Description

I had a problem sending emails while using Zend Framework with Gmail account. So I had to handle different types of errors:

• "Unable to connect via TLS" - being created by Zend Framework Exception.
• "Unable to find the socket transport "https" - did you forget to enable it when you configured PHP?" - PHP built in error message

Suggestions

Before starting to code, you have to configure your PHP to work with php-openssl.

Linux:

Install openssl

Install php5_openssl. I`m not sure about all of the distributions I did it only on OpenSuse:

zypper install php5_openssl

I`m guessing that on CentOS it would be something like

yum install php5_openssl

And Ubuntu

apt-get install php5_openssl

Windows:

Add extension=php_openssl.dll to your php.ini

 After finishing it, please restart your apache.

Now check if the SSL module is installed:

php -m | grep ssl

will output:

openssl

Or try to check your phpinfo.

Now you can use my code as an example:

application.ini

email.host 			= 'smtp.gmail.com'
email.from		 	= 'info@yourdomain.com'
email.name 			= 'Display Name'
email.params.auth		= 'login'
email.params.username 		= 'info@yourdomain.com'
email.params.password 		= 'Password'
email.params.ssl 		= 'ssl'
email.params.port 		= 465

helper.perfix[] = 'My_Helper';

Bootstrap.php

class Bootstrap extends Zend_Application_Bootstrap_Bootstrap
{
    protected  function _initConfig(){
    	 $config = new Zend_Config_Ini(
            APPLICATION_PATH . '/configs/application.ini',
            APPLICATION_ENV
        );
        Zend_Registry::set('appConfig',$config);
    }
    protected function _initHelpers(){
    	 $perfix = Zend_Registry::get('appConfig')->helper->perfix->toArray();
    	 Zend_Controller_Action_HelperBroker::addPrefix($perfix[0]);
    }
}

IndexController.php

class IndexController {
 	public function indexAction(){
		$helper = $this->_helper->mail(array(
				 			'email'		=> 'myemail@gmail.com',
				 			'subject' 	=> 'test subject',
				 			'message'	=> 'just a test message'
				 		));
		var_dump($helper);die;
	}
}

Mailer.php (helper)

class My_Helper_Mail extends Zend_Controller_Action_Helper_Abstract {
	/**
	 * @var array email has to contain those values
	 */
	private static $_keys = array('email','subject','message');
	/**
	 * @var Zend_Mail
	 */
	private $_mail;

	const MAIL_BODY_CHARSET 	= 'utf8';
	const VALIDATION_DATA_ERROR = 'Email error, key %s is required and cannot be empty.';

	/**
	 * Execute everything, enables our class to work as helper ($this->_helper->mail(array()))
	 * @params array $data (Should contain self::$_keys)
	 * @return Zend_Mail
	 */
	public function direct(array $data){
		//validate keys and values
		self::_checkData($data);

		//prepare
		$this->_prepare($data);

		return $this->_send(self::_createTransportSmtp());
	}

	/**
	 * Validate data before send
	 * @param array $data
	 * @throws My_Helper_Mail_Exception
	 */
	private static function _checkData(array $data){
		foreach(self::$_keys as $value){
			if (empty($data[$value])){
				throw new My_Helper_Mail_Exception(sprintf(
					self::VALIDATION_DATA_ERROR,
					$value
				));
			}
		}
	}

	/**
	 * Prepre mail data
	 * @param array $data
	 */
	private function _prepare(array $data){
		$oAppConfig = Zend_Registry::get('appConfig')->email;

		$this->_mail = new Zend_Mail();
		$this->_mail->addTo($data['email']);
		$this->_mail->setSubject($data['subject']);
		$this->_mail->setBodyHtml($data['message'],self::MAIL_BODY_CHARSET);
		$this->_mail->setFrom($oAppConfig->from,$oAppConfig->name);
	}

	/**
	 * Setup mail settings
	 * @return Zend_Mail_Transport_Smtp
	 */
	private static function _createTransportSmtp(){
		$config = Zend_Registry::get('appConfig'); 

		$host  	= $config->email->host;
		$params	= $config->email->params;

		return new Zend_Mail_Transport_Smtp($host,$params->toArray());
	}

	/**
	 * Send mail
	 * @param Zend_Mail_Transport_Smtp $transport
	 * @return Zend_Mail
	 */
	private function _send(Zend_Mail_Transport_Smtp $transport){
		return $this->_mail->send($transport);
	}
}
class My_Helper_Mail_Exception extends Zend_Exception {}

Summary

Using Zend Framework is pretty straight-forward when you have all of your server settings enabled.

You are more then welcome to update me if you would found any other solution or a problem.

-Shak

So I`m working on a WordPress plugin for a while, and I found some common issues with plugins that need to be integrated with WordPress's posts.

