Yii URL creation

I was losing track of how to do this so here it is. Here's how to create an absolute URL in Yii.

Yii::app()->createAbsoluteUrl(

Facebook App setup - don't miss this or it won't work

I was getting frustrated trying to use their demo apps. I couldn't seem to get my user account logged in and displaying my friends..etc.  Well it turns that I hadn't enabled the proper permissions in the Facebook App admin screen. It's on a different page than the app setup screen. Once I added "email" to the permissions, it worked like a charm!

Facebook App Demo Difficulties

Facebook has a few demo applications you can use to learn how to work with their API. Unfortunately they haven't kept these demo's updated with the recent changes.

For example, to get the URL for a friends photo used to be:

friends.picture

but now it's

friends.picture.data.url

The change makes total sense, I just wish they would update it.

Installing Python Imaging Library (PIL)

The Facebook example app I'm testing with requires the PIL library to be installed for Python.

http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/

Downloading and running it caused the installation program to crash.

Problem:
PIL Installation crashed

Solution:
Right click the insall file and "Run as Administrator"

Installing Google App Engine on Vista

As with my previous post regarding installing Python MSI file, I had to copy it to my local drive and run it from there.

After it loads up, I get the following error:

Problem:

Could not access network location
\\[servername]\[profilename]$\Profile\Desktop

Solution:

Open a DOS/command prompt, go into the folder containing that MSI file and run the following command:

msiexec /a c:\tmp\GoogleAppEngine-1.7.3.msi /qb TARGETDIR=c:\gae

This will automatically extract all the files into the c:\gae folder.  Once this is done, you can run the Google App Engine launcher from here:

C:\gae\Google\google_appengine\launcher\GoogleAppEngineLauncher.exe

I made a shortcut to it. I was able to add an existing project to it and it's working perfectly.

Installing Python on Windows Vista

I'm trying to install Python 2.7 on my Windows Vista machine so I can use it with Google App Engine to do some HTML5 app coding.  I run into the following error:

Problem:
This installation package could not be opened. Verify that the package exists and that you can access it, or contact the application vendor to verify that this is a valid Windows Installer package

I had no problem downloading the MSI file, multiple times, so I know that isn't the problem.

Solution:
I was running this install/setup file from a mapped drive. Copy the MSI file into the c:\tmp or similar folder and run it from there.

We begin here.

I need a place to keep track of common solutions to issues I've run into. This is where I'm going to keep them. Hopefully these posts will be helpful to others as well.