Laughing Meme

I use Rails’ database session backend for LM. (for login, as well as “flash”) Without any sort of built in garbage collection the sessions table gets very large, very quickly. Beyond aesthetic issues, this can also cause MySQL’s key buffer to fill up. (which on Debian is by default set quite low)

So I wrote up a quick flush method, and saved it in a file models/session.rb.

class CGI::Session::ActiveRecordStore::Session
  def self.flush_old_empty_sessions
     self.delete_all "DATE_SUB(NOW(),INTERVAL 6 HOUR) > 
     updated_at and BIT_LENGTH(data) <= 688"
  end
end

This says nuke all sessions which are over 6 hours old, and which are empty. (688 is the length of the serialized session with an empty flash)

MySQL specific, and susceptible to changes in either session structure or its serialization. But it was quick and easy and worked for me.

Then you simply need a cron job like: ruby script/runner 'CGI::Session::ActiveRecordStore::Session.flush_old_empty_sessions'

I’ve started putting together Debian packages for our dev platform at work, and stumbled upon an obvious, and yet new to me technique for building quick and dirty .debs … package surgery. I’ve got a MySQL 4.1.3 package (an official package won’t be showing up anytime soon is the rumor) by the simple expedient of downloading the 4.1.3 source from MySQL.com, and copying over the debian directory from the official package. Similarly a PHP 5.0.1 package that is compatible with Apache2 (apache2-mpm-prefork) is available by downloading DotDeb’s php5 package, and tweaking its debian/rules file. (rumor has it an official one of these might show up soon-ish)

Both are still pretty rough around the edges (I’m having trouble with config files not being installed, and not being updated properly), but hopefully in the next few days they’ll be available to a few brave souls. (Though they already install pretty cleanly on an up-to-date sarge)

In the mean time, anyone know where I can find instructions on setting up an apt source?

At work we’re using Class Table Inheritance to model the core data structures of our as yet nameless open source CRM. (actually it has a code name, but I don’t like it, so we’ll pretend it’s nameless)

This week as I learned both the name of this pattern, and the SQL to implement it efficiently in MySQL I thought I’d share some notes on what we’ve come up with.

In which our protagonist begins a more thorough exploration of PEAR, and quickly runs into a challenge. Non-PHP hackers should feel free to avert their eyes. Maybe this is a well known hack, maybe (hopefully!) there is a better way to do this, but a quick Google search turned up a deafening silence, a marked dearth, of information on how to access a MySQL insert_id (the value created by inserting a row into a table with an AUTO_INCREMENT column).

I understand that using AUTO_INCREMENT columns is the “wrong” way to do things as far as PEAR is concerned, I’m supposed to use its implemented in PHP sequences, rather then the native and implemented in C method I’ve been using quite happily for years. (If I find myself migrating my MySQL app to Oracle sometime soon, I promise you AUTO_INCREMENT columns are going to be the least of my worries.)

Perl DBI faced a similar dilemma many years ago, and decided, wisely, to punt on the whole issue. They didn’t provide a solution, and they didn’t preclude you from using your native solution. Turns out sometimes doing less is more.

And lastly, when the hell did PHP get so high and holy that it refuses to let me code the way I want to code? Stuff like this constantly turns me off of PEAR, the whole thing just kind of has a bad smell about it.

But enough with the ranting, so here is my current, hold-me-over-until-someone-points-out-the-error-of-my-ways solution.

Your PEAR::DB object $dbh holds a reference to the MySQL connection object in $dbh->connection. Which allows you take a stroll down memory lane to the bad old days with this little gem:

$id = mysql_insert_id($dbh->connection)

For all our veneer of OO civilization, it doesn’t take much to scratch away the surface and expose our naked barbarian PHP soul does it?