File Uploads

Ok, first up file uploads for those that aren't clear are the following sorts of things:

• adding a picture on your computer to an aritcle (you upload the image file)
• installing a new component/plug-in/temple (these items are uploaded to your website)
• uploading data to a custom component (like PDF & JPGs to Flipbook or CSV files for use in EasyTable)

A file upload is literally the transmission of data from your computer to the web server that your website runs on.

Unlike normal activities like editing text or creating menus which send small amount of data to specific fields, file uploads send much larger amounts of data in a pre-packaged format.  Files that can be uploaded can be a variety of types, common ones include:

• ZIP/GZ  (compressed data files)
• JPG/PNG/GIF (images)
• SWF, AVI, MOV, MP3, MP4 (Flash, audio & video)

As file uploads are usually self contained packages they have to be treated with much more care. As such hosting services and most CMS software have limits on what can be uploaded. Some file restrictions that you might encouter include:

• no executable files
  • to prevent virus transmission
• no script files
  • like PHP
  • Perl etc
  • done to prevent hacking of the website
• no files over a specified size
  
  • typically ranges from 0Mb to a user configurable number
  • usually the better the host the bigger you can go

Generally the one that causes the most trouble with a CMS website is the maximum file size you're allowed to upload. In Joomla this is controlled by a PHP variable called upload_max_filesize.

The value this variable has is usually controlled by your hosting service at the cheap end of town and by yourself in the nicer hosting services.

What's my upload_max_filesize?

The default PHP value is 2M (2 megabytes), most hosting providers change it from this either up or down. There are a variety of ways to find your websites value:

• on WHM/CPanel system
  • Open the PHP Configuration icon and look for the line highlighted in image below.
• on Joomla 1.5
  • Select the menu "Help" -> "System Info" -> "PHP Information"
  • Scroll down to the end of the PHP Core section to find the value of upload_max_filesize
• using a test PHP file
  • create and upload a phpinfo() file to your server (if you don't know what this means don't do it)
• contact your hosting provider

How can I change my upload_max_filesize?

There are a range of ways including using your WHM access to change it, setting a php.ini file up and finally calling your hosting provider. We recommend you read about it because you can cause problems if you do it the wrong way.

As a starting point here's a Google search for you.

• version details (Joomla, PHP, mySQL etc)
• browser name, version & platform (eg. Firefox, Safari, Chrome and which platform Mac/Win)
• URL showing the problem
  
  • if no URL is available then a screen shot
• any error messages (please cut and paste them out of your browser into the forum, don't try to remember them and type them in.)
• turn on Joomla's debug mode and try to create the error again (also look at the debug output and copy and paste any relevant sections into your forum post.)

JInstaller::install: Failed to copy file

This is a common message that usually results from file or directory permissions on the hosting environment.  The easiest way to check if the problem is being caused by permission issues is to use Joomla's built-in "System Info" option in the Help menu.

When you select the "System Info" option, then you are presented with a range of information tabs about your website and the Joomla installation.

As shown in this screenshot one of the tabs you can choose is called “Directory Permissions’ - for you to be able to successfully install components, plug-ins and templates then all of these directories listed should show as “Writable”.  If they don't (the directory permission show as “Unwritable”) you will need to change the permissions for your Joomla installation.

How do I change the permissions for my Joomla installation?

First up - changing permissions can be dangerous. If you don't really understand permissions and ownership get the technical support staff at your hosting service to fix the permissions for you.  Specifically the webserver will need read and write access to the Joomla installation, it will also need ownership or membership of a group that owns the websites directories.

Changing permissions will depend on your website hosting setup.

• If your host provides cPanel access you can use the “File Manager” to change the directory permissions.
• If your host provides Shell access you can use chmod and chown to set the permissions to 755 and the group owner to the webserver's group
• If your host has a custom control panel specific to them you may be best off opening a support ticket to get the problem resolved.

It's not my Permissions!

If your permissions are all showing as writable then the next most likely cause is that your Joomla installation is version 1.5.10 - a typical error in this case will look like this:

JInstaller::install: File
'/website/tmp/install_38bd786260b81/SomeComponent.install.php' does not exist.
Component Install: Could not copy PHP install file.

Joomla 1.5.10 had a slight change which causes this error to be thrown, it has been resolved in all subsequent versions.  The simplest solution is to upgrade to a latter (and more secure) version of Joomla 1.5.

It's not my Permissions and it's not Joomla 1.5.10

If you've gotten this far and it hasn't worked the final thing to check is your “Global Configuration” for “FTP Settings”. If you have FTP enable/disbaled, flip the FTP option (set it to the opposite setting) and try again.

In our experience with our software/templates and with Third Party products these steps have resolved 99% of installation issues via the Joomla Installer.

See People Software is a brand of Craig Phillips Pty Ltd (CPPL).

