Zend_Form_Element_Radio does not allow you to remove the preselected option. You can set it initially to an integer value that is not one of your radio option values. The problem with this is, when you reload the form and it doesn’t pass validation, the integer value you set to hack this gets reset to the first element option. To fix this problem, I wrote a hack you can add just before you give the view script the form object that resets it to an integer value that is not already set. If the user has selected an option that is valid, it will stay populated and not remove this selected option.

//Zend_Form_Radio has a bug where you cannot remove preselected
//values. The element default to the first option. This will
//loop through every radio element and set the value to 3
//if the value is empty. This is a hack which unsets the default value.
foreach ($form->getElements() as $element) {
    if ($element->getType() == 'Zend_Form_Element_Radio') {
        if ($element->getValue() == '') {
            $element->setValue('3');
        }
    }
}

Today I needed to display weather results for given cities. After reading reviews and API docs from various sites, I decided to use the Google Weather API. The Google Weather API was very easy to work with. All you need to do is hit the API with your city/zip and Google would return the 4 day forecast in XML. The API also included links to the weather condition images. If you wanted too, you could replace these links easily to use your own custom weather images.

Example of how to get the current condition:

$weatherObj = new GoogleWeather(‘Los Angeles California’);
$weatherResult = $weatherObj->getCurrentCondition ();

Example of how to retrieve 4 day forecast:

$weatherObj = new GoogleWeather(‘Los Angeles California’);
$weatherResult = $weatherObj->getAllDays();

/**
 * Used to return Weather results from Googles Weather API.
 *
 * Requires (PHP Curl,PHP Tidy)
 *
 * @author Tully Rankin
 *
 */
class GoogleWeather {

/**
 * URL of API
 *
 * @param string
 */
protected $url;

/**
 * Search Query
 *
 * @param string
 */
protected $query;

/**
 * Response from API Query
 *
 * @param string
 */
protected $data;

/**
 * DOM Instance
 *
 * @param DOMDocument
 */
protected $dom;

	/**
	 * Initializes GoogleWeather properties and
	 * queries API with search string.
	 *
	 * @param string $query Location to search
	 * @param string $url URL of the Google Weather API
	 */
	public function __construct($query, $url = 'http://www.google.com/ig/api?weather=')
	{
		$query = str_replace(' ', '+', $query);
		$this->query = $query;
		$this->url = $url;
		$this->_retrieveDATA();
		$this->dom = new DomDocument();
		$this->dom->loadXML($this->data);
		if ($this->_isResultEmpty())
			return false;
	}

	/**
	 * Queries GoogleWeather API.
	 * uses PHP Curl extention.
	 */
	protected function _retrieveDATA()
	{
		$ch = curl_init();
		curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $this->url . $this->query);
		curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
		curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
		$data = curl_exec($ch);
		$this->data = $this->_tidyXML($data);
	}

	/**
	 * Cleans up malformed XML Data.
	 *
	 * @param string $xml XML Formatted string
	 * @return string
	 */
	protected function _tidyXML($xml)
	{
		$options = array('input-xml' => true, 'output-xml' => true, 'clean' => true);
		$clean = tidy_parse_string($xml, $options, 'UTF8');
		tidy_clean_repair($clean);
		return $clean;
	}

	/**
	 * Checks if returned DATA has results.
	 *
	 * @return bool
	 */
	protected function _isResultEmpty()
	{
		$error = $this->dom->getElementsByTagName('problem_cause')->item(0);
		return $error;
	}

	/**
	 * Gets the current weather condition.
	 *
	 * @return array
	 */
	public function getCurrentCondition()
	{
		$node = $this->dom->getElementsByTagName('current_conditions')->item(0);
		$current = array();
		foreach ($node->childNodes as $c) {
			$current[$c->nodeName] = $c->getAttribute('data');
		}
		return $current;
	}

	/**
	 * Get weather conditions for all days. As of now
	 * Google currently returns 4 days.
	 *
	 * @return array
	 */
	public function getAllDays()
	{
		$nodes = $this->dom->getElementsByTagName('forecast_conditions');
		$i = 1;
		$weather = array();
		foreach ($nodes as $node) {
			foreach ($node->childNodes as $c) {
				if ($c->hasAttributes())
					$weather[$i][$c->nodeName] = $c->getAttribute('data');
			}
			$i++;
		}
		return $weather;
	}

