Utility Mill

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Auto_Expiring_HTML (editing)

Forget to remove "New .." descriptions from your website? Let Javascript do it for you

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Tired of seeing "New" written around old content on your websites?  Want to display something only for a short time?

Well, now you can make certain HTML pieces disappear after a chosen number of days.


**Instructions**

Paste whatever HTML you want to expire/disappear into the "HTML Snippet" field.  Set the number of days you want it to expire in and run the utility.

Paste the output into the desired location in your website.


**How it Works**

This will wrap a div tag around whatever HTML you enter, and put some javascript under it to hide that div if the current date is greater than your set expiration.

**Want to use this in a WordPress post?**

Then things get a little tricky :-) WordPress doesn't allow javascript in posts.  So we just have to import a javascript file to get around it.

Take the javascript part of the output (part in between the script tags but not including the script tags) and put it into a file say: expire.js.  Then upload that file to your website.

Take the HTML part of the output and put it into your blog post somewhere.  Then put this line into your blog post under it:

`<script type="text/javascript" src="URL TO expire.js" />`


Here's an example WordPress post using this technique. In this hypothetical example, your post made it to the front page of [reddit](http://www.reddit.com), so you want to welcome the visitors.  But you know reddit is a fickle lover and will have forgotten about you within 2 days, so you have set the "welcome redditors" message to dissapear after that:


`<div id="utilitymill_28557">`
`<p>Welcome Redditors!</p>`
`</div>`

`<script type="text/javascript" src="/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/expire.js" />`

`Brilliant post ...`



**Developer Notes**

Javascript's setFullYear expects month-1, it's not a bug.

Compress option just removes new lines, needs to remove spaces, etc too.

I haven't tested this beyond Firefox, please let me know how it goes, or just fix this utility.

Can you think of a less intrusive way to edit a users HTML?

Set Up the Inputs

Each row sets up an input field for the utility. Hover you mouse over the labels for help.

Var. Name	Label	Type	Default Value	Tool Tip	Allow Blank	Max Length	Regex	Order	Drop Down Values	Remove
			<p>All new content!</p> <strong>I promise, all new</strong>

Edit the Code

The More You know:

Utilities use Python 2.5, go learn it!
Tab key inserts 4 spaces (this is Python afterall)
Use the print statement to make output.
You can import anything in the Python standard library plus these exciting third party libraries.
View a working utility's code to see how everything works.

#import line added for compatibility with code execution change.
#You can remove all but what is needed.
import calendar,datetime,difflib,math,random,re,string,time,urllib

ONELINER=True #future input checkbox?

#wrap HTML in a div tag with unique ID
divid="utilitymill_%s" % random.randint(0,100000) #namespace safe type deal ..
HTML=('<div id="%s">\n' % divid) +HTML+'\n</div>'

#calc expiry date
expirydate=datetime.date.today()+datetime.timedelta(days=int(DAYS_TO_EXPIRY))

#Make JS
script="""
<script type="text/javascript">
//Auto Expiring HTML!
//Created at http://utilitymill.com/utility/Auto_Expiring_HTML
function hidediv(id) 
{
    //safe function to hide an element with a specified id
    if (document.getElementById) { // DOM3 = IE5, NS6
    document.getElementById(id).style.display = 'none';
    }
    else {
        if (document.layers) { // Netscape 4
            document.id.display = 'none';
        }
        else { // IE 4
            document.all.id.style.display = 'none';
        }
    }
}
var expiredate=new Date();
expiredate.setFullYear(%s,%s,%s);
var today=new Date();
if (today > expiredate)
{
    hidediv('%s');
}
</script>
""" % (expirydate.year,expirydate.month-1,expirydate.day,divid)

if ONELINER:
    print HTML
    print script.replace('\n','').replace('\t',''),
else:
    print HTML
    print script

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Content that violates any copyright will be deleted.

Just Testing (I'm just testing out Utility Mill, it's ok to delete this in a few days)

Utility Mill is another wonderful Blended Technologies project.