CPPL's core business is:

• software development for:
  • iPhone applications
  • Joomla Extensions
• devloping new websites using Open Source solutions like Joomla!
  • setup
  • on-server configuration & support
  • training
  • templates
  • public/intranet website
• Managed Web Services
  • Maintenace
  • Managed Websites
  • Managed Services
  • Service Monitoring

The best way to get us involved is to drop us a line via our contact form!

A support subscription gives you access to the private Subscriber Forum for that specific product. Subscriber Forums are actively monitored and responed to by CPPL during business hours. The CPPL business hours are Monday-Friday 0800-1800 AEST.

At this point there are two subscription plans available:

1. EasyTable Subscription 3 Months
2. EasyTable Subscription 6 Months

As the name of each plan indicates the subscription is valid for 3 or 6 months.

The Subscriber Forum provides:

• installation and configuration support issue
• bug resolution
• early access to new versions of the software
• any subscriber only software that may be developed.

Previous Version

If you click on the "Downloads" menu heading (http://seepeoplesoftware.com/downloads.html) rather that the menu item "Current Easytable.zip" you will get to all the files available for download.

Below the sample files you will find the version prior to the current version.

Current Version

If you mouse over the "Downloads" menu heading (http://seepeoplesoftware.com/downloads.html) and then click on the menu item "Current Easytable.zip" you will download page for the current publicly available version.

You will find the sample files in the general "Downloads" area.

Subscriber and Pre-Release Versions

Current Support Subscribers are able to get the latest version of EasyTable from the private Subscribers Forum. You can download these versions as long as your support subscription is current.

You will find the sample files in the general "Downloads" area.

EasyTable 1.0 “Free” vs “Pro”

KEY

EasyTable performs an quick version check each time the component is opened in the Administrator area of Joomla.

If the easytable.xml file can't be found this indicates that the installation was not successfully completed by Joomla or that the file has been deleted. As EasyTable manipulates your database directly we don't take the risk of a faulty installation and simply stop the component from proceeding.

Solution

You can try re-installing the component to rectify the problem, but if this fails you will need to either try the General Joomla Installations troubleshooting steps or contact your hosting provider to determine the cause of the problem.

Versions Prior to 1.0FC9

If you are using versions prior to 1.0FC9 you will experience a similar error that reads as shown below.

Notice the file that couldn't be opened is prefixed with "public_" (in some very rare cases it could be prefixed with "subscriber_" but this has never been reported).

This error occurs because your website can't contact the SeePeopleSoftware.com website to check current version data. Due to a coding bug in all versions prior to FC9 the EasyTable component would mistakenly abort it's execution rather than setting the version display message appropriately.

Solution

Upgrade to a more recent version of the EasyTable component.

Quick Answer

The EasyTable component as mentioned elsewhere, uses the CSV parser built into PHP, which probably follows the RFC for CSV files very closely.

According to the RFC any field in a CSV file should only contain text data (remember this is an old standard from before the internet, and text basically means a-z, A-Z, 0-9 and a few special characters).

Note that those ranges don't include unicode characters outside of the original ASCII character set. If your CSV file has Unicode characters the PHP parser probably drops them (either that, or we're made a mistake).

How do I fix this?

The program that's exporting the data should already do that for you (although some don't).  Basically Ó would under normal conversion rules change to either O or Ö based on options your program may support. Some common encoding examples:

Ö becomes Ö

É becomes É

Ë becomes Ë

Ó becomes Ó

A bit more technically

Fields in CSV files are considered to be TEXTDATA, where TEXTDATA =  %x20-21 / %x23-2B / %x2D-7E

The section below expands out the hex values to their common text equivalents:

20:21
[space] !

23:24:25:26:27:28:29:2A:2B
#  $  %  &  '  (  )  *  +

2D:2E:2F
-  .  /

30:31:32:33:34:35:36:37:38:39:3A:3B:3C:3D:3E:3F
0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  :  ;  <  =  >  ?

40:41:42:43:44:45:46:47:48:49:4A:4B:4C:4D:4E:4F
@  A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O

50:51:52:53:54:55:56:57:58:59:5A:5B:5C:5D:5E:5F
P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z  [  \  ]  ^  _

60:61:62:63:64:65:66:67:68:69:6A:6B:6C:6D:6E:6F
`  a  b  c  d  e  f  g  h  i  j  k  l  m  n  o

70:71:72:73:74:75:76:77:78:79:7A:7B:7C:7D:7E
p  q  r  s  t  u  v  w  x  y  z  {  |  }  ~

Normally

Example Column Heading creates an alias example-column-heading

The Problem

Example Column Heading creates an alias qexample-column-headingq

Discussion

The EasyTable component imports text files in a CSV format.

Originally text files were all ASCII files but now with the advent of the Internet and multi-byte character sets there are lots of different encoding formats. Combine this with PHP & server settings and different Operating System platforms and it's very easy to get a file that has been exported incorrectly.

