Timezone and time not synchronized on client pc - laravel

I have created an application that depends on the timezone (set on the OS) of the client to render a display.
However, if the client incorrectly set his timezone on his pc, my display breaks.
My question is: How to i get the appropriate timezone of the client, based on where he is right now?
I understood that there are a couple of solutions: I could do this by using google API and then know the location of the client.However, this would require asking the client permission before accessing his location. I also read that you could use IP address of the client but this is unreliable. Finally, I could just ask the client.
Is there any other way to do this dynamically?
Any help is appreciated
PS: I understand that the question is broad and my question would simply require a list of possibilities. No definite answer.


Javascript new Date().toString(); would give you all the information you need about the time at the user and the timezone (if set properly). You can then send it to your server and do what you intend to.
var split = new Date().toString().split(" ");
var timeZoneFormatted = split[split.length - 2] + " " + split[split.length - 1]; //outputs "GMT+1100 (AEDT)"
No permission needed for this one. Just sends it back to your server as you want and work with it.
Javascript code from here: Getting the client's timezone in JavaScript

Related

How to Get around Hard Coding the Host Session ID in vbScript or VBA code

I have novice knowledge working with PCOMM on the AS400. I have written 15 VBA scripts in Excel which calls AS400 Macros. To get the programs to work the AS400 has to be at the Login Screen and the Active Host Session MUST be set at "D". It is the Host Session that is giving me the blues. As there are many using the same PC, I never know which Host Session the AS400 will active at any point in time... sometimes "A", sometimes "B", or there may be multiple open sessions on the same screen.
The top few lines of my VBA script is below. Is there a way I can define the script to avoid using the Host Session ID ("D" in this case) so my script will work with any ID ("A" or "B", etc)
Sub APVCHDET()
Set autECLSession = CreateObject("PCOMM.autECLSession")
autECLSession.SetConnectionByName ("D")
>
enter image description here

I found this in the documentation:
Dim SessObj as Object
Dim autECLConnList as Object
Set autECLConnList = CreateObject("PCOMM.autECLConnList")
Set SessObj = CreateObject("PCOMM.autECLSession")
' Initialize the session
autECLConnList.Refresh
SessObj.SetConnectionByHandle(autECLConnList(1).Handle)
SessObj.StopCommunication()
More here. It's a little like drinking from a fire hose though.

Set SessObj = CreateObject("PCOMM.autECLSession"), in ur code, SessObj used for set which session need to be connected. regarding ur question to Jmarkmurphy, commented out the "SessObj.StopCommunication()", this has the same effect as going to the PCOMM emulator Communication menu and choosing Disconnect.
Finally regarding your original issue, error on "autECLSession.autECLOIA.WaitForAppAvailable", as mentioned at the very beginning, u have set to connect with session by using "SessObj" hence, for "autECLSession" has not been used at all to connect with any connection, that's why popup the error "The Session has not been set for this object"

Drupal 7 ignoring $_SESSION in template

I'm working on a simple script in a custom theme in Drupal 7 that is supposed to just rotate through different background image each time a user loads the page. This is my code in [view].tpl.php that picks which image to use.
$img_index = (!isset($_SESSION["img_index"]) || is_null($_SESSION["img_index"])) ? 1 : $_SESSION["img_index"] + 1;
if ($img_index > 2) {
$img_index = 0;
}
$_SESSION["img_index"] = $img_index;
Pretty simple stuff, and it works fine as long as Drupal starts up a session. However, if I delete my session cookie, then always shows the same image, a session is never started.
I'm assuming that since this code is in the view file that the view code is being cached for anonymous users and hence the session is never started, but I can't figure out how to otherwise do what I want.

Don't mess with session like /u/maiznieks mentioned on Reddit. It's going to affect performance.
I've had to do something similar in the past and went with an approach like /u/maiznieks mentions. It's something like this,
Return all the URLs in an array via JS on Drupal.settings.
Check if a cookie is set.
If it's not, set it and set it's value to 0.
If it's set, get the value, increase the value by one, save it to the cookie.
With that value, now you have an index.
Check if image[index] exists
If it does, show that to the user.
If it doesn't, reset index to 0 and show that. Save 0 to the cookie.
You keep caching. You keep showing the user new images on every page load.
You could set your current view to do a random sort every 5 mins. You would then only have to update the logic above to replace that image. That way you can keep something similar working for users with no JS but still keep this functionality for the rest.
You can replace cookies above with HTML5 local storage if you'd like.

