField.clone());

This will make it behave like a normal file field. You can see an example here.

Sencha Touch: Using the Action property of the Button element

I've been trying to wire up the buttons in my UI to handlers inside the view so I could have them fire an event to the controller and complete an action, but it required me to put a function in the config section and it looks messy and isn't portable.

After much googling I found a hidden property of Button called action. I can't find very good documentation on it and wanted to show an example of it because it will make your life so much easier.

// Building a button inside of an items array
{
    xtype: 'button',
    action: 'warnOnLeave',
    align: 'left',
    iconCls: 'home',
    ui: 'back',
}

// Handle the button click inside a controller
control: {
    // Listen for the new button press
    'button[action=warnOnLeave]':{
        tap: 'onCreateNewContent'
    }
}

This saved me quite a few steps because all my button actions triggered something in the controller. This way I can skip using fireEvent and just tie the event to a handler method in the controller.

Sencha Touch: Center elements in a tab panel

By default elements in Ext.tab.Panel are aligned left. I wanted to center them so it's not so close to the back button in the Title Bar.

I found the answer while digging around in the comments section of the Sencha Touch documentation and wanted to surface the answer so others could easily find it.

Ext.define("Sample.view.ContentEditorContainer",{
    extend: 'Ext.tab.Panel',
    alias: 'widget.contenteditorcontainer',
    
    config: {
        // How to center tabs in a panel floating at the top
        tabBar: {
            layout: {
                type: 'hbox',
                align: 'center',
                pack: 'center'
            }
        },

This will center the elements.

Here is the documentation for centering elements on a panel.

Tep Wireless Sale: 50% off

I used a tep internet hotspot on my last vacation and the it worked really well. I highly recommend it to anyone going on an overseas trip.

They're having a 50% off sale right now. The coupon code is “FireSale”.

Javascript / jQuery : Scroll to the top of a document

Quick way to scroll to the top of a page via jQuery

jQuery(window).scrollTop(0);