Tag Archives: Computing

Using PHP’s array_diff in Algorithm Development

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array_diff can be really powerful. Once you’ve to find the different elements between two arrays you’ve to use array_diff. Here’s a case when you can use it while coding a simple algorithm.

The Task

You’ve one array with tickets of linked destinations – so you start from one city to another, than next and so on. Each element is an array with “from” and “to” destinations:

$inputTickets = array(
    0 => array('from' => 'barcelona', 'to' => 'madrid'),
    1 => array('from' => 'sofia', 'to' => 'paris'),
    2 => array('from' => 'madrid', 'to' => 'milano'),
    3 => array('from' => 'paris', 'to' => 'barcelona'),
    4 => array('from' => 'cupertino', 'to' => 'sofia'),
    5 => array('from' => 'milano', 'to' => 'valencia'),
    6 => array('from' => 'valencia', 'to' => 'nice'),
    7 => array('from' => 'mountain view', 'to' => 'cupertino'),
);

It’s easy to construct two arrays – the “from” destinations array and the “to” destinations array, and here the easiest way to get the starting point of the whole trip, because of the fact that these are linked tickets.

$fromDestinations = $toDestinations = array();
 
foreach ($inputTickets as $k => $v) {
    $fromDestinations[] = $v['from'];
    $toDestinations[]   = $v['to'];
}
 
// and finally get the starting point
$startPoint = array_diff($fromDestinations, $toDestinations);

Conclusion

Beside of knowing several algorithm techniques, there’s also need of knowing the language syntax and possibilities – in that case PHP’s

Construct a Sorted PHP Linked List

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This is really a draft, but I somehow decided to post it. Here’s a simple linked list in PHP, where only the add() method is slightly different. When you have an item to add it’s placed on the “right” place – the result is a sorted list.

Few notes before the code! This list is designed for integers, but I plan to “extend” it somehow and it can be improved a lot. In my future posts I’ll post something more about the complexity of the algorithm and an analysis of it.

class Node
{
    public $data;
    public $next;
    public $prev;
 
    public function __construct($data, $prev, $next)
    {
        $this->data = $data;
        $this->prev = $prev;
        $this->next = $next;
    }
}
 
class LinkedList
{
    protected $front = null;
 
    public function add($data)
    {
        if (!$this->front) {
            $node = new Node($data, null, null);
            $this->front = &$node;
        } else {
            if ($data < $this->front->data) {
                $node = new Node($data, null, $this->front);
                $this->front = $node;
                return;
            }
 
            $current = $this->front;
            while ($current) {
                if ($current->data < $data && isset($current->next) && $current->next->data > $data) {
                    $node = new Node($data, $current, $current->next);
                    $current->next = $node;
                }
                if ($current->data < $data && !isset($current->next)) {
                    $node = new Node($data, $current, $current->next);
                    $current->next = $node;
                }
                $current = $current->next;
            }
        }
    }
 
    public function printl()
    {
        $current = &$this->front;
        while($current) {
            echo $current->data, '<br />';
            $current = $current->next;
        }
    }
}
 
$list = new LinkedList();
$list->add(13);
$list->add(14);
$list->add(15);
$list->add(11);
$list->add(12);
$list->add(17);
$list->add(10);
$list->add(16);
 
$list->printl();

jQuery: Setting Up a Vector Path Fill Color

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It’s quite unusual to think of the jQuery’s attr() method as a generic method that can only change basic attributes as value, style, etc. However attr() can change whatever DOM element attribute. In this case you may know that the SVG path element can have a fill attribute, so you can simply setup a:

$('path').attr('fill', '#ccc');

2xjQuery: Select a Selector

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Selectors in jQuery

jQuery JavaScript Library

If you’re familiar with jQuery you should already know what are selectors and how they work. However we’re used to get some DOM element with a specific selector, but actually sometimes you cannot select directly what you need. This is especially true when mixing more than one JavaScript libraries. In my case OpenLayers generated a vector layer and jQuery was supposed to change the vectors fill-color property.

OpenLayers

With the simple $(‘path’) I easily got all vectors in the current document, but the problem was that I took them as text. Thus it came to me to use nested jQuery – $($(‘selector’));

To describe what actually happened in my case, let me show you a breve example.

Example

Here’s a short HTML markup:

<div><span>text text</span></div>

With jQuery I can select both the DIV and SPAN with the simple $(‘div’) and $(‘span’), but just for the example lets assume I’ve only the inner text of the DIV tag:

$('div').html();

That was the case in the OpenLayers/jQuery problem. Now I can easily use another jQuery selector:

$($('div').html());

This will return the same as $(‘span’) – a jQuery object.

Looping Animation with JavaScript and Raphaël

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Raphael is a popular JavaScript library helping you to manage vectors via SVG or VML in your browser. It is extremely helpful and very easy to learn and use. The interesting thing is that in the browser you can do very powerful things with vectors, but they remain very less known. However with such libraries like Raphael the task is really simple.

Animation

As I said animating some vector properties is as simple as:

var paper = Raphael('canvas', 1024, 500);
var c = paper.circle(50, 50, 6).attr({fill : '#f00'});
c.animate({r : 10, fill : '#00f'}, 1000);

Here we change the radius and the background color of the circle for 1000 milliseconds.

The same thing can be done with any property with any other JavaScript library as jQuery. But as in jQuery, Raphael or whatever library the animation is not looping. That’s natural you can just change a property by animating it, but the looping animation suggests at least two animations. So it’s a developers job to implement this. Here’s a simple way to do this.

Two Way Animation

The solution here is using two functions calling each other.

var paper = Raphael('canvas', 1024, 500);
var c = paper.circle(50, 50, 6).attr({fill : '#f00'});
 
function a() {
    c.animate({r : 10, fill : '#00f'}, 1000, b);
}
function b() {
    c.animate({r : 6, fill : '#f00'}, 1000, a);
}
a();