Bloggerit by Toddism

Cost of Illegals

So, today there is a story about the cost of illegal aliens in Gwinnet County Georgia. In this report by the Gwinnett Daily Post says that a Gwinnett County grand jury complained it could not figure out how much illegals are costing the county.

Now I ain't no rocket psychologist but as a Gwinettian I can tell you it is damned expensive. I have 3 kids in public schools. In the lower grades it is not uncommon to overhear elementary school children (kindergarten - 5th grade) translating a teacher's comment into latino.

I know this is not a scientific study, but look at this: http://www.scangwinnett.com/mugshots/. Look at the sheer volume of hispanics. You cannoty tell me that illegal immigration is not damned expensive.

We are 1,170 miles from Laredo Texas on the Mexican border (according to google) and yet we have a huge population of illegal immigrants. They often do not speak our language and do not want to integrate into the community. We are providing their health care and education yet many are here illegally. It is simply wrong.

Illegal Immigration affects Jobs

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, "Of the 4.1 million new immigrant workers, between 1.4 and 2.7 million are estimated to be illegal immigrants. This means that illegal immigrants accounted for up to 56 percent of the net increase in civilian employment in the United States over the past five years" (full story). Do you know who this really impacts? Unskilled labor. Your sons and daughters who might want a job while they attend school.

Cross-Browser View/Hide

I just gotta say that this pissed me off to no end. I had code that worked well with IE, Opera and Firefox but Safari just wouldn't work. Most of my work is for Intranets so I could code to IE but once I had to do some public stuff the "squeeze hit the fan" - so to speak.

It turns out that the only way I could get it to work is with a style called hidden. It has one entry: display:none. I had to change the className of the object to hidden and then change it back later on. I also created an entry called shown that also had one entry: display:block that I could use to show an element. Now, in order to change it back I needed to know what it's className was. So here is how I solved for "X"....

I created 2 javascript arrays and a counter to keep track of how many I added:

  var aclasslist = new Array();
  var aidlist = new Array();
  var acount=0;

I also created a function called cbtoggle() that accepts on parameter - the objectid. It looks for the element in the arrays and if it does not find it it adds it and it's className to the arrays. If the className is either hidden or blank it adds the value shown.

This also uses a function called findObj a buddy sent me. It seems to return stuff better that getElementById

Now if you are like me you quit reading and just want the damned code. Here it is:


<style>
  .hidden { display:none }
  .shown { display:block }
  
</style>

<a href="javascript:cbtoggle('someelementid')">view/hide element</a>
<div id='someelementid'>some html text and stuff </div>
  
<script language=javascript>

function findObj(theObj, theDoc)                {
        var p, i, foundObj;
        
        if(!theDoc) theDoc = document;

        if( (p = theObj.indexOf("?")) > 0 && parent.frames.length)              {
                theDoc = parent.frames[theObj.substring(p+1)].document;
                theObj = theObj.substring(0,p);
        }

        if(!(foundObj = theDoc[theObj]) && theDoc.all) foundObj = theDoc.all [theObj];

        for (i=0; !foundObj && i < theDoc.forms.length; i++)
                foundObj = theDoc.forms[i][theObj];
                for(i=0; !foundObj && theDoc.layers && i < theDoc.layers.length; i++)
                        foundObj = findObj(theObj,theDoc.layers[i].document);

        if(!foundObj && document.getElementById) foundObj = document.getElementById(theObj);

            if( ! foundObj  ) return false;
            
        return foundObj;
}

var aclasslist = new Array();
var aidlist = new Array();
var acount=0;


function cbtoggle( oid )
{
  if( ! findObj(oid ) ) return;
  
  var o = findObj(oid);
  
  if( acount==0 )
  {
    cbaddid( oid );
  }
  else
  {
     if( cbindex(oid)==-1 )
     {
       cbaddid(oid);
     }
  }
  if( o.className=='hidden' )
  {
     o.className=cbgetclass( oid );     
     
  }  
  else
    o.className='hidden';
    
}

function cbaddid( oid )
{
   aidlist[acount]=oid;
   if( findObj(oid).className != '' && findObj(oid).className !='hidden' )
     aclasslist[acount]=findObj(oid).className;
   else
     aclasslist[acount]='shown';
   acount++;
   
   
}

function cbindex( oid )
{
  for( i=0; i < acount; i++ )
  {
    if( aidlist[i]==oid )
      return i;
  }
  return -1;
}    

function cbgetclass( oid )
{
  var i=cbindex(oid )
  if( i > -1 )
  {
    return aclasslist[i];
  }
  return '';
}


</script>

No Comment

I always hated commenting my code. Some people just go overboard. They will put:

    ' * open the recordset

right before the line

      rs.open("select * from sometable where 1=2 and false=true")

Now any moron can see that you are opening a recordset. Unless you are paid by the word that comment is useless. I took a java class once and the instuctor said this: "comments are added when the code is written. as soon as it is in production some manager is gonna call you up and tell you there is a huge bug and it needs to be fixed now. So, you rush in - change the code - save it and publish it. Now the comments no-longer reflect what is in the code. The comments are wrong. Therefore, don't comment." I like it.

Today's Date

Ever need to run a query that says "select * from orders where orderdate > today"? Well check this out:

CREATE view dbo.v_today as
select convert(varchar(5),MONTH(getdate())) + '/' + convert(varchar(5),DAY(GETDATE()))  + '/' + convert(varchar(5),YEAR(getdate())) 
as Today

How do you use it?

select * from v_today

/*
  Today             
----------------- 
3/8/2008

*/
    /* new orders today */
    select * from orders where orderdate >= (select today from v_today)
    
    /* or */
    
    /* orders before today */
    select * from orders where orderdate < (select today from v_today)
    
    /* or */
    
    /* orders before today that were not yet shipped*/
    select * from orders where orderdate < (select today from v_today) and shipdate is null

PHP Forms

PHP (like other web languages) differentiates between things in a form and things in the url. URL variables are referenced with the $_GET[name] syntax while form variables are referenced with the $_FORM[name] syntax.

Here is an example FORM post with variables in the URL:

      <form action=someform.php?id=100 method=post>
        Please note that the "method=post" is important.  If you forget it then all your FORM 
        variables will be added to the URL.  Very messy.
        
         <table>
           <tr><td><input type=text name=fname ><input type=submit value=Save >
         </table>
      </form>

So then someform.php would look like this:

       <?
         $id=$_GET[id];
         $fname=$_POST[fname];
         $sql="update users set firstname='$fname' where userid=$id";
         
       ?>

So the difference is - if you post the data using a FORM use the $_POST[] array. If the variable is in the URL use the $_GET[array]

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