This is a note for fixing Kratos theme multi-language issue. Basic information Theme: Kratos Language plugins: Polylang, Loco Language settings: en_CA, zh_CN Symptom On English version, always display Chinese words. While OceanWP theme displays correctly for multi-languages. Reason The theme offers multi-language support for American English, Japanese, and Chinese language files: en_US, ja_JP, zh_TW. For English only contains en_US, not en_CA. For multi-language use, I created a en_CA language file under common location: /wp-content/languages/themes/kratos-en_CA.po. In the theme, the language file location is locked on theme directory.  Therefore all other languages that located on other location cannot be found. function theme_languages() { load_theme_textdomain('kratos', get_template_directory() . '/languages'); } add_action('after_setup_theme', 'theme_languages'); Fixing multi-language issue As a quick fix, just change en_CA to en_US, instead of creating another language file. Then it displays as expected. For better solution, the en_CA language file could be copied over to theme language directory, in order to keep Canadian English style.  312 total views,  8 views today

Category list on sidebar widget will display all categories on post category hierarchy by default. However, we do not want to display all of them for some reason. Here is simple technique to achieve this goal. Find category IDs First thing to do is to find out all category IDs that we don't want them to show on the sidebar. Run the following script against WordPress MySQL database. SELECT t.term_id catID,t.name FROM wp_terms t join wp_term_taxonomy tax on tax.term_id=t.term_id where tax.taxonomy='category' Snippets //Hide categories from WordPress category widget function exclude_widget_categories($args){ $exclude = "4,6,7,8,9,10,13,14,15,16"; $args["exclude"] = $exclude; return $args; } add_filter("widget_categories_args","exclude_widget_categories"); Apply the snippets There are many ways to apply the snippets. You could add it to theme functions.php file or using snippets plugin to apply the snippets code. In my case, I'm using snippets to apply the code. This way is better organized for reusing the snippets. Last words, This is the simplest way to contorl the category list on sidebar, but you may use other ways to control the category list on sidebar, for instance, find a proper plugin or write your own plugin to achieve it.  376 total views,  3 views today

WordPress Links Manager is a tool to manage a set of links. You can add, modify, and remove a link easily from admin dashboard. By default, WordPress come with a widget to add a sidebar, where the links will be shown. The Links Manager is provided by default in earlier versions of WordPress than Version 3.5. However, the WordPress Links Manager and blogroll are hidden for new installs. Moreover, if you used an earlier version than 3.5 and upgraded your installation, then the Links Manager was removed if you don’t have any links. Restoring the Links Manager 1. Using filter Add the following line to your theme’s functions.php file to enable WordPress Links Manager if you are using WordPress version 3.5 or higher To enable Links Manager in version 3.5+, just add the following code to one of the following locations: functions.php file of the theme; php snippets plugin; your own plugin; add_filter( 'pre_option_link_manager_enabled', '__return_true' ); Once enabled, you can see a Links tag in the left panel of the dashboard. 2. Change option value from database If you can access the database you could enable it pritty easy by changing the option value in the database directly. There is an option_name = 'link_manager_enabled' in wp_options table. You can set this value to 1 directly. update wp_options set option_value=1 where option_name='link_manager_enabled'; What Link Manager plugin does is just to change this value in wp_option table behind the scene using filter function. Displaying Links in sidebar WordPress provides a widget within its Links Manager. So you can easily locate links in the sidebar…

There are many things have to be done on background, for instance, version check, update theme, delete posts, delayed posting, delete transients, etc. In WordPress this background job is performed by WP-Cron, witch is defined in wp-cron.php file. WordPress cron is the system built-in process that handles the scheduling of time-based tasks. Out-of-the-box, WordPress performs a number of scheduled tasks, they include: WordPress core update checks Plugin update checks Theme update checks Publishing of scheduled posts WP-Cron takes its name from cron, which is a time-based job scheduler in Unix-like systems. However, WP-Cron is designed to work on any hosting provider (including shared hosting) without using any external software or tools for scheduling events. Problem of WP-Cron The wp-cron.php is triggered on every http request. If any scheduled event is due, the event is spawned to wp-cron.php for processing, so the event is triggered to run. This is unreliable, espectially for low traffic sites, or heavily cached sites, cause scheduled events to be missed if no traffic is received for a prolonged period of time. For high-traffic sites, WP-Cron is extremely inefficient. This is because WP-Cron will check for scheduled events on every page load. This could mean that the cron schedules are being checked multiple times per second. This is unnecessary and highly redundant, as scheduled events typically run in minutes or hourly, even monthly interval. Even wp-cron.php creates a lock in WordPress transient, witch stored in wp_options table, but for high traffice sites the high concurrent requests may still spawn multiple requests to wp-cron.php, thus increasing server load.…