#hobberwickey, I will suggest to create a custom module and implement hook_boot() in module. As per drupal bootstrap process session layer will call after cache layer everytime. hook_boot can be called in cache pages and before bootstrap process also. You can take more information here.

Is there a way to view the HttpRuntime.Cache?

I have a webservice that stores an authenticated users token in the HttpRuntime.Cache to be used on all subsequent requests. The cached item has a sliding expiration on it of 24 hours.
Secondly I have a vb.net app that is pinging this webservice every 15 seconds. It gets authenticated once, then uses the cached token for all subsequent requests. My problem is that the application appears to lose authentication at random intervals of time less than the 24 hr sliding expiration. However with it getting pinged every 15 sec the authentication should never expire.
I am looking for a way to view the HttpRuntime.cache to try and determine if the problem is in the webservice security methods or within the vb.net app. Can I view the HttpRuntime.cache somehow?
The webservice is part of a web forms site that was built with asp.net 2.0 on a Windows Server 2008.

The name of my key's were unknown as they were system generated guid values with a username as the value. So in order to view a cache collection that was unknown I used a simple loop as follows.
Dim CacheEnum As IDictionaryEnumerator = Cache.GetEnumerator()
While CacheEnum.MoveNext()
Dim cacheItem As String = Server.HtmlEncode(CacheEnum.Entry.Key.ToString())
Dim cacheItem2 As String = Server.HtmlEncode(CacheEnum.Entry.Value.ToString())
Response.Write(cacheItem & ":" & cacheItem2 & "<br />")
End While
Hope this helps others.

First off, HttpRuntime.Cache would not be the best place to store user authentication information. You should instead use HttpContext.Current.Session to store such data. Technically the cache is allowed to "pop" things in it at its own will (whenever it decides to).
If you actually need to use the cache, you can check if your item is in the cache by simply doing:
HttpRuntime.Cache["Key"] == null

Scraping Real Time Visitors from Google Analytics

I have a lot of sites and want to build a dashboard showing the number of real time visitors on each of them on a single page. (would anyone else want this?) Right now the only way to view this information is to open a new tab for each site.
Google doesn't have a real-time API, so I'm wondering if it is possible to scrape this data. Eduardo Cereto found out that Google transfers the real-time data over the realtime/bind network request. Anyone more savvy have an idea of how I should start? Here's what I'm thinking:
Figure out how to authenticate programmatically
Inspect all of the realtime/bind requests to see how they change. Does each request have a unique key? Where does that come from? Below is my breakdown of the request:
https://www.google.com/analytics/realtime/bind?VER=8
&key= [What is this? Where does it come from? 21 character lowercase alphanumeric, stays the same each request]
&ds= [What is this? Where does it come from? 21 character lowercase alphanumeric, stays the same each request]
&pageId=rt-standard%2Frt-overview
&q=t%3A0%7C%3A1%3A0%3A%2Ct%3A11%7C%3A1%3A5%3A%2Cot%3A0%3A0%3A4%2Cot%3A0%3A0%3A3%2Ct%3A7%7C%3A1%3A10%3A6%3D%3DREFERRAL%3B%2Ct%3A10%7C%3A1%3A10%3A%2Ct%3A18%7C%3A1%3A10%3A%2Ct%3A4%7C5%7C2%7C%3A1%3A10%3A2!%3Dzz%3B%2C&f
The q variable URI decodes to this (what the?):
t:0|:1:0:,t:11|:1:5:,ot:0:0:4,ot:0:0:3,t:7|:1:10:6==REFERRAL;,t:10|:1:10:,t:18|:1:10:,t:4|5|2|:1:10:2!=zz;,&f
&RID=rpc
&SID= [What is this? Where does it come from? 16 character uppercase alphanumeric, stays the same each request]
&CI=0
&AID= [What is this? Where does it come from? integer, starts at 1, increments weirdly to 150 and then 298]
&TYPE=xmlhttp
&zx= [What is this? Where does it come from? 12 character lowercase alphanumeric, changes each request]
&t=1
Inspect all of the realtime/bind responses to see how they change. How does the data come in? It looks like some altered JSON. How many times do I need to connect to get the data? Where is the active visitors on site number in there? Here is a dump of sample data:
19
[[151,["noop"]
]
]
388
[[152,["rt",[{"ot:0:0:4":{"timeUnit":"MINUTES","overTimeData":[{"values":[49,53,52,40,42,55,49,41,51,52,47,42,62,82,76,71,81,66,81,86,71,66,65,65,55,51,53,73,71,81],"name":"Total"}]},"ot:0:0:3":{"timeUnit":"SECONDS","overTimeData":[{"values":[0,1,1,1,1,0,1,0,1,1,1,0,2,0,2,2,1,0,0,0,0,0,2,1,1,2,1,2,0,5,1,0,2,1,1,1,2,0,2,1,0,5,1,1,2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,0,3,2,0],"name":"Total"}]}}]]]
]
388
[[153,["rt",[{"ot:0:0:4":{"timeUnit":"MINUTES","overTimeData":[{"values":[52,53,52,40,42,55,49,41,51,52,47,42,62,82,76,71,81,66,81,86,71,66,65,65,55,51,53,73,71,81],"name":"Total"}]},"ot:0:0:3":{"timeUnit":"SECONDS","overTimeData":[{"values":[2,1,1,1,1,1,0,1,0,1,1,1,0,2,0,2,2,1,0,0,0,0,0,2,1,1,2,1,2,0,5,1,0,2,1,1,1,2,0,2,1,0,5,1,1,2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,0,3,2],"name":"Total"}]}}]]]
]
388
[[154,["rt",[{"ot:0:0:4":{"timeUnit":"MINUTES","overTimeData":[{"values":[53,53,52,40,42,55,49,41,51,52,47,42,62,82,76,71,81,66,81,86,71,66,65,65,55,51,53,73,71,81],"name":"Total"}]},"ot:0:0:3":{"timeUnit":"SECONDS","overTimeData":[{"values":[0,3,1,1,1,1,1,0,1,0,1,1,1,0,2,0,2,2,1,0,0,0,0,0,2,1,1,2,1,2,0,5,1,0,2,1,1,1,2,0,2,1,0,5,1,1,2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,0,3],"name":"Total"}]}}]]]
]
Let me know if you can help with any of the items above!

