ActionScript 3 madness

Many people in the big corporations thinks now it’s time to move to AS 3 their oldies (I heard of people still using AS 1 code). But seems they are only interested in quick transcodings (concept which isn’t possible, at all, unless we are talking about 10 lines of code).

In Pescados Software we use AS only as a tool, so we moved to AS 3 when we needed it, but allways for new projects. Re-usable AS 2 code was finally thrown, as most of times we found it wasn’t so “re-usable” at all. I think AS 3 is a good starting point to make new “solid” stuff. Although I’m not specially satisfied with the performance and “features” of the newer versions of Flash Player, I think AS 3 is a pretty decent language which many people coming from other programming languages (such as Java or PHP) adopted easilly, and others like us (more in the “design side of Flash”) can adapt-to, coming from the background usages of AS 1 and 2.

Still, from the end-user point of view, I don’t see many advances (watching silly HD videos in Youtube is no more than watching silly videos at all, only to mention one of the best new features of the latest FP versions, quite unrelated to AS 3 at all). If we spend the new power of AS 3 creating special effects (which aren’t so special at all), I will feel like a monkey with a gun. We must evolve and create the web 2.0, before the web 3.0 arrives so soon.

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Backup remote mysql databases to local MAMP via AppleScript/SSH

Requirements: access to the remote machine (usually a server) via SSH.

I backup my databases to the local installation of MAMP (stands for Mac-Apache-MySQL-PHP), but you can specify any directory you wish.

First step: do some stuff, so you can login automatically (no password prompt) to the remote machine. I followed the steps at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=30709 and it worked flawlessly. In the first step exposed there, just type what the folk says, then “enter” all the time long (no need to enter data).

After you successfully copy the public key to the remote server, just copy-paste the following to your script editor, modify what you need to match your settings and hit “Run”:

--> this is the folder where the remote "mysql" dir will be copied
--> I choose MAMP's one, but you can choose any for backup purposes
set localDir to "User:Library:Application Support:appsolute:MAMP PRO:db:"

--> enter your server, the dir where your "mysql" dir is located (usually something as /var/lib)
--> and move it to whatever location is available via HTTP
--> if you don't have such service, you can use "scp" to copy the file to your machine
--> but then you must setup your machine to accept SSH connections
with timeout of 3600 seconds --> 1 hour
do shell script "ssh -l root server.com 'cd /var/lib; tar -zcf mysql.tar.gz mysql;mv mysql.tar.gz /var/www'"
end timeout

--> download tgz file and remove pre-existing "mysql" folder in local machine (not sure yours, mine yes)
do shell script "cd " & quoted form of POSIX path of localDir & "; curl -O http://www.server.com/mysql.tar.gz; rm -rf mysql;"

--> unpack
tell application "Finder" to open (localDir & "mysql.tar.gz")

--> remove tgz file from remote and local servers (I'll keep the uncompressed dir)
do shell script "ssh -l root qilania.com 'rm /var/www/mysql.tar.gz'; rm " & quoted form of POSIX path of (localDir & "mysql.tar.gz")

Cheers!

EDIT: See this post for a different option (supports other db engines, such as InnoDB).

Hello world!

Welcome to my personal blog about Qilania, the educational MMORPG for kids which will be born in 2010, where I act as product manager.

This will be a very interesting project, not only for its nature, but for the great amount of technologies used in it: SmartFox Pro Server and OpenSpace, PHP, MySQL, Flash and Flex, Java and AppleScript (in order to automate lots of tasks).

Stay tuned!