I love Dropbox.

I’ve been using Dropbox for some of my file storage across my computers for about a year now. It was a great place to store my resume so that all my computers were synced with the changes that I was constantly making while out of work.

And now I have begun to use Dropbox for development and syncing among all my computers … and it rocks. If you haven’t considered it for your development projects, Dropbox is your answer. No more USB sticks, or emailing myself a zip file, or anything like that. It’s perfect!

Here are some highlights:

• 2 gigabytes free
• Any file is welcome
• You handle your files on your computer normally; no funky upload/download
• Versioning! Yes, I said versioning!
• Auto-syncing across all computers: Windows and Mac
• Shared folders
• Undo and Undelete!
• Did I mention it was FREE?

So, take a moment and get your Dropbox. You won’t regret it.

Of course, I learned an incredible amount and feel the experience was invaluable to my current work. There were things I truly could have done without (like mild panic attacks, being away from my wife, etc.) but on the whole I learned a ton.

In the end I feel that I gave it my all, and no matter what happens in the future, I don’t have any regrets.

Firstoff, my friend Mitch has started http://barkingants.com. He seems to be picking up steam with his work, which is mostly small- and medium-sized websites. His work and development knowledge are top notch.

Then, there is http://bluetractor.com which is the online home of my friend John Thomas. John specializes in flash presentations, and even flash games, but he also does a lot of traditional web design. Look for Blue Tractor to break out this year with a lot of great work.

Lastly, there is http://gelfusion.org, whom I just met this week. Greg is the principle owner and he has a vast amount of experience in the online world. I’m finding he is the silent type doing delivery of work for some pretty well-known clients, and doing awesome at it in the meantime.

Anyhow, things are still going okay for me. I can’t believe it’s been over a year since I moved to the Nashville area. Time really flies.

So, one problem that we’ve come across is a way to relate several tables (or weblogs as EE calls them) together. An example would be like so: doctors, their specialties, and the locations of their practice. A likely scenario is a user wants to find out what locations provide a certain specialty. Thus, you have to use the doctors as the bridge of the data.

In Expression Engine you can use a related field to tie two tables of data together. For instance, I can tie a Doctor to a certain specialty using a related field. But, creating a bridge between the doctors’ specialties and all the locations is not possible without a little custom programming.

Also, throw in the mix that doctors can have offices at several locations, and you’ve got a hairy set of data. (We’re using the multi-relationship plug-in from here).

So, let’s get to the code.

<?php
global $DB;
$addresses = $DB->query("SELECT * FROM `exp_weblog_data` WHERE weblog_id = 6");
foreach($addresses->result as $address){
	$doctors = $DB->query("SELECT * FROM `exp_weblog_data` WHERE weblog_id = 3");
	foreach($doctors->result as $doc){
		$rel_field_ids = array(2);
		$rel_field_ids_new = '';
		$rel_field_ids[0] = $doc['field_id_34'];
		$rel_field_ids[1] = ereg_replace("\r",",",$doc['field_id_35']);
		$rel_field_ids_new = "'" . implode("','",$rel_field_ids) . "'";
		$specialties = $DB->query("SELECT * FROM exp_relationships WHERE rel_id IN (" . $rel_field_ids_new . ")");
		foreach($specialties->result as $specialty){
			if($specialty['rel_child_id'] == $address['entry_id']){
				$specs[] = $specialty['rel_parent_id'];
			}
		}
	}

	if(sizeof($specs) > 0) {
		$specialties_ids = $DB->query("SELECT field_id_13 FROM exp_weblog_data WHERE entry_id IN(" . implode($specs,',') . ")");
		foreach($specialties_ids->result as $s_id){
			$related_spec = $DB->query("SELECT * FROM exp_relationships WHERE rel_id = " . $s_id['field_id_13']);
			$related_spec_title = $DB->query("SELECT title FROM exp_weblog_titles WHERE entry_id = " . $related_spec->row['rel_child_id']);
			if(!in_array($related_spec_title->row['title'],$titles_array)){ $titles_array[] = $related_spec_title->row['title']; }
		}
	}
	implode($titles_array,"','")
}
?>

So, in a nutshell the code above will compare the locations with the specialties using the exp_relationships table and the doctor as the bridge.

I had to think about it a bit, but you kinda get the idea. I hope this helps someone out there struggling with the same issue.

Happy coding.

Note: When copying this code make sure you replace the curly quotes.