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Dynamic Connections Build GMC3 Available for WCE

Thread began 8/25/2010 2:25 pm by Anna Robinson | Last modified 9/07/2010 10:15 am by Anna Robinson | 2338 views | 15 replies |

Anna Robinson

Dynamic Connections Build GMC3 Available for WCE

Announcing a brand new extension... Dynamic Connections! This Dreamweaver extension is ready for beta testing. Download the build here.

This extension allows you to create a dynamic database connection file. There are 3 common scenarios this might be used for:
- Make a connection file that will dynamically determine the domain it's on and use the appropriate credentials based on that domain.
- Make a connection file to allow changing of the credentials even on the same domain.
- Make a connection file where just the username and password are dynamic so that different users can have different permissions.

You can access the UI from the database panel > Dynamic MySQL Connection (or anywhere else in Dreamweaver that you can create a database connection).

The serial number is h97Ej-oYnXn-0y9Nd-Vf389. As usual, there are a limited amount of activations so please do not install on more than 2 machines. We look forward to any and all feedback!

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Please remember that the beta build is only available to the WCE group so please do not report bugs or feedback in the regular forums; use this forum to provide us input or ask questions.

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Ray BorduinWebAssist

Since nobody has commented yet, I'll try to point out a few more of the advantages.

- Make a connection file that will dynamically determine the domain it's on and use the appropriate credentials based on that domain.

Currently a lot of people have a separate local and live database that have different connection information. The only way to handle this now is to maintain separate versions of the connection file. Then you have to make sure not to upload dependent files because it would overwrite the local or live version and break your site. With this new extension you can set up both versions in the connection file itself and not worry about this problem any more.

- Make a connection file to allow changing of the credentials even on the same domain.

Since you can have truly dynamic connection information you can for instance have multiple powerstore sites running with a single admin and allow someone to choose the store they want to administer from the admin and have it switch databases so that one admin could control any number of stores. Also you could use this for things like localization of different languages. For instance in powerCMS you could create a copy of your database for each language and have a dropdown to change the connection to the corresponding language which actually switches the database. Then you can have english, french, spanish, or whatever other language versions of your site all controlled by a session variable that changes the connection and the rest of your site can be the same.

- Make a connection file where just the username and password are dynamic so that different users can have different permissions.

More and more our extensions are going to start creating and manipulating database tables for you. This means your connection in Dreamweaver needs to have privilages that allow that, but you may not want your website user to have the same permissions for security reasons. This allows you to use one connection in DW but a separate connection on your live site to prevent any security concerns around having a user with database table editing privilages... also you may have a site where users view data and administrators insert and update data. You can use different database usernames and passwords associated with the user group by managing session variables to prevent users from having anything but read access to the database. That way even if you hapen to miss a SQL injection hole no malicious destruction or manipulation of data would be possible since the user permissions would prevent those types of queries from running, even though an admin that logs in could still have permission to make those edits.

Make sense? There are probably other good uses of this extension I haven't thought of as well. Please provide some feedback about whether this extension is helpful for you and how you would use it.

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Did this help? Tips are appreciated...

anonymous

Totally makes sense. I actually am working on a project where several different sites utilize the exact same platform I created except for the database. This will be huge plus in only maintaining one set of files locally and then being able to push the code to all the respective different sites and allow them to acquire the connection information dynamically.

I just saw it at 3 AM this morning for the first time and hadn't had a chance to download and begin testing until now. I will report back anything I find.

Brian

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anonymous

Ok... just ran into a problem with this beta.

I am configuring the dynamic connection for two sites I have on the same server.

They do have different domain names and when I configure the two different connections -- one to be used with first domain and then one to be used with the second domain, it instead just uses the connection from the first domain even though I have not set up the second domain to even utilize the first additional connection.

---- EDIT ----

Actually, what was happening is that it was caching the old variable so the new connections file didn't take hold.

So my next question or suggestion for this extension would be to put in some cache busting code for the connection file. This should be somewhat easy as it is just a static block of code that I feel would be very beneficial.

Many thanks!

Brian

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anonymous

Ok... so there is another update to my previous problem.

It is not just a cache issue.

It actually does not correctly identify the domain when going without the "www".

So, "www.mydomain.com" will work fine but if you just have "http://mydomain.com", then it tries to use the first connection possible.

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anonymous

Ray,

I went ahead and rewrote the code for my dynamic connection file just so my applications (which are live) wouldn't break. But I would love to get another build of this. I can also show you the code I wrote (which is quite a bit simpler for my needs) if needed.

Regards,

Brian

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CraigRBeta Tester

i just tried it for a test subdomain I use

initially my 'additional connection' domain was set to

"http://www.subdomain.domain.com" which fails.

if I use either

"www.subdomain.domain.com" or just
"subdomain.domain.com"

it seems to work fine

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anonymous

Hi Craig,

After talking with Ray, I was able to confirm that you should only be entering the domain without the prefixing protocols... so like you said - either "domain.com" or "subdomain.domain.com."

Best regards,

Brian

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Russell CollinsBeta Tester

Wonderful

Hey this plugin is great!

what a relief it is to get the hassle of local and live db's conn's finally sorted, not to mention the importance of easily developing multi level db security.

Regards

Russ

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John LangerBeta Tester

Yeah, worked like a dream. Only tested for local and remote servers, no muti-database stuff as I haven't got a need for that at the moment but from what I read that should work fine. This will be a great asset as I'm constantly forgetting to change the database criteria 'twixt local and remote!!.

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