To get the same, Google has launched new Real Time API. With this API you can easily retrieve real time online visitors as well as several Google Analytics with following dimensions and metrics. https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/realtime/dimsmets/
This is quite similar to Google Analytics API. To start development on this,
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/realtime/v3/devguide

With Google Chrome I can see the data on the Network Panel.
The request endpoint is https://www.google.com/analytics/realtime/bind
Seems like the connection stays open for 2.5 minutes, and during this time it just keeps getting more and more data.
After about 2.5 minutes the connection is closed and a new one is open.
On the Network panel you can only see the data for the connections that are terminated. So leave it open for 5 minutes or so and you can start to see the data.
I hope that can give you a place to start.

Having google in the loop seems pretty redundant. Suggest you use a common element delivered on demand from the dashboard server and include this item by absolute URL on all pages to be monitored for a given site. The script outputting the item can read the IP of the browser asking and these can all be logged into a database and filtered for uniqueness giving a real time head count.
<?php
$user_ip = $_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"];
/// Some MySQL to insert $user_ip to the database table for website XXX goes here
$file = 'tracking_image.gif';
$type = 'image/gif';
header('Content-Type:'.$type);
header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($file));
readfile($file);
?>
Ammendum:
A database can also add a timestamp to every row of data it stores. This can be used to further filter results and provide the number of visitors in the last hour or minute.
Client side Javascript with AJAX for fine tuning or overkill
The onblur and onfocus javascript commands can be used to tell if the the page is visible, pass the data back to the dashboard server via Ajax. http://www.thefutureoftheweb.com/demo/2007-05-16-detect-browser-window-focus/
When a visitor closes a page this can also be detected by the javascript onunload function in the body tag and Ajax can be used to send data back to the server one last time before the browser finally closes the page.
As you may also wish to collect some information about the visitor like Google analytics does this page https://panopticlick.eff.org/ has a lot of javascript that can be examined and adapted.