}
// set tabstop=4

Download the Google Weather PHP Class

This weekend I started my first Facebook application. I decided to create an application that will take your friends photos and make a collage out of them. I intend to make the size of the collage a variable that can be selected from a drop-down HTML element. I would like the user to be able to create a collage that is the size of there screen resolution. This way they could make a wallpaper for there desktop with all there friends. Below is an example collage that was created using my PHP Collage Class and Facebooks graph API.

Using the class is easy:

include ‘Collage.php’;
$time = time();
$type = ‘jpg’;
$imageObj = new Collage($images, 250, 250);
$imageObj->execute();
$imageObj->saveFile(“images/{$time}.jpg”, $type);
echo “<img src=\”images/{$time}.{$type}\” />”;

PHP Collage Class:

/**
 * This class is used to create an image collage from
 * an array of image links.
 *
 * @author Tully Rankin
 * @website http://www.TullyRankin.com
 */
class Collage {

	/**
	 * Holds array of image links
	 */
	public $images = array();

	/**
	 * Height of the collage image
	 */
	public $height;

	/**
	 * Width of the collage image
	 */
	public $width;

	/**
	 * Holds the buffer of all images
	 */
	public $imgBuf = array();

	/**
	 * Stores the created collage image
	 */
	public $imgOut;

	/**
	 * Holds array of Exception objects
	 */
	public $errors = array();

	public function __construct(Array $images, $height=1024, $width=768)
	{
		try {

			if (empty($images))
				throw new Exception('Images can not be empty.');

			$this->images = $images;
			$this->height = $height;
			$this->width = $width;

			$iTmp = "";

			$this->_addImagesToBuffer();
			$this->imgOut = imagecreatetruecolor($this->width, $this->height);
		} catch (Exception $e) {
			$this->errors[] = $e;
		}
	}

	/**
	 * Creates the collage
	 */
	public function execute()
	{
		$tmpHeight = 0;
		$tmpWidth = 0;

		try {
			do {
				foreach($this->imgBuf as $image) {
					if ($tmpWidth <= $this->width) {
						@imagecopy($this->imgOut, $image, $tmpWidth, $tmpHeight, 0, 0, imagesx($image), imagesy($image));
						@imagedestroy($image);
						$tmpWidth += 50;
					} else {
						$tmpWidth = 0;
						@imagecopy($this->imgOut, $image, $tmpWidth, $tmpHeight, 0, 0, imagesx($image), imagesy($image));
						@imagedestroy($image);
						$tmpWidth += 50;
						$tmpHeight += 50;
					}
				}
				$this->_addImagesToBuffer();;
			} while($tmpHeight <= $this->height);
		} catch (Exception $e) {
			$this->errors[] = $e;
		}
	}

	/**
	 * Saves the image to a file
	 *
	 * @param string $name The name of the image.
	 * @param string $type The image type to save as.
	 */
	public function saveFile($name, $type="jpeg")
	{
		try {
			ob_start();
			switch($type) {
				case "png":
					@imagepng($this->imgOut);
					break;
				case "jpg":
				case "jpeg":
					@imagejpeg($this->imgOut);
					break;
				case "gif":
					@imagegif($this->imgOut);
					break;
				default:
					throw new Exception("Unknown image type");
			}
			$contents = ob_get_contents();
			ob_end_clean();
			file_put_contents($name, $contents);
		} catch (Exception $e) {
			$this->errors[] = $e;
		}
	}

	/*
	 * Creates an image from each image given in the constructor.
	 * Adds it to public imgBuf array
	 */
	protected function _addImagesToBuffer()
	{
		$this->imgBuf = array();
		foreach($this->images as $imageSrc) {
        	$iTmp = imagecreatefromjpeg($imageSrc);
            array_push($this->imgBuf, $iTmp);
        }

	}
}

Click Here to view the class as a plain text file.