Or, in this case, replace “dream” with “framework.”

"You created a work-around by over-riding a function to reference a function that wrapped around a function that we were over-riding? Genius!"

In Inception, the movie, if you die in a dream within a dream within a dream you are stuck in limbo – never to wake up. When dealing with a template with a custom framework that interfaces with Joomla that has its own framework, what happens if you have an error deep in the middle of all that code?

Most of the time PHP sends out friendly errors telling you what is broken, where and why. However, if code is stuck in infinite recursion you end up timing out and/or exhausting your available memory. In simpler times, you would only have to sift through one or two scripts to find the break. With frameworks within frameworks it’s a whole different story. Good times…

My client wanted to move to the cloud. I was happy to set them up on an instance with Amazon’s EC2 service. Their site uses Joomla (1.5.22) along with a YooTheme template which, in turn, uses Warp (5.5.15, developed by the YooTheme folks). Everything was moving along nice and smooth until I started to test the newly migrated site with the Joomla module caching turned on.

I load up the home page, no problem. Then, refreshing the home page to pull it from cache…

Crash.

Memory exhausted?

PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of xxxxxxxxx bytes exhausted (tried to allocate xxxxxx bytes)…

It really didn’t matter how much memory I gave PHP by updating the “memory_limit” parameter in /etc/php.ini. The application had a voracious appetite for memory. Nothing could satisfy it. That told me that I was dealing with either recursion or some ridiculous database issue (like pulling a million records into memory). I ruled out the database issue and started to focus on infinite recursion as the culprit.

Poking around the code, I found the break point was in the Warp framework’s directory in ./yoo_enterprise/warp/systems/joomla.1.5/helpers/system.php with the following code:

if (!function_exists('mb_strpos')) {
     function mb_strpos($haystack, $needle, $offset = false) {
     return JString::strpos($haystack, $needle, $offset);
     }
}

I commented out that function to discover I hadn’t set up the new box with multibyte support (http://php.net/manual/en/book.mbstring.php).

Call to undefined function mb_strpos()

Oops. However, it would seem the developers of Warp had accounted for this. After all, the comment right above that nifty function stated the following: “mb_strpos function for servers not using the multibyte string extension”

How thoughtful. So why was this failing?

Digging deeper, I looked into the JString method in the Joomla libraries in ./libraries/joomla/utilities/string.php and found this bit of useful code:

function strpos($str, $search, $offset = FALSE)
{
     if ( $offset === FALSE ) {
          return utf8_strpos($str, $search);
     } else {
          return utf8_strpos($str, $search, $offset);
     }
}

Ah, I see. Joomla devs seemed to have created a useful function for dealing with utf8. I wonder what that function looked like…

Digging into ./libraries/phputf8/mbstring/core.php I found the following:

function utf8_strpos($str, $search, $offset = FALSE) {
     if(strlen($str) && strlen($search)) {
          if ( $offset === FALSE ) {
               return mb_strpos($str, $search);
          } else {
               return mb_strpos($str, $search, $offset);
     }
} else
     return FALSE;
}

At this point in the movie Leonardo Dicaprio spins his totem and you wonder if it will ever stop spinning. Well, it will… when it runs out of memory. Yes, Warp’s mb_strpos calls Joomla’s utf8_strpos which, in turn, calls mb_strpos which, of course, has been overwritten by Warp’s mb_strpos which calls Joomla’s utf8_strpos and so on and so on…

Satisfied that I figured out what was the causing the error, I ran the following commands on the box:

sudo yum install php-mbstring.i686
sudo /etc/init.d/httpd restart

And… it works. The site — not the code. I left that broken and tried to report the bug to the devs. Now that I have multibyte support the site bypasses that first function that started this bad dream in the first place.

Of course, I could have just installed php-mbstring as soon as I figured out I needed it but where’s the fun in that when finding recursive black hole code is so much more fun and time consuming?

Update… 5/6/2011 @ 9:25AM
After emailing the devs (I could find no bug tracking system), the devs replied that there actually is a core Joomla function to deal with this issue in libraries/phputf8/native/core.php.

function utf8_strpos($str, $needle, $offset = NULL) {
    if ( is_null($offset) ) {
        $ar = explode($needle, $str);
        if ( count($ar) > 1 ) {
            return utf8_strlen($ar[0]);
        }
        return FALSE;
    } else {
        if ( !is_int($offset) ) {
            trigger_error('utf8_strpos: Offset must be an integer',E_USER_ERROR);
            return FALSE;
        }
        $str = utf8_substr($str, $offset);

        if ( FALSE !== ( $pos = utf8_strpos($str, $needle) ) ) {
            return $pos + $offset;
        }
        return FALSE;
    }
}

He went on to tell me that the decision to include native/core.php resides in libraries/phputf8/utf8.php

Looking at utf8.php, I find the following:

/**
* Load the smartest implementations of utf8_strpos, utf8_strrpos
* and utf8_substr
*/
if ( !defined('UTF8_CORE') ) {
    if ( function_exists('mb_substr') ) {
        require_once UTF8 . '/mbstring/core.php';
    } else {
        require_once UTF8 . '/native/core.php';
    }
}

Yes, that’s right… the native implementation is loaded if mb_substr is defined. Since the Warp code is calling the JString method after it defines its own version of mb_substr… well, you get it.