<<< These scripts were tested on MS SQL Server  2019 >>> From time to time we need to generate huge data for testing. Without any data generating tool we can achieve it by using some SQL Scripts. these scripts are different from regular query scripts. Generate list of data CREATE TABLE #accounts ( fname VARCHAR(20), lname VARCHAR(20)) GO INSERT #accounts VALUES ('Fred', 'Flintstone') GO 1000 SELECT TOP 10 * FROM #accounts fname lname Fred Flintstone Fred Flintstone Fred Flintstone Fred Flintstone Fred Flintstone Fred Flintstone Fred Flintstone Fred Flintstone Fred Flintstone Fred Flintstone ALTER TABLE #accounts ADD id INT IDENTITY(1,1) SELECT TOP 10 * FROM #accounts GO fname lname     id Fred Flintstone 1 Fred Flintstone 2 Fred Flintstone 3 Fred Flintstone 4 Fred Flintstone 5 Fred Flintstone 6 Fred Flintstone 7 Fred Flintstone 8 Fred Flintstone 9 Fred Flintstone 10 ALTER TABLE #accounts ADD id INT DECLARE @id INT SET @id = 0 UPDATE #accounts SET @id = id = @id + 1 OPTION ( MAXDOP 1 ) GO SELECT * FROM #accounts GO fname lname     id Fred Flintstone 1 Fred Flintstone 2 Fred Flintstone 3 Fred Flintstone 4 Fred Flintstone 5 Fred Flintstone 6 Fred Flintstone 7 Fred Flintstone 8 Fred Flintstone 9 Fred Flintstone 10 Note: MAXDOP is max degree of parallelism, set it to 1 to avoid duplicate value if running on multiple processors machine. Read article 1 for detail. Generate sequence numbers Using sys.all_columns table SELECT TOP (1000) ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL)) FROM sys.all_columns Generate huge Rows using CROSS JOIN SELECT ROW_NUMBER()…

Split array column into rows Use OPENJSON feature in sql server (2016+) to parse json array string into rows. Let's first look this: select * from openjson('["small.jpg","mid.jpg","big.jpg"]') select * from openjson('{"A":"small1.jpg","B":"mid1.jpg","C":"big1.jpg"}') Result: key value type 0 small.jpg 1 1 mid.jpg 1 2 big.jpg 1 key value type A small1.jpg 1 B mid1.jpg 1 C big1.jpg 1 Now look at more complehensive example: create table parts (id int, name varchar(255), images varchar(max)) insert into parts (id,name,images) values (1, 'nail','["small.jpg","mid.jpg","big.jpg"]'), (2, 'screw','{"A":"small1.jpg","B":"mid1.jpg","C":"big1.jpg"}') --split array column to rows declare @tmp table(id int, img varchar(4000)) declare @id int,@img varchar(max) declare csr cursor for select id,images from parts open csr fetch next from csr into @id,@img while @@fetch_status=0 begin insert into @tmp (id,img) select @id,value from openjson(@img) fetch next from csr into @id,@img end close csr deallocate csr select * from @tmp Result: Concat rows to a column Using OPENXML feature in sql server to concat rows into a column. Reuse to script above: --concat rows to a column --using above example select id, '_product_image_gallery', stuff((select ','+img from @tmp where id=t.id for xml path('')),1,1,'') from @tmp t group by id Result:  326 total views

