Category: Web

In the four weeks or so, I’ve become quite familiar with the Google Maps API, pitfalls included. I’ve been contracted to work on an interactive map for the RAIN Group, a not-for-profit out of Pennsylvania that is focused on water quality. Especially in areas where hydraulic fracturing (fracking) for natural gas is taking place.

Google’s API, to say the least, is easy to customize with some javascript experience. The requirements of the project required overlays gathered from USGS, EPA and other entities. It was fairly straight forward to incorporate the KML layers that we procured, but some of these files ran rather large in size. After the heartbreak of having to admit that Google was telling the truth about the size limitations on KML files, it was back to the drawing board.

Luckily, after a lot of hunting, I found the GeoXML library. Rather than using Google’s servers to render these layers, GeoXML provided a client-side alternative. This means that the size limitations that we faced were no longer an obstacle in displaying our layers.

Everything came together and the world was at peace again. If you are considering building your own map elements from complex datasets, I would not overlook this library. It will save your life… or at least a little headache.

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Rave Alert has been a major project that I have have been assigned to implement. This system provides an easy way of contacting students and staff in case of emergency via email, text message, voice call, Facebook and Twitter. We also use it for snow days and class cancellations. Not too long ago the helpful staff at Rave introduced me to the CAP XML standard. CAP is a standard not just specific to Rave, but many emergency alert systems. It is also used by various government agencies for sharing emergency information over multiple systems.

PHP CAP Alert Function

Once I heard of CAP, I knew we could use this XML standard in various ways to extend the reach of our own emergency alerts. One being the school web page. Here is a small function I put together using PHP that will display an emergency message on a web page:

Just include this code on your PHP page and then call it with the CAP URL location you want to pull from:

cap_parse("http://example.com/cap.xml");

CAP Desktop Alerting Software

Taking this a step further, I decided to get a little more familiar with .NET. It was brought to my attention that we were missing a desktop alert component. There are server-based systems out there that require some setup and a good deal of money. After a little thought, I concluded we could meet these same goals with a simple desktop client that used the CAP XML feed to trigger an emergency message. And in a couple days I had something built.

I thought this project warranted creating a Github repository. It’s still a little rough, but by bringing it to git, I’m hoping to get some more interest and input in this project. I’ve made the source code available, so maybe someone will find this code useful to bolster their own emergency alerting using CAP. Please visit my CAP Alerting Desktop repository if you are interested. Any contributions to the code are welcome.

Mentioned Resources:

PHP CAP Alert Function
CAP Desktop Alerting Software

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From past posts you could probably ascertain that I’ve taken quite a liking to jQuery.  Lately I’ve been developing a form for my brother, Karl’s drafting service and have used this handy javascript framework.  There is a jQuery plugin that I’ve been working with called Really Simple Validation that presents a simple, easy-to-use way of validating your forms before submitting them.  It also allows an individual to implement their custom functions for validating your forms.

Karl’s order form required a specific phone number format (xxx-xxx-xxxx).  Unfortunately, Really Simple Validation does not have pre-made phone number validation.  I scoured the internet for such a function to no avail, so I decided to write my own custom function for RSV.  It’s fairly simple and straightforward.  Here is the javascript code:

function phoneValid()
{
var phoneRE = /^\d\d\d\-\d\d\d-\d\d\d\d$/;
var val = document.getElementById(“phone”).value;

if (!val.match(phoneRE)) {
var field = document.getElementById(“phone”);
return [[field, “Please enter a valid phone number format (xxx-xxx-xxxx).”]];
}
return true;
}

The first variable created (phoneRE) is a regular expression and is used to match the sequence of phone number (xxx-xxx-xxxx).  The second variable (val) is the value of the particular form input field that has the id of “phone”.  Below that is a conditional statement that returns an error message if the value of the input field doesn’t match the particular regular expression defined as phoneRE.  If you look within that statement you’ll see “return [[field, “Please enter a valid phone number format (xxx-xxx-xxxx ).”]];”.  This area is required for RSV and will display the message if an error is thrown.  The field variable points to the form input field with the id “phone”.

Now that the function is created you just need RSV to make a call.

$(“#order_form”).RSV({
onCompleteHandler: myOnComplete,
rules: [
“function,phoneValid”,
]
});

To make this coexist within your form you will have to change “#order_form” to the particular id that you have given to your form.  If you look at the line: “function, phoneValid”, you’ll see where the function we created above is being be called.

That’s it!  For those new to jQuery remember that you need to include the jQuery script and the RSV plugin script as described in the links above.

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