Update… 5/6/2011 @ 9:45AM

The devs responded with the following fix:

This should be placed in warp/systems/joomla.1.5/helpers/system.php just before the first multibyte (mb_) check:

/* Load string class */
require_once(JPATH_ROOT.'/libraries/joomla/utilities/string.php');

By loading that first, Joomla does its job by establishing the correct utf8 function call for the Warp system to use. You can now wake up.

However, it should be noted that performance takes a big hit through the Joomla utf8 work-around. If you can get multibyte support installed, do that first.

So, it makes wonder if the article that just caught my eye was outsourced to another country or if they simply forgot that rule. Mostly it makes me wonder where in the world a person would write that someone endeavors to do anything?

“The Emergency Unit endeavored to remove a dangling chunk of glass poking from a high-rise window that remained after the pane fell.”

A far more simple way to phrase that would have been, “The Emergency Unit worked…” or “The Emergency Unit was on the scene…” Small words… But “endeavored?”
Now this may not be monkey business at all. But I recall reading some time back that a Southern California newspaper was going to outsource their news team to India.

Having dealt with my fair share of India-based tech support I can say that they certainly endeavor to assist me in finding a most satisfactory solution to my problem. The problem that they are extremely sorry I am experiencing in the first place and hope that I will be patient with them while my record is retrieved but, in the meantime, can I please reboot my computer. That is, if I know how.

So, the real question is did WNBC outsource their news, is a writer getting fancy OR did is the author’s first language not American English? Because, how will our children learn if the words are too big for their eyes? Or, as my ADD-addled brain would say, “oooh, look at that shiny mailbox.”

What the heck is that all about? I don’t remember seeing that on any warning label. At first I passed it off as a one-time oddity. But, just now (well, almost now but just before just now), I was talking to a friend and felt the familiar bzzzt on my leg. I reached toward my pocket to get my phone then noticed it sitting in front of me on my desk. Am I crazy? Anyone else getting ghost vibrations from overuse of your Blackberry?

I’ve had about a half dozen of them in the past two weeks. Weird.

Here’s a video I just made for the occasion from an old super 8 movie.� No monkeys but lots of Paul Simon singing Kodachrome.

I spent the day with one of our former scientists yesterday. We walked the old streets and talked about the old days. It was nice. A lot had changed in our lives but the lab coats were still the same. White, big buttons and poo stains. Ah, those poo stains. Isn’t it funny the things you miss? I can remember a time when nothing bothered me more than a fresh poo toss. I would jump up and scream, pounding my chest with anger at the audacity of it all. Now, the stain is all that reminds me of winters and summers past.

Back then my youthful idealism was as fresh as the stains. The world held limitless possibilities. You could even say infinite. But slowly that idealism gets stripped back. First when I realized I could never afford an infinite number of monkeys then when I realized I’d need to settle on 100. But we must always dream. I dreamed of monkeys.

The institute is quiet now. A few monkeys show up to type randomly at the new computers we set up. Even the clicking of the keyboards sounds different. Perhaps I shouldn’t have invested in the quiet keyboards. No, it was necessary. After all, our worker’s comp insurance required the new ergonomic workstations.

I don’t know if I will ever recapture all 100 monkeys. I don’t know if the floors will ever have as many banana peels and smeared poo skid marks. I don’t know if my lab coat will ever be white again. Right now I’m just thinking of the slide I went down yesterday and the rip in my lab coat I got from jumping off the swing. I was a little annoyed at myself for ripping a perfectly good coat. However, in 10 years that rip may be all that is left of this time in my life. I will hang my lab coat in the closet and smile at the rip. Yesterday took me back 20 years. Before monkeys, before stains, before gray hairs.

After flying in to Newark via the Sunday red-eye (Okay, my eyes were only red from crying. Yes, yes… I made the mistake of watching Cool Runnings on my laptop again. The ending gets me every time), I stopped at the Dollar car rental to pick up my wheels. It turns out that I had to rent an entire car. Lame.