I needed/wanted realtime data for personal use so I reverse-engineered their system a little bit.
Instead of binding to /bind I get data from /getData (no pun intended).
At /getData the minimum request is apparently: https://www.google.com/analytics/realtime/realtime/getData?pageId&key={{propertyID}}&q=t:0|:1
Here's a short explanation of the possible query parameters and syntax, please remember that these are all guesses and I don't know all of them:
Query Syntax: pageId&key=propertyID&q=dataType:dimensions|:page|:limit:filters
Values:
pageID: Required but seems to only be used for internal analytics.
propertyID: a{{accountID}}w{{webPropertyID}}p{{profileID}}, as specified at the Documentation link below. You can also find this in the URL of all analytics pages in the UI.
dataType:
t: Current data
ot: Overtime/Past
c: Unknown, returns only a "count" value
dimensions (| separated or alone), most values are only applicable for t:
1: Country
2: City
3: Location code?
4: Latitude
5: Longitude
6: Traffic source type (Social, Referral, etc.)
7: Source
8: ?? Returns (not set)
9: Another location code? longer.
10: Page URL
11: Visitor Type (new/returning)
12: ?? Returns (not set)
13: ?? Returns (not set)
14: Medium
15: ?? Returns "1"
page:
At first this seems to work for pagination but after further analysis it looks like it's also used to specify which of the 6 pages (Overview, Locations, Traffic Sources, Content, Events and Conversions) to return data for.
For some reason 0 returns an impossibly high metrictotal
limit: Result limit per page, maximum of 50
filters:
Syntax is as specified at the Documentation 2 link below except the OR is specified using | instead of a comma.6==CUSTOM;1==United%20States
You can also combine multiple queries in one request by comma separating them (i.e. q=t:1|2|:1|:10,t:6|:1|:10).
Following the above "documentation", if you wanted to build a query that requests the page URL and city of the top 10 active visitors with a traffic source type of CUSTOM located in the US you would use this URL: https://www.google.com/analytics/realtime/realtime/getData?key={{propertyID}}&pageId&q=t:10|2|:1|:10:6==CUSTOM;1==United%20States
Documentation
Documentation 2
I hope that my answer is readable and (although it's a little late) sufficiently answers your question and helps others in the future.

Does Outlook correctly handle time zones for .ics (ICalendar) files?

I have a program that sends calendar appointments out to users. However these users are in many different time zones. When I create the .ics file, I set the time zone to the local time zone, because they are scheduled here. They then get sent out to the users, who are scattered across many time zones.
Will outlook handle this correctly? As in: if I schedule a person for an 8am meeting and I am in Philadelphia, it should come up as 8am meeting for them in any other time zone.
I know that Outlook works with time zones to an extent, but I couldn't find any good documentation on it.
EDIT:
I really should have asked something more along the lines of how do you format it to handle this correctly, here is the format I am currently using. But I have little experience with this so I might be doing it wrong:
String[] iCalArr = { "BEGIN:VCALENDAR",
"PRODID:-//foobar//morefoobar//EN",
"VERSION:2.0",
"CALSCALE:GREGORIAN",
"METHOD:REQUEST",
"BEGIN:VTIMEZONE",
"TZID:America/New_York",
"X-LIC-LOCATION:America/New_York",
"BEGIN:DAYLIGHT",
"TZOFFSETFROM:-0500",
"TZOFFSETTO:-0400",
"TZNAME:EDT",
"DTSTART:19700308T020000",
"RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=2SU",
"END:DAYLIGHT",
"BEGIN:STANDARD",
"TZOFFSETFROM:-0400",
"TZOFFSETTO:-0500",
"TZNAME:EST",
"DTSTART:19701101T020000",
"RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=11;BYDAY=1SU",
"END:STANDARD",
"END:VTIMEZONE",
"BEGIN:VEVENT",
"DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:" + strBeginDate,
"DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:" + strEndDate,
"DTSTAMP:" + strNow,
"UID:DT 2012 Training - " + System.Guid.NewGuid().ToString(),
"RECURRENCE-ID;TZID=America/New_York:20110207T103000",
"CREATED:" + strNow,
"DESCRIPTION;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:foobar",
"LAST-MODIFIED:" + strNow,
"LOCATION:" + location,
"SEQUENCE:1",
"STATUS:TENTATIVE",
"SUMMARY:foobar",
"TRANSP:OPAQUE",
"END:VEVENT", "END:VCALENDAR" };

Outlook should handle that just fine, assuming your particular application writes out proper timezone information. Or perhpaps works in UTC and marks everything with the Z zone.
I'm confused by your remark that "testing is not an option". I can imagine the unidentified "program" being unable to write out test data, but your question indicates you worry about Outlook. Surely you can handedit some ICS files with different timezones and feed them to Outlook? This should clearly indicate that Outlook knows how to deal with them.

yes Outlook handles time zones, this article from the KB actually indicates a limitation which is that Outlook needs to be updated everytime a timezone (DST, ...) is changed:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931667

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