One of the main issues is the wpautop method.

Description

From WordPress's website:

Changes double line-breaks in the text into HTML paragraphs (<p>...</p>).

WordPress uses it to filter the content and the excerpt.

Now lets dig a bit more inside ha?

function wpautop($pee, $br = 1) {
        if ( trim($pee) === '' )
                return '';
        $pee = $pee . "\n"; // just to make things a little easier, pad the end
        $pee = preg_replace('|<br />\s*<br />|', "\n\n", $pee);
        // Space things out a little
        $allblocks = '(?:table|thead|tfoot|caption|col|colgroup|tbody|tr|td|th|div|dl|dd|dt|ul|ol|li|pre|select|option|form|map|area|blockquote|address|math|style|input|p|h[1-6]|hr|fieldset|legend|section|article|aside|hgroup|header|footer|nav|figure|figcaption|details|menu|summary)';
        $pee = preg_replace('!(<' . $allblocks . '[^>]*>)!', "\n$1", $pee);
        $pee = preg_replace('!(</' . $allblocks . '>)!', "$1\n\n", $pee);
        $pee = str_replace(array("\r\n", "\r"), "\n", $pee); // cross-platform newlines
        if ( strpos($pee, '<object') !== false ) {
                $pee = preg_replace('|\s*<param([^>]*)>\s*|', "<param$1>", $pee); // no pee inside object/embed
                $pee = preg_replace('|\s*</embed>\s*|', '</embed>', $pee);
        }
        $pee = preg_replace("/\n\n+/", "\n\n", $pee); // take care of duplicates
        // make paragraphs, including one at the end
        $pees = preg_split('/\n\s*\n/', $pee, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
        $pee = '';
        foreach ( $pees as $tinkle )
                $pee .= '<p>' . trim($tinkle, "\n") . "</p>\n";
        $pee = preg_replace('|<p>\s*</p>|', '', $pee); // under certain strange conditions it could create a P of entirely whitespace
        $pee = preg_replace('!<p>([^<]+)</(div|address|form)>!', "<p>$1</p></$2>", $pee);
        $pee = preg_replace('!<p>\s*(</?' . $allblocks . '[^>]*>)\s*</p>!', "$1", $pee); // don't pee all over a tag
        $pee = preg_replace("|<p>(<li.+?)</p>|", "$1", $pee); // problem with nested lists
        $pee = preg_replace('|<p><blockquote([^>]*)>|i', "<blockquote$1><p>", $pee);
        $pee = str_replace('</blockquote></p>', '</p></blockquote>', $pee);
        $pee = preg_replace('!<p>\s*(</?' . $allblocks . '[^>]*>)!', "$1", $pee);
        $pee = preg_replace('!(</?' . $allblocks . '[^>]*>)\s*</p>!', "$1", $pee);
        if ($br) {
                $pee = preg_replace_callback('/<(script|style).*?<\/\\1>/s', '_autop_newline_preservation_helper', $pee);
                $pee = preg_replace('|(?<!<br />)\s*\n|', "<br />\n", $pee); // optionally make line breaks
                $pee = str_replace('<WPPreserveNewline />', "\n", $pee);
        }
        $pee = preg_replace('!(</?' . $allblocks . '[^>]*>)\s*<br />!', "$1", $pee);
        $pee = preg_replace('!<br />(\s*</?(?:p|li|div|dl|dd|dt|th|pre|td|ul|ol)[^>]*>)!', '$1', $pee);
        if (strpos($pee, '<pre') !== false)
                $pee = preg_replace_callback('!(<pre[^>]*>)(.*?)</pre>!is', 'clean_pre', $pee );
        $pee = preg_replace( "|\n</p>$|", '</p>', $pee );
        return $pee;
}

You may find more at http://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tags/3.3.1/wp-includes/formatting.php

As you can see, this function changes a lot of things in WordPress's posts, such as:

• Adding \n after (almost) each HTML tag
• Fixing new lines to cross platform newlines (\r\n to \n)
• Changing the <object> tag
• Adding <p> tags.
• Cleaning empty <pre> tags

So I marked the most important issue about this function "Adding <p> tags".

Why is it so important for me?

As I wrote before it seems that one of the biggest problems for developers that develop WordPress plugins is the wpautop plugin. When they are trying to modify the user's posts, they always need to struggle with the <p> tags and sometimes they don't know how to handle them right.

Suggestions...

What to do

If I remember correctly , wpautop priority is set to 11 by default.

I have split my solution into 4 steps:

1. Mark your posts with your own "signature"
2. Create your own HTML template and don't use <p> tags
3. Changing the_posts
4. Removing the <p> tags from my plugin's HTML

How?

