Non quis, sed quid.

Another weird thing that happens when you switch the storage systems you use on the pastebin script is that, for some reason, you lose the ability to flag pastes as yours (through the usage of the remember me checkbox) and as such are unable to delete pastes that you made. I admit, I completely overlooked this built in feature – somehow – and decided to add my own paste flagging mechanism.

I decided to not use cookies and instead to associate your IP to your pastes so that you may delete ANY paste you make, provided your IP is the same as when you made that paste. Still, for those people who are cursed by damned dynamic IPs, this implementation obviously does not work and I’ll probably make my other features work with the cookies pastebin sets (if you check the remember be checkbox) or implement another way of flagging pastes as yours.

pastebin.com’s script has two storage methods: sql and flat-file based storage.

Though I prefer SQL for ease of use and easier interaction with code, I did not like the “public” way the script  handled pastes (the paste ID was associated with a primary key in the SQL database which was how paste IDs were assigned too – a clever way to not have to worry about IDs getting re-used) as anyone could just guess URLs to find pastes: http://pb.malloc.us/1, http://pb.malloc.us/2 etc. I really preferred the way pastebin.com currently handles it – which is also the way the flat-file storage method handles it.

Since Malloc’s pastebin was meant to be more tuned to the needs of developers, it needed to be less public than the stock pastebin script was. As such, I modified pb.malloc.us to use a more random ID assignment system and I think it works out just fine.

So now that I have pastebin installed and working on http://pb.malloc.us. I’ve been looking at the code and decided I don’t really like the way things currently are.

So, for starters I have made a few changes:

• I don’t really agree with how “public” pastebin currently is, so I’ve removed the Recent posts section on the side.
• There used to be a feedback form on the side too. I’ve removed that since anyone who’d want to give me feedback knows where to find me.
• We all know how annoying spammers are and for that reason I have added a CAPTCHA to pastebin using Recaptcha and its wonderful API.
• Having looked at the code… I’m considering just making my own pastebin instead of modifying pastebin.com’s source.

I know, I know. You’re all probably saying: “but it is a pastebin, all people need it for is to paste things in” which is true and from that perspective the pastebin.com script does it justice but I’m still not satisfied.

I’ve fixed the SQL statements we were told to use in the INSTALL file.

For anyone who encounters this problem, here’s the solution.

The problem:

The SQL statements in the INSTALL file that come with pastebin’s source aren’t following the correct syntax and as such, we encounter this error when we try to run the provided SQL statements.
[sql]#1064 – You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version
for the right syntax to use near ‘KEY `expires`’ at line 16[/sql]
The solution:

Not sure how it previously eluded me…but the fix was quite obvious.
[sql]CREATE TABLE `pastebin` (
`pid` int( 11 ) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT ,
`poster` varchar( 16 ) default NULL ,
`posted` datetime default NULL ,
`code` text,
`parent_pid` int( 11 ) default ‘0′,
`format` varchar( 16 ) default NULL ,
`codefmt` mediumtext,
`codecss` text,
`domain` varchar( 255 ) default ”,
`expires` DATETIME,
`expiry_flag` ENUM( ‘d’, ‘m’, ‘f’ ) NOT NULL DEFAULT ‘m’,
PRIMARY KEY ( `pid` ) ,
KEY `domain` ( `domain` ) ,
KEY `parent_id` ( `parent_pid` ) ,
KEY `expires` ( `expires` )
);

create table recent
(
domain varchar(255),
pid int not null,
seq_no int not null,

primary key(domain,seq_no)
);[/sql]

Well, I lied. I haven’t installed/setup a pastebin yet but I have tried and…failed.

I keep running into this error when trying to create the appropriate tables in my database.
[sql]#1064 – You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version
for the right syntax to use near ‘KEY `expires`’ at line 16[/sql]
So for now, I am sticking with the flat-file DB setup. Well at least we have something to work with for the time being.

So I’ve been a busy busy person and installed a pastebin for Malloc.us. But one must be wondering why on earth I would have a WHOLE category dedicated to, what may seem to some, a short discussion of pastebin(s) and to that I answer thus:

Although there are…, what? 3 different pastebin scripts out there now? Maybe 4? I’m not really satisfied with what features they offer out of the box and so I’ll probably be working on or hacking at the script(s) to get them just how I like them.

Stay tuned for more…