Add some useful extension methods for string manipulations in C#. Make coding more elegent, interesting and productive. string.ToBoolean(); string.ToInt(); string.RemoveSufix(string suffix); string.RemovePrefix(string prefix); string.Remove(string toBeRemoved); string.RemoveSpace(); string.RemoveWhiteSpace();   /// <summary> /// Accept string value: "true", "t", "1" as true, all others will be evaluated as false. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static bool ToBoolean(this string value) { if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(value)) return false; switch (value.Trim().ToLower()) { case "true": return true; case "t": return true; case "1": return true; case "0": return false; case "false": return false; case "f": return false; case "": return false; default: return false; //throw new InvalidCastException("You can't cast that value to a bool!"); } } /// <summary> /// Convert a string to int with default value /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static int ToInt(this string value) { if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(value)) return 0; int.TryParse(value, out int i); return i; } /// <summary> /// Remove string suffix /// </summary> /// <param name="suffix"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static string RemoveSufix(this string value, string suffix) { if (value.EndsWith(suffix)) { value.Substring(0, value.Length - suffix.Length); } return value; } /// <summary> /// Remove string prefix /// </summary> /// <param name="prefix"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static string RemovePrefix(this string value, string prefix) { if (value.StartsWith(prefix)) { value.Substring(prefix.Length); } return value; } /// <summary> /// Remove all spaces from a string /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static string RemoveSpace(this string value) { return value.Replace(" ", string.Empty); } /// <summary> /// Remove all white spaces from a string, including " ", \t, \r, \n /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static string RemoveWhiteSpace(this string value) { return value.Replace(" ", string.Empty) .Replace("\t",…

Error handling in sql server was a pain before SQL Server 2005. Starting from  Sql Server 2005 try ... catch blocks was introduced. It was not only giving us a beauty of coding, but greatly improved our development performance. It comes with the following build-in functions: ERROR_NUMBER() ERROR_SEVERITY() ERROR_STATE() ERROR_PROCEDURE() ERROR_LINE() ERROR_MESSAGE() When these functions is called in a CATCH block, they will returns the error information. After working on many projects, I found a best pattern for error handling in Sql Server as the following steps. 1. Create a log table to store error information catch by try...catch blocks, CREATE table sys_log( id int identity primary key, procName varchar(255), essionID int, errorNumber int, severity smallint, errorState smallint, errorLine int, description nvarchar(255), info nvarchar(max), mslangid smallint default 1033, --1033 English, 2052 Chinese timeStemp datetime default getdate()) GO 2. create a stored procedure to catch and log error information: CREATE proc sys_LogError @procname sysname, @info nvarchar(max)='' AS INSERT INTO sys_log(ProcName,SessionID,ErrorNumber,Severity,ErrorState,ErrorLine,Description,info) values ( @procname, @@spid, ERROR_NUMBER(), ERROR_SEVERITY(), ERROR_STATE(), ERROR_LINE(), ERROR_MESSAGE(), @info ) 3. in all stored procedures that need to handle exepctions in transaction using this template: CREATE proc proc_name AS BEGIN tran BEGIN try -- do something print 1/0 commit tran END try BEGIN catch rollback tran declare @info nvarchar(max)='@table='+@table+', @urls='+@urls declare @procname sysname = OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(@@PROCID) + '.' + OBJECT_NAME(@@PROCID) exec sys_LogError @procname,@info ---- re-throw exeception if you need --declare @msg nvarchar(2048) = error_message() --declare @severity smallint = error_severity() --declare @state smallint = error_state() --raiserror (@msg, @severity, @state) END catch ERROR_MESSAGE() can be referenced with MASTER.dbo.sysmessages table, mslangid is for identifying…

