Category: Tech

Sending Fax with PHP on Windows

UPDATE 2010.06.21: This article was written for Fax Console on Windows XP, has not been tested against Windows 7 Fax and Scan.

I had a project that I needed to fax documents from a PHP application. We had our own Windows XP box running XAMPP (LAMP for Windows) so I could install whatever and configure however we needed. I searched high and low for a tutorial on how to send fax from PHP on Windows. The PHP COM documentation and MSDN Library left something to be desired so I thought I would put a little something together for posterity…

First thing I discovered was the handy COM class in PHP that allows you to manipulate Windows applications. Pretty cool.

Then I went over to the MSDN Library to see how I can send a fax. Enter the FaxDocument COM Object. The most important property of the FaxDocument object is Body. This property allows you to attach any document or image file (.doc, .txt, .pdf, .jpg, .tif, etc.) for faxing by defining the path to the file.

The next part that was essential for our application was to create a dynamic cover page for each outgoing fax. Instead of rendering a PDF on the server for each outgoing fax, there is a FaxDocument property called CoverPage that allows you to use a Windows template cover page file (.COV). You can create your own .COV file using Windows application Fax Cover Page Editor, which can be found in the Start Menu:

Start Menu -> Programs -> Accessories -> Communications -> Fax -> Fax Cover Page Editor
Or in the system here:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\fxscover.exe

The only catch is that you need to define the UNC to the .COV file in FaxDocument.CoverPage. What the heck is a UNC path? UNC stands for Uniform Naming Convention and is specific to Windows and Windows networking. The format goes something like this: \\COMPUTERNAME\SharedFolder\Resource

Notice that the part of the path immediately following the COMPUTERNAME is a SharedFolder. It is essential that you turn on sharing for the folder that contains the file(s) that you want to use for your FaxDocument.CoverPage. Right-click on the folder you want to share:

Properties (contextual menu) -> Sharing (tab) -> Share this folder on the network (checkbox)

The COMPUTERNAME can be found on Windows by right-clicking on ‘My Computer’:

Properties (contextual menu) -> Computer Name (tab)

When you are testing your PHP script, you can test your UNC path by having PHP echo it. Copy your UNC path and paste it into the Run box found here: Start menu -> Run

If it does not open your .COV file in Windows’ Fax Cover Page Editor application, something is wrong and you need to examine your UNC path, .COV filename and sharing properties.

Here is the final PHP code:

$obj_faxdoc = new COM ( "FaxComEx.FaxDocument" );
$obj_faxdoc->DocumentName = "Fax from PHP"; // This is the name that will appear in the Windows Fax Console
$obj_faxdoc->Sender->Title = "Quote"; // This is a field defined in the .COV
$obj_faxdoc->CoverPageType = 1; // This specifies the .COV location: 0 = No cover page, 1 = Local, 2 = Server
$obj_faxdoc->CoverPage = "\\\\COMPUTERNAME\\SharedFolder\\Template.COV"; // Don't forget double backslash
$obj_faxdoc->Subject = "Fax for John Doe"; // This is a field in the .COV and also shows in Fax Console
$obj_faxdoc->Note = "Please review the following fax."; // This is a field in the .COV
$obj_faxdoc->Body = "/path/to/faxable/file.pdf"; // The path to the file you want to fax
$obj_faxdoc->Recipients->Add ( "888-555-2134", "John Doe" );
$obj_faxdoc->Submit ( "" );

Links

php.net – PHP COM class
msdn.microsoft.com – FaxDocument COM object
xampp.org – LAMP for Windows
en.wikipedia.org – UNC definition

WP Theme for iPhone/Android

New WP theme released for iPhone and Android designed with touch-screen phones in mind:
bravenewcode.com/wptouch

Update: Just installed this theme on underblob. It is actually installed as a plug-in and not as a theme, which makes a lot more sense. The plug-in auto-detects user agent string and spits out the wptouch theme if you are viewing on a mobile device. This way it preserves your existing theme for peeps coming in on their desktop browsers. Pretty clever!

IE Conditional Tags

Internet Explorer has rendering bugs that vary across all versions. Microsoft has included some conditional comment tags that are specific to their IE browsers since IE5. These are really helpful if you need to include a CSS or JS file to fix layout quirks:

<!--[if IE]> Instructions for all IE browsers <![endif]-->
<!--[if lte IE 7]> Instructions for IE7 or earlier <![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 6]> Instructions for IE6 only <![endif]-->

AS3 Flip Horizontal/Vertical

import flash.geom.Matrix;

public function flipHorizontal ( dsp:DisplayObject ):void {
	var matrix:Matrix = dsp.transform.matrix;
	matrix.a = -1;
	matrix.tx = dsp.width + dsp.x;
	dsp.transform.matrix = matrix;
}
		
public function flipVertical ( dsp:DisplayObject ):void {
	var matrix:Matrix = dsp.transform.matrix;
	matrix.d = -1;
	matrix.ty = dsp.height + dsp.y;
	dsp.transform.matrix = matrix;
}

Links

dreaminginflash.com

Wordle

Was checking out the new WordPress Foundation site and saw in the sidebar it said their header image was generated with Wordle. Curious, I checked it out and found Wordle is a Java Applet that creates a graphic word matrix based on the number of recurring words in any RSS feed. There are a bunch of fonts and layout algorythms you can choose from and you can create custom color palette as well. Here is one I generated from underblob.com’s RSS:



Pretty cool!

AS3 Listeners — Loader.COMPLETE vs MovieClip.ENTER_FRAME

Trying to load a directory of hundreds of images into separate movie clips using the AS3 Loader class. By assigning an Event.COMPLETE listener to the Loader, the callback function only has a reference to the Loader and not to the image that’s being loaded or the parent that it’s being loaded into. So if I need to Tween on this image after the load is completed, no dice. Instead, assign an Event.ENTER_FRAME to the parent MovieClip and dig a byte comparison out of the contentLoaderInfo object…

 

for each ( var imgPath in imgXML.elements () ) {
	var imgLoader:Loader = new Loader ();
	imgClip.addChild ( imgLoader );
	imgClip.addEventListener ( Event.ENTER_FRAME, imgLoading );
	imgLoader.load ( new URLRequest ( imgPath ) );
}

…

function imgLoading ( e:Event ):void {
	var bL:Number = e.target.getChildAt ( 0 ).contentLoaderInfo.bytesLoaded;
	var bT:Number = e.target.getChildAt ( 0 ).contentLoaderInfo.bytesTotal;
	if ( bT == bL ) {
		e.target.removeEventListener ( Event.ENTER_FRAME, imgLoading );
		e.target.parent.Tweener // etc.
	}
}


WP SQL Categories

Here is how to get WordPress Post categories via straight SQL query:

 

SELECT 
	wp_term_taxonomy.description, 
	wp_terms.term_id, 
	wp_terms.name, 
	wp_terms.slug
FROM wp_term_taxonomy
	JOIN wp_terms ON ( wp_term_taxonomy.term_id = wp_terms.term_id )
WHERE wp_term_taxonomy.taxonomy = 'category'