Marking your posts:

Include special statement inside post_content, for example when adding new post you may add a text "my-plugin-text-needs-to-be-manipulated", so the user's post will look like:

This is a new post

my-plugin-text-needs-to-be-manipulated

Thank you all!

Changing the posts:

http://pastebin.com/w58WqjHP

/**
 * Require more work but does the job.
*/
class Posts {
	const CATCH_POST_PRIORITY = -32767;
	const TEXT_TO_CHANGE = 'my-plugin-text-needs-to-be-manipulated';
	/*
	 * Manipulate our plugin's text\data
	 * @param array $posts
	 * @return array
	 */
	public function manipulate($posts){
		$newPosts = array();
		foreach ($posts AS $post) {
			if (false === strpos($post->post_content,self::TEXT_TO_CHANGE)
				 || !self::IsPreviewMode($post->ID)){
				$newPosts[] = $post
				continue ;
			}

			//remove new lines
			//TODO: extract your data to your HTML (real plugin uses a View object and render's the data)
			$html = str_replace("\n","",file_get_content("some.html"));
			//assign back to post content
			$post->post_content = str_replace(self::TEXT_TO_CHANGE,$html,$post->post_content);
			$newPosts[] = $post;
		}
		return $newPosts;
	}

	/**
	 * Check if we are in preview mode of current post id
	 * @param int $postID
	 * @return bool
	*/
	private static function IsPreviewMode($postID){
 		return isset($_GET['preview']) && isset($_GET['p']) && $_GET['p'] != $postID;
	}
}

$posts = new Posts;
add_action('the_posts' , array($posts, 'manipulate'), Posts::CATCH_POST_PRIORITY);

Removing the <p> tags

http://pastebin.com/afk9SJNk

/**
 * DOM Handler
*/
class Extended_DOMDocument extends DOMDocument {
	/**
	 * @var DOMElement $pluginStauts
	*/
	private $pluginStatus = false; 

	const CONTAINER = "our_plugins_class_wrapper";
	const UTF8_META = '<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />'; 

	public function __construct($post){
		parent::__construct("1.0", "UTF-8");
		if (!@$this->loadHTML(self::UTF8_META.$post)){
			return ;
		}
		$this->isPluginInvolved();
	}

	private function isPluginInvolved(){
		$this->pluginStatus = $this->getElementByClassName(self::CONTAINER);
	}	

	/**
 	 * Remove p tags
	 * @return string
	 */
	public function removeWpAutoP(){
		$content = $this->saveHTML();
		if (!$this->pluginStatus){
			return $content;
		}
		$html = self::DOMinnerHTML($this->pluginStatus);
		return str_replace($html,preg_replace('#<p>(.*?)<\/p>#','$1',$html),$content);
	}

	/**
	 * @see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5404941/php-domdocument-outerhtml-for-element
	 */
	public static function DOMinnerHTML($n, $outer=true) {
	    $d = new DOMDocument('1.0');
	    $b = $d->importNode($n->cloneNode(true),true);
	    $d->appendChild($b); $h = $d->saveHTML();
	    // remove outter tags
	    if (!$outer) $h = substr($h,strpos($h,'>')+1,-(strlen($n->nodeName)+4));
	    return $h;
	}

	/**
	* Get all elements that have a tag of $tag and class of $className
	*
	* @param string $className The class name to search for
	* @param string $tag       Tag of the items to search
	* @return array            Array of DOMNode items that match
	*/
	public function getElementsByClassName($className, $tag="*") {
		$nodes = array();
		$domNodeList = $this->getElementsByTagName($tag);
		for ($i = 0; $i < $domNodeList->length; $i++) {
			$item = $domNodeList->item($i)->attributes->getNamedItem('class');
			if ($item) {
				$classes = explode(" ", $item->nodeValue);
				for ($j = 0; $j < count($classes); $j++) {
					if ($classes[$j] == $className) {
						$nodes[] = $domNodeList->item($i);
					}
				}
			}
		}
		return $nodes;
	}

	/**
	 * Convenience method to return a single element by class name when we know there's only going to be one
	 *
	 * @param string $className The class name to search for
	 * @param string $tag       Tag of the items to search
	 * @return array            Array of DOMNode items that match
	 */
	public function getElementByClassName($className, $tag="*") {
		$nodes = $this->getElementsByClassName($className, $tag);
		return count($nodes) == 1 ? $nodes[0] : $nodes;
	}
}

// setting this filter to priority 12
add_filter('the_content' , array('removeWpAutoP'), 12);
/**
 * remove auto wp p tags
 * @param string $content
 * @return string
 */
function rm_wpautop($content) {
	$dom = new Extended_DOMDocument($content);
	$content = $dom->removeWpAutoP();
	return $content;
}

What not to do

It's pretty easy -don't remove the filter.

Why?

Because removing the filter most of the time creates bugs and problems with other posts and plugins. For example, