Comments on: Building Web 2.0 Tag Clouds in PHP http://www.developertutorials.com/blog/php/building-web-2-0-tag-clouds-in-php-165/ Keeping webmasters up-to-date on technology. Sun, 06 Jul 2008 10:55:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5 By: Jesse Mullan http://www.developertutorials.com/blog/php/building-web-2-0-tag-clouds-in-php-165/#comment-684 Jesse Mullan Mon, 05 May 2008 12:36:59 +0000 http://www.developertutorials.com/blog/php/building-web-2-0-tag-clouds-in-php-165/#comment-684 I knew the answer already -- I was wondering if you had considered the edge cases. I knew the answer already — I was wondering if you had considered the edge cases.

]]> By: Akash Mehta http://www.developertutorials.com/blog/php/building-web-2-0-tag-clouds-in-php-165/#comment-682 Akash Mehta Mon, 05 May 2008 11:51:34 +0000 http://www.developertutorials.com/blog/php/building-web-2-0-tag-clouds-in-php-165/#comment-682 @Jesse: that's an interesting point; when $maxval == $minval, we'd have a division by zero when calculating $spread. However, the only time this could happen is a) when you only have one tag; and b) when all your tags have equal values. For the first scenario, I leave the validation to the developer as you would probably want to do something when you have only one tag (e.g. list items within the tag). For the second scenario, either your site is new, you have hit quite a coincidence or you don't need a tag cloud in the first place (because all your "tags" have equal values). Once again, I leave this up to the developer to handle outside of the function, as the function's sole purpose is to generate a tag cloud, and I don't wish to complicate it by adding error handling (or worse still, making it do nothing - blank outputs are the hardest to debug). Of course, if this is an issue and you choose to handle it within the function, all it takes is an if($spread == 0) $spread = 1;. @Jesse: that’s an interesting point; when $maxval == $minval, we’d have a division by zero when calculating $spread.

However, the only time this could happen is a) when you only have one tag; and b) when all your tags have equal values.

For the first scenario, I leave the validation to the developer as you would probably want to do something when you have only one tag (e.g. list items within the tag).

For the second scenario, either your site is new, you have hit quite a coincidence or you don’t need a tag cloud in the first place (because all your “tags” have equal values). Once again, I leave this up to the developer to handle outside of the function, as the function’s sole purpose is to generate a tag cloud, and I don’t wish to complicate it by adding error handling (or worse still, making it do nothing - blank outputs are the hardest to debug).

Of course, if this is an issue and you choose to handle it within the function, all it takes is an if($spread == 0) $spread = 1;.

]]> By: Jesse Mullan http://www.developertutorials.com/blog/php/building-web-2-0-tag-clouds-in-php-165/#comment-644 Jesse Mullan Fri, 02 May 2008 19:19:48 +0000 http://www.developertutorials.com/blog/php/building-web-2-0-tag-clouds-in-php-165/#comment-644 What happens when $maxval == $minval ? What happens when $maxval == $minval ?

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