[SQL] How to escape single quotes in the words of Pinal Dave

I will answer this SQL riddle in the words of Pinal Dave:

Jr. Developer asked me other day how to escape single quote?

User can escape single quote using two single quotes (NOT double quote).

In case you need it (I doubt it) he also provides a great example.

The man is a SQL master, and if you're a Jr.Developer (I am not but when it comes to SQL I am probably less than that) you gotta follow him on twitter.  

Another way of injecting single quotes using CHAR(39):

DECLARE @IanQuigley as varchar(MAX)
SET @IanQuigley = 'Thanks, I don' + CHAR(39) + 't know much about SQL'

I did my worst - as usual.

[CSS] DIVs next to each other (and DIVs VS Tables all over again)

Let me guess - you need a page header/footer and you wanna use DIVs 'cause your buddy on digg or reddit says tables are soooooooo uncool? 

Here's a few CSS classes that will get you were you want to be:

.left {
width: 80%;
heigth: 10%;
position: relative;
float: left;
}

.right {
width: 20%;
heigth: 10%;
position: relative;
float: right;
}

.wrapper {
width: 100%;
position: relative;
clear: both;
}

And here's an example of the markup you might be looking for:

<div class="wrapper">
 <div class="left">
  <!-- Whatever - maybe a lame logo -->
 </div>
 <div class="right">
  <!-- Whatever - maybe login stuff -->
 </div>
</div>
<div class="wrapper">
 <!-- Content -->
</div>

You can repeat this basic Header structure as much as you want if you need nested divs to resemble (here I say it) tables.

But - on a side note - using a table would be much more intuitive 'cause you know what a table is and how it looks like. You certainly don't need to remember loads of crazy CSS properties semantically and visually unrelated to what your trying to do.

Ok, if we're really doing this ... truth is everyone started using DIVs because the word has been spread that using nested tables is unprofessional. This is not totally untrue, but guess what - nesting hundreds of DIVs will bring you nowhere good in terms of maintainability at much lower speed.

My personal choice is a moderate one, try to stay in control finding the balance using a bit of both, DIVs within tables or tables within DIVs, to keep the built-in simplicity of tables and the advantages of DIVs.

Look at this:

If Amazon uses that many nested tables (that's 35 results for the table opening tag in the home page) no-one's gonna bug you for using a few (except those W3C pansies).

[SQL] Counting Rows with the Same Value of a Given Field

Here's a piss-easy script to count the number of rows in a table where a given field has the same value:

SELECT myField, COUNT(*) AS 'inelegantCount'
FROM myTable
GROUP BY myField

It's the classic GROUP BY statement example - which I can't manage to remember, thus the blog post.

Start Using WikiSearch Already!

When I run a search I often have a peek at other people's favourite search results for that given search (from the "see all notes for this WikiSearch" link) in the hope I won't have to spend precious seconds/minutes to find what I am looking for. Unfortunately - even if WikiSearch has been out for a while now - the usual result is the void.

It's well known that any respectable developer spends a fair share of time looking up stuff on Google. Wouldn't it be easier for everyone if we all started using WikiSearch? 

Telling the good stuff from the crap would be much faster.

Definitive Javascript RegEx Validation for Butchers

This comes back to bother me now and then - so I decided to put together a few snippets to use as base in case of client validation with RegExes.

First of all the core snippet, which takes text to validate and a regex and returns a boolean:

function regexMatch(regEx, stringToValidate)
{
   var oREGEXP = new RegExp(regEx);
   return oREGEXP.test(stringToValidate);
};

Often you will be validating a text field - so here's other two functions using the previous one:

function textFieldVisualRegexValidation(textElement, regEx)
{  
   var returnValue = false;
  
   if (regexMatch(regEx, textElement.value))
   {
       textElement.style.backgroundColor = "green";
       returnValue = true;
   }
   else
   {
       textElement.style.backgroundColor = "red";
   }
  
   return returnValue; 
};

function textFieldRegexMatch(ctrlName, regEx)
{  
   var elem = document.getElementById(ctrlName);
  
   return textFieldVisualRegexValidation(elem, regEx);
};

Some event will call textFieldRegexMatch triggering the validation. You can customize textFieldVisualRegexValidation to perform some action in case of validation succeeded or failed (I am setting the input field background to green.red but one could swap images or whatever).

You can hook up the above from (for example) the onBlur event of one of your textBoxes or any input field:

onblur="textFieldRegexMatch('yourInputFieldID', regExPattern)"

You obviously have to declare somewhere your regExPattern:

const regExPattern = "^[A-Z,a-z,0-9]{1,12}$";

I am sure there are better ways of doing the above but this is just meant as a reference to brutally Copy-Paste and tailor to your needs.