If you have a decent text editor you can do a "hex dump" and see what is actually in the file. For example, this recent file looked like this dumped:

00000000: EF BB BF 22 52 65 73 75 	Ôªø"Resu 
00000008: 6C 74 20 49 64 22 2C 22 	lt Id"," 
00000010: 52 61 63 65 20 49 64 22 	Race Id" 
00000018: 2C 22 54 65 61 6D 22 2C 	,"Team", 
00000020: 22 44 72 69 76 65 72 20 	"Driver  
00000028: 23 31 22 2C 22 43 6F 75 	#1","Cou 
00000030: 6E 74 72 79 20 44 31 22 	ntry D1" 
00000038: 2C 22 44 72 69 76 65 72 	,"Driver 

All those non alphanumeric characters tell us the file isn't properly encoded. The same file saved out as UTF-8 no BOM looks the way it should:

00000000: 22 52 65 73 75 6C 74 20 	"Result  
00000008: 49 64 22 2C 22 52 61 63 	Id","Rac 
00000010: 65 20 49 64 22 2C 22 54 	e Id","T 
00000018: 65 61 6D 22 2C 22 44 72 	eam","Dr 
00000020: 69 76 65 72 20 23 31 22 	iver #1" 
00000028: 2C 22 43 6F 75 6E 74 72 	,"Countr 
00000030: 79 20 44 31 22 2C 22 44 	y D1","D 
00000038: 72 69 76 65 72 20 23 32 	river #2

Firstly have you read this article?

If you have then these are the things to check:

1. The "Key Field" and the "Linked Key Field" are both visible in the List View of their respective tables.
   • Version 1.0fc7 and later can use any column/field even if it isn't displayed in the list or detail views.
2. The link search is an exact match, so "California" = "California" but "California" <> "california"
3. Make sure you haven't unpublished your linked table after linking it.

The alias is used to create table columns in MySQL and it is used as the CSS class name for the column and table cell.

As a result the first character of the alias must be in the range of A to Z, upper or lower case , or [a-z,A-Z]. If EasyTable finds a column label that starts with a number or other non-alphabetic character it will prepend a lower case 'a' to the alias when creating it.

For example;

Column Label = '18 to 24'

Alias = 'a18-to-24'

In a strictly technical sense the table can be as big as your database can handle.

In reality you can currently upload a 3,000,000 byte (3 MB) CSV file with the component. Practically we could increase it or remove the limit but that would lead to problems in the EasyTable operation at the current stage of development.

However, the 3 MB presumes your Joomla installation is setup on an environment that lets you upload a file that large. We have come across some hosting providers that have strange limits - needless to say we don't use them anymore.

To answer the next logical question, we hope in a future version to add support for:

1. ZIP'd files (you can fit a lot of text into a compressed 3 MB file).
2. Importing a previously uploaded file from a directory with not conceivable size limit.
3. Importing from another internet address (URL import0

No.

Now that the short answer is dealt with, here's the slightly longer one.

The Alias is created at the time the table is created, that's because we actually create a real table in the backend database your Joomla website is running on. The alias is the actual column name in the table in the database, it's also used to for the CSS class label for the column.

To answer the next logical question - yes in a future version you may be able to change the alias. Like all feature requests it really depends on how much time we can afford to spend on the EasyTable component.

EasyTable 1.0 imports data in a CSV file format. The CSV format (RFC4180) is defined here, a more readable summary is on Wikipedia.

The key part of the error message occurs at very begining:

EasyTable only supports CSV files and it does this using PHP's method fgetCSV method. If the fgetCSV throws up an error you will see that line "Possibly your CSV file is malformed"

The first thing to check is the CSV file meets the definition. The best way to do this is using a Unicode aware text editor that can search for & display invisible characters in your CSV file, ( and no Notepad isn't good enough ). I personally recommend BBEdit but I'm sure there's something on Windows/Linux environments that does a similar job.

Things to look out for

• control characters that need to be encoded first
• comma's in the body of a field that aren't properly encased
• the wrong delimiter used for fields eg. a semi-colon ; rather than a comma

To determine if your file is the source of the problem try downloading the sample CSV file in our downloads area and uploading it to your website. If that works then there's a reasonable chance that your CSV file is malformed as the error message indicates.

EasyTable is a Joomla 1.5 Native component it does not work with any 1.0 era versions of Joomla. There will not be a version for Joomla 1.0 (unless you want to pay for it to be written, in which case contact us).

Having said that EasyTable 1.0  (and all previous versions) have the following requirements.

Requirements

Joomla Version

1.5.14 ( although it may work on previous versions of Joomla 1.5 { 1.5.10 does have a known issue with packages that we can't address } )

Database

MySQL 5.0+ ( FC1 has run on the last version of MySQL 4.1 so it should work )

PHP Version

5.1+ ( it's 2010 people - you'll just have to live with it ).