Author: masnun

My First WordPress Theme: maSnun.com gets a new look!

Post author By masnun
Post date December 29, 2009
4 Comments on My First WordPress Theme: maSnun.com gets a new look!

It’s been a really long time I have been with WordPress 🙂 I installed wordpress first on a separate sub-domain and liked the power and flexibility of WP. Later I moved the installation directly to https://masnun.com . During this period, I have switched from one theme to another. What I have looked for is simplicity and lots of customization. Obviously none of the themes could satisfy me. I have used some really great themes and appreciated their beauty in this post but all these were overkill for me. I am a simple guy and want everything to be as simple and plain as myself.

I have always wanted to do something with WordPress API by adding Google Analytics to WordPress but couldn’t really concentrate out of laziness. After my first WP plugin became a hit one, I decided to dig deeper into the WP API and then Hasin Vai asked me to study on WP Theme Development. I was looking for this. He sent me the book “WordPress 2.8 Theme Design” by Tessa Blakeley Silver. The book was good theoretically but like always, I didn’t like the idea of reading all those texts. I just skimmed through. But it gave me basics and the confidence to do something with WP Theme Development.

Today afternoon, I started building my first WordPress theme and here it is 🙂 I have built it, maSnun.com gets a new look of it’s own! 🙂 This is of course a hacked version of the famous “default” theme — Kubrick 🙂

The theme I have written has no images – plain HTML and CSS. I have willingly removed the sidebar and ability to add widgets. Instead, I have some plans to put in some static contents to fill up that space. This is just a rough version. I am not very good at CSS and styling. I am basically a developer. So my design was simply rubbish! But the positive side is I have learnt the curves of WP theme development, at least the php portion.

The efforts contributed a lot to my HTML and CSS knowledge as well. It was really a cool experience working it out!

I just love WordPress! 😀

Download: http://masnun.googlecode.com/files/masnun.com-2009-the-wp-theme.zip

PHP

Google’s Text to Speech API : A PHP Wrapper Class

Post author By masnun
Post date December 14, 2009
31 Comments on Google’s Text to Speech API : A PHP Wrapper Class

It’s really amazing how Google is providing cool APIs for every this and that! And here comes another one that impressed me 😀 I am talking about the Text To Speech API by Google. It’s fantastic! I wrote a php wrapper class that would help you create mp3 files from texts 🙂 Of course, using Google as the medium!

Here’s the source code:

<?php
// FileName: tts.php
/*
 *  A PHP Class that converts Text into Speech using Google's Text to Speech API
 *
 * Author:
 * Abu Ashraf Masnun
 * https://masnun.com
 *
 */

class TextToSpeech {
    public $mp3data;
    function __construct($text="") {
        $text = trim($text);
        if(!empty($text)) {
            $text = urlencode($text);
            $this->mp3data = file_get_contents("http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?q={$text}");
        }
    }

    function setText($text) {
        $text = trim($text);
        if(!empty($text)) {
            $text = urlencode($text);
            $this->mp3data = file_get_contents("http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?q={$text}");
            return $mp3data;
        } else { return false; }
    }

    function saveToFile($filename) {
        $filename = trim($filename);
        if(!empty($filename)) {
            return file_put_contents($filename,$this->mp3data);
        } else { return false; }
    }

}
?>

<?php

// FileName: tts.php

* A PHP Class that converts Text into Speech using Google's Text to Speech API

* Author:

* Abu Ashraf Masnun

* https://masnun.com

class TextToSpeech {

public $mp3data;

function __construct($text="") {

$text = trim($text);

if(!empty($text)) {

$text = urlencode($text);

$this->mp3data = file_get_contents("http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?q={$text}");

}

function setText($text) {

$text = trim($text);

if(!empty($text)) {

$text = urlencode($text);

$this->mp3data = file_get_contents("http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?q={$text}");

return $mp3data;

} else { return false; }

}

function saveToFile($filename) {

$filename = trim($filename);

if(!empty($filename)) {

return file_put_contents($filename,$this->mp3data);

} else { return false; }

}

And here’s demo :

<?php
require "tts.php";
$tts = new TextToSpeech();
$tts->setText("Hello World!");
$tts->saveToFile("masnun.mp3");
?>

<?php

require "tts.php";

$tts = new TextToSpeech();

$tts->setText("Hello World!");

$tts->saveToFile("masnun.mp3");

You can alternatively pass the text to the constructor of the object like this:

<?php
require "tts.php";
$tts = new TextToSpeech("Hello World!");
$tts->saveToFile("masnun.mp3");
?>

<?php

require "tts.php";

$tts = new TextToSpeech("Hello World!");

$tts->saveToFile("masnun.mp3");

That is simple, isn’t that? Hope you like it!

PHP

FeedParser: A PHP Class for Quick Feed Parsing

Post author By masnun
Post date December 12, 2009
1 Comment on FeedParser: A PHP Class for Quick Feed Parsing

Well, it doesn’t require any further explanation — we the web developers know how often we need to parse feeds. It’s a very common practice to use SimpleXML for parsing feeds. But today Hasin vai (Hasin Hayder) showed me a very cool thing — the Google Feed Parser. It’s a web based feed parser that is internally used by Google. The coolest thing about the parser is that it returns data as JSON 🙂

Seeing the point, I quickly fired off my netbeans IDE and wrote a php class for quick feed parsing 😀 Why fetch the feed and then parse it? Let Google handle the parsing and fetch the parsed results 🙂 Google is really making our lives simpler!

Here’s the class definition:

<?php
// Filename: feedparser.php
class FeedParser {
    function parse($feedUrl="https://masnun.com/feed/rss/",$number=5) {
        $feedUrl = urlencode($feedUrl);
        $gUrl = "http://www.google.com/uds/Gfeeds?num={$number}&hl=en&output=json&q={$feedUrl}&v=1.0";
        $json = json_decode(file_get_contents($gUrl),true);
        return  $json["responseData"]["feed"];
    }
}
?>

<?php

// Filename: feedparser.php

class FeedParser {

function parse($feedUrl="https://masnun.com/feed/rss/",$number=5) {

$feedUrl = urlencode($feedUrl);

$gUrl = "http://www.google.com/uds/Gfeeds?num={$number}&hl=en&output=json&q={$feedUrl}&v=1.0";

$json = json_decode(file_get_contents($gUrl),true);

return $json["responseData"]["feed"];

}

So, how do you use it? Initiate a new FeedParser object and then call the parse() method with the feed URL and entry count. The second parameter is optional and is “5” by default.

<?php
include("feedparser.php");
$parser = new FeedParser();
$data = $parser->parse("https://masnun.com/feed/rss/",3);
echo  $data["entries"][2]['title']."\n";
?>

<?php

include("feedparser.php");

$parser = new FeedParser();

$data = $parser->parse("https://masnun.com/feed/rss/",3);

echo $data["entries"][2]['title']."\n";

So what do we get in the $data array? Good question, lets see :

<?php
include("feedparser.php");
$parser = new FeedParser();
$data = $parser->parse("https://masnun.com/feed/rss/",3);
var_dump( $data );
?>

<?php

include("feedparser.php");

$parser = new FeedParser();

$data = $parser->parse("https://masnun.com/feed/rss/",3);

var_dump( $data );

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