Administration Themes

The administration themes were a request from a customer. He does own development with developer, stage and production servers and wanted a subtle way to see which server he was currently changing.

A theme consists of a color set, background images, the icon and a progress animation. At the moment 7 colors are available in trunk. Because of the favorite icons it is easier to spot the right tabs, too.

Strida MAS Upgrade II

Since the last blog post some stuff on my bike got replaced. Here is a update on the upgrade.

Bend handle bars and new grips

The bend handle bars provide a little more space for my legs. Feels like a different bike. The original grips on the MAS are nice, but I wanted bar ends. Here is not enough space for additional bar ends, so they have to be integrated into the grips. For long distances the possibility to have different grip positions are a huge comfort plus. The Ergon R2W Team Edition are perfect. The green added some color to the black bike. It is our company color, too :-).

Brake cables

The last part I replaced and it was a lot of work. I had to dismantle the wheels, fenders, handle bars. The new Jagwire Ripcord cables are rigid. They provide great brake power, but are difficult to assemble. I got rid of the extensions (from the bend steer kit) and the new cable housing matches the color of the grips. The green of the original brake levers were different, so I got black ones.

Front light

I replaced the Sigma PowerLed (90 lux) with a B&M Ixon IQ Speed (50 lux). In numbers it has less light but in real it is more. It throws a trapezoid of light on the street. Because of the bend handle bars I got problems with the brake cables. A small spacer bar fixed the problem and I really like the look.

Rear Light

The rear light is now a "B&M Toplight Line", that integrates the reflector into the light. So with the it, I can mount the light to the rack and throw the rear reflector away. The result is a much cleaner look.

The reflector stripe is in the middle, the light is at the top and the battery case at the bottom. The light uses two LEDs that are broken up to a bright line of light. They provide great visibility. Here is no blinking mode (Which is illegal in Germany anyway). I don't like blinking lights because they make it really difficult to recognize distance changes. The light uses the convenient AA battery format.

The light is available in two versions. A basic version "Permanent" and the "Senso" version featuring a light/movement sensor. I know from my previous rear light (IX Back Senso) that the sensor is too sensitive. So I got the "Toplight Line Permanent".

Strida MAS upgraded (Number One)

Papaya Callbacks

papaya CMS got a new class PapayaObjectCallbacks recently. The class can be used to define and handle callbacks for other classes and relies heavily on the magic methods. It addresses several problems.

1. Code duplication if you have several callbacks in one class
2. Validation before you can use the callback
3. Easy to use, self speaking API for callbacks

PapayaObjectCallbacks is defined as a sub object with lazy initialization. An array is used to define the callbacks functions and the default return value. If you have a complex/large list of callback functions, I suggest to define a new class that extends PapayaObjectCallbacks. With a special class you can define the dynamic properties/methods using PHPDoc comments.

public function callbacks(PapayaObjectCallbacks $callbacks = NULL) {
  if (isset($callbacks)) {
    $this->_callbacks = $callbacks;
  } elseif (is_null($this->_callbacks)) {
    $this->_callbacks = new PapayaObjectCallbacks(
      array(
        'onEventOne' => TRUE,
        'onEventTwo' => 'default'
      )
    );
  }
  return $this->_callbacks;
}

To call the function is really simple. Just do it!

$result = $this->callbacks()->onEventOne($argument);

If no function was assigned to the callback the defined default will be returned. Otherwise the assigned function is called and its return value will be used. So no validation of the assignment is needed.

The user (of your class with the callbacks) can assign the callback function, now.

$someObject->callbacks()->onEventOne = array($this, 'someCallbackHandler');

In PHP equal or greater 5.3 an anonymous function is possible:

$someObject->callbacks()->onEventOne = function($context, $argumentOne) { ... };

The first argument of the callback is always a context object. The reason for this is, that we still have to be PHP 5.2 compatible, so we can not use the PHP syntax for it. In addition you can edit the context without a local variable. By default this is an instance of stdClass but you can assign any object.

$someObject->callbacks()->onEventOne->context->someProperty = 'some value';

If you like to see the implementation, you can find it in the papaya SVN.