Based OO principles the private fields should not be accessd by anything outside of the object. However, for some reason we have to access the private fields, a good example is unit testing. With dotnet reflection we could access any fields, members in an object. The accessibility is controled by BindingFlags, specify proper bindingFlags we can access all private fields in a class. To access the private fields in base class we need to add one more level of the type with BaseType. Here is the extension method to get the value of a public and private field in an instance. public static T GetFieldValue<T>(this object obj, string name) { var bindingFlags = BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance; var field = obj.GetType().GetField(name, bindingFlags); if (field == null) field = obj.GetType().BaseType.GetField(name, bindingFlags); //father else if (field == null) field = obj.GetType().BaseType.BaseType.GetField(name, bindingFlags); //granpa else if (field == null) field = obj.GetType().BaseType.BaseType.BaseType.GetField(name, bindingFlags); //father of granpa return (T)field?.GetValue(obj); }  419 total views

Python Code import json import requests # 3rd party import jsonpath from pyecharts.charts import Map from pyecharts import options as opts from src.covid19_data import nameMap url = 'https://api.inews.qq.com/newsqa/v1/automation/foreign/country/ranklist' resp = requests.post(url).text data = json.loads(resp) # get contry names and confirmed cases $：outer {}， ..: fuzzy match + key name = jsonpath.jsonpath(data, "$..name") # ['美国', '巴西', '印度', '俄罗斯', ... ] confirm = jsonpath.jsonpath(data, "$..confirm") pairs = list(zip(name, confirm)) # [('美国', 5321520), ('巴西', 3109630), ('印度', 2329638), ...] # 2. data visualization map plotting - size,title,color,data map_ = Map(opts.InitOpts(width='1200px', height='600px')) .add(series_name="Global Covid-19 Confirmed Cases", data_pair=pairs, # data entry - country : confirmed maptype="world", # world map name_map=nameMap, # country name mapping is_map_symbol_show=False) # 不显示标记点 # set series options map_.set_series_opts(label_opts=opts.LabelOpts(is_show=False)) map_.set_global_opts(title_opts=opts.TitleOpts(title="Global Covid-19 Pandemic (Chinese)"), visualmap_opts=opts.VisualMapOpts(max_=6000000, is_piecewise=True)) map_.render('../result/covid19.html') covid19_data nameMap = { 'Singapore Rep.': '新加坡', 'Dominican Rep.': '多米尼加', 'Palestine': '巴勒斯坦', 'Bahamas': '巴哈马', 'Timor-Leste': '东帝汶', 'Afghanistan': '阿富汗', 'Guinea-Bissau': '几内亚比绍', "Côte d'Ivoire": '科特迪瓦', 'Siachen Glacier': '锡亚琴冰川', "Br. Indian Ocean Ter.": '英属印度洋领土', 'Angola': '安哥拉', 'Albania': '阿尔巴尼亚', 'United Arab Emirates': '阿联酋', 'Argentina': '阿根廷', 'Armenia': '亚美尼亚', 'French Southern and Antarctic Lands': '法属南半球和南极领地', 'Australia': '澳大利亚', 'Austria': '奥地利', 'Azerbaijan': '阿塞拜疆', 'Burundi': '布隆迪', 'Belgium': '比利时', 'Benin': '贝宁', 'Burkina Faso': '布基纳法索', 'Bangladesh': '孟加拉国', 'Bulgaria': '保加利亚', 'The Bahamas': '巴哈马', 'Bosnia and Herz.': '波斯尼亚和黑塞哥维那', 'Belarus': '白俄罗斯', 'Belize': '伯利兹', 'Bermuda': '百慕大', 'Bolivia': '玻利维亚', 'Brazil': '巴西', 'Brunei': '文莱', 'Bhutan': '不丹', 'Botswana': '博茨瓦纳', 'Central African Rep.': '中非共和国', 'Canada': '加拿大', 'Switzerland': '瑞士', 'Chile': '智利', 'China': '中国', 'Ivory Coast': '象牙海岸', 'Cameroon': '喀麦隆', 'Dem. Rep. Congo': '刚果（金）', 'Congo': '刚果（布）', 'Colombia': '哥伦比亚', 'Costa Rica': '哥斯达黎加', 'Cuba': '古巴', 'N. Cyprus': '北塞浦路斯', 'Cyprus': '塞浦路斯', 'Czech Rep.': '捷克', 'Germany': '德国', 'Djibouti': '吉布提', 'Denmark': '丹麦', 'Algeria': '阿尔及利亚',…