The clerk (associate?) handed me my keys and walked out to the car. Then I looked at the keys:

Why, yes, that is a locked key ring with two identical alarm remotes and two identical keys. Why do you ask? It then occurred to me. I was looking in the wrong place for my missing monkeys! After enquiring as to who may have put together my key ring, I found Milton! Sometimes serendipity just finds you (but usually when it’s looking for someone else).

The plan, as it currently stands, is to move up North in 3 to 5 weeks then commute back down to Los Angeles every week to support ongoing operations. As such, I have been talking to one of our programmers, Danny, to contribute a few hundred dollars (or bananas) per month so I can crash at his yet-to-be-acquired apartment one or two nights per week.

Last night I spent my first night on Danny’s couch.� At least I did in my dream (nightmare?).� I awoke early and knocked on his bedroom door to check in.� He was asleep on the floor.� In his bed was Shannen Doherty of 90210 fame.� What the heck?� “Hello?” I said.

She was pretty casual and not at all the psycho the media had made her out to be.� Oh, yeah, she had a mullet.� Or at least a half mullet.� This, of course, became the central point of our conversation until I woke up.� I’m scared.� Should I be?

We use their service during the day. As you know, music soothes the savage beast. However, recently, each time the Yahoo! Music Jukebox would switch from one song to another it would cause our computer system to come to a near stand-still. As you can imagine, this does not bode well for an organization trying to get monkeys to type a Shakespearian sonnet. You have no idea how much monkey poo would get thrown at the computer monitors each time the system would stall.

In any case, I did what a lot of savvy Interweb users do when confronted with a technical problem from a major Interweb company. That is, AFTER throwing poop at the screen. I went to their website. On the website I found a help screen. On the help screen I found a form. The form wanted Active-X. It told me it needed Active-X AFTER I filled out the form with all the details of my problem (the music problem — not the problem of being a scientist in charge of a monkey typing lab). I was using Firefox. I switched to IE (IE is lame) and filled out the form again. I agreed to install the active-x. I filled out the form and submitted it. The Active-X began to do its thing. It took 5 minutes. After 5 minutes it told me it couldn’t complete its thing. My message wasn’t sent.

I called Bongo over and asked him for help. He came over to my computer and tried. It didn’t like him either. We started searching Yahoo!’s website for a phone number to Yahoo!. There are no phone numbers to Yahoo! on Yahoo!’s web site. So, we did what savvy Interweb users do when they can’t find information on Yahoo! We searched Google for phone numbers for Yahoo!

By the way, I’m not that excited. It’s just that Yahoo!’s name includes an exclamation point.

We found a number for Yahoo! and called them. That number is 866-562-7219. Use that number if you want to call Yahoo!

That wasn’t the right number for our problem. The right number at Yahoo! for our problem was 800-318-0631. This is the number for the Yahoo! Music Service. We got that from Tom. Tom is a customer support person who was reading from a script that we think was written by one of our monkeys. When I told Tom I had tried submitting my problem through their Web form and that I had also tried to re-download and install the software, Tom was very helpful. He suggested I submit my problem through their Web form or that I could try re-downloading and installing their software.

When I was a kid I used to watch the Twilight Zone (in reruns — I’m not THAT old). I was now in the Yahoo! Zone. I didn’t like being in the Yahoo! zone. I think Tom was making fun of me. I don’t think Tom’s real name was Tom but that has nothing to do with this. In any case, I asked Tom if he was reading from a script.

Tom forwarded me to Raymond. I don’t know if Raymond’s real name was Raymond but that’s beside the point. Raymond was twice as helpful as Tom. Yeah, do the math.

I told Raymond what I had told Tom. Raymond was a much better listener. I think Raymond is the kind of guy I could drink a beer with and talk about programming. Tom was just lame. Raymond was very sympathetic to my problem. Tom feigned sympathy. Raymond put me on hold for 3 minutes to find out how he could better help me. Tom had put me on hold TWICE and for about 5 minutes each. Raymond came back and told me that before he could escalate my call and help me I would need to send an email to yahoomusicengine-feedback@cc.yahoo-inc.com. I’m not going to invite Raymond to drink a beer with me and talk about programming. I don’t like Raymond anymore. I don’t like Yahoo! anymore.

We are going to send one of our chartered busses to Yahoo! to pick up our monkeys and bring them back here. Tom and Raymond will have to do without our monkeys preparing scripts for them. Bongo just threw poop at the screen. He doesn’t like Yahoo! either.

To recap: Yahoo! is lame. To reach Yahoo! call 866-562-7219. To reach Yahoo! Music call 800-318-0631.