undefined method `^' for "b":String (NoMethodError)

Fortunately, I am not the first one who encountered this issue, and so it is already fixed in the Rails git repository. To fix it on my local installation, I simply had to replace /<path_to_ruby_gems>/activesupport-2.3.4/lib/active_support/message_verifier.rb with the corresponding file from the git repository. And with that, my applications started to work again :)

Here some things I noticed while upgrading Noserub from pre-beta to beta:

The folder “cake/locale” has been removed. It contained the template for translating the core. It seems this file has been moved to the translations project on CakeForge.

The files AppController, AppModel, and AppHelper have been moved from “cake” to “cake/libs/controller”, “cake/libs/model”, resp. “cake/libs/view/helpers”.

The folder “cake/libs/view/templates” has been removed and its subfolders are now direct subfolders of “cake/libs/view”.

In “app/config/sql” three files have been added: “db_acl.php”, “i18n.php”, and “sessions.php”.

In “app/config/core.php” the constant COMPRESS_CSS has been removed. On the other hand three new config entries were added: “App.encoding”, “Asset.filter.css”, and “Asset.filter.js”. The two latter are commented out by default.

While running the application I got some messages that the functions loadModel(), listClasses() and Model::generateList() are now deprecated. Thanks to the help messages it was easy to fix them.

The only bigger issue I encountered up to now was a change in the API for writing custom validation methods. Here some code from my model to illustrate the problem:

var $validate = array('passwd2'  => array('rule' => 'validatePasswd2'));

function validatePasswd2($value, $params = array()) {
    if ($this->data['Identity']['passwd'] !== $value) {
        return false;
    } else {
        return true;
    }
}

This code worked fine with the pre-beta, but with the beta version the type of $value has been changed, it is now an array instead of a string (see the explanation for ticket 3797). And so the code above will always return false. To fix it, the comparison has to be changed to:

if ($this->data['Identity']['passwd'] !== $value['passwd2'])

That’s it, good luck with upgrading :)

In the pre-beta two files have been removed which may affect your application, even though it is rather unlikely someone used those files: dbo_pear.php (i.e. support for PEAR-DB) and neat_string.php.

More likely is an issue with radio buttons, which has been described (with solution) by Amit Badkas.

Something else that caused trouble for me, is that the following code snippet returns always true in a controller action:

isset($this->params['form']);

I don’t know whether it is a bug or a feature that this variable is always set, up to now it was only set if you submitted a form as far as I know.

Anyway, it seems like the upgrade caused less trouble than expected ;-)

After some debugging I could locate the line which caused the problem:

<?php echo $html->link(__('Delete', true), array('action'=>'delete', $entry['Entry']['id']), null, __('Are you sure you want to delete', true).' #' . $entry['Entry']['id']); ?>

Or more precisely:

__('Are you sure you want to delete', true)

Don’t ask me why that doesn’t work on Dreamhost ;-)

As I don’t need multi-language support, the workaround is simple:

<?php echo $html->link(__('Delete', true), array('action'=>'delete', $entry['Entry']['id']), null, 'Are you sure you want to delete #' . $entry['Entry']['id']); ?>

Maybe this will help someone…

Ok, let’s dive into the code. First a bit of context:

// snippet from View::_render()
$loadedHelpers = $this->_loadHelpers($loadedHelpers, $this->helpers);

foreach(array_keys($loadedHelpers) as $helper) {

As we move to the View::_loadHelpers() function, we detect the following statement:

return $this->cakeError('missingHelperFile', array(array(
    'helper' => $helper,
    'file' => Inflector::underscore($helper) . '.php',
    'base' => $this->base
)));

That is a bit weird, as the statement returns an error, but there was no error handling in the previous code snippet. But maybe the cakeError function just returns an empty array, who knows. So let’s have a look at the cakeError function defined in the Object class:

function cakeError($method, $messages) {
    ...
    if (class_exists('AppError')) {
        $error = new AppError($method, $messages);
    } else {
        $error = new ErrorHandler($method, $messages);
    }
    return $error;
}

No, the function doesn’t return an array. Hm. As this function returns an object, and the first snippet expects an array, then there should be some PHP errors when displaying a “missing helper file” error. But there are no PHP errors. We find the answer in the ErrorHandler class: it just shows the error message and calls “exit” to stop the script execution. And so the returns are never called…

Well, this solution would work fine as long as it is only used internally (even though it is not very elegant). But the framework allows you to write a custom error handler, and so if you want to handle a “missing helper file” error yourself, you get PHP errors when you don’t use an exit.

That’s it. I hope you learned something from this example :)

Warning: session_start() [function.session-start]: Cannot send session cache limiter - headers already sent (output started at
/home/dho/projects/test/trunk/app/controllers/users_controller.php:7) in /home/dho/projects/cake_1.2.x.x/cake/libs/session.php
on line 131

It is a bit nasty. The warning points us to line 7 (the last line). Hm, but line 7 looks correct, doesn’t it?

<?php
    class UsersController extends AppController {
        var $uses = null;

        function edit() {}
    }
?> 

Well, if you mark line 7 with your mouse, you see that there is a space after the “>” character. And this space is the cause of the warning. If you remove the space, the warning disappears.

[Sat Oct 21 10:35:06 2006] [notice] child pid 9360 exit signal
Segmentation fault (11)

After debugging with strace (after hours of unsuccessful searching), I found out that a function is called which is not implemented:

set_thread_area({entry_number:-1 -> -1, base_addr:0x809a640,
limit:1048575, seg_32bit:1, contents:0, read_exec_only:0,
limit_in_pages:1, seg_not_present:0, useable:1}) = -1 ENOSYS (Function
not implemented)

Hm, but how to fix it? Well, I “fixed” it by accident. As I started my computer the next time I had chosen to load a 2.6.x kernel, and the problem disappeared. Now I am a bit in a dilemma, on the one hand I need a 2.6.x kernel for Apache, and on the other hand I need a 2.4.x kernel for my trackpoint…

Update (2006-09-18): Replace also /cake/scripts/templates/skel/webroot/js/vendors.php.

class UsersController extends AppController
{
    function beforeFilter()
    {
        // not logged in, so redirect to the login page
        $this->redirect('/login');
    }

    function delete($id)
    {
        $this->User->delete($id);
    }
}

This example redirects _and_ removes the specified user even if you are not logged in (you just have to know the url to delete users). To fix that potential security hole you have to add an exit() after the redirect:

function beforeFilter()
{
    // not logged in, so redirect to the login page
    $this->redirect('/login');
    exit();
}

ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

After some searching I found a solution: I have had to add the following line to /etc/hosts.allow:

ssh: 0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0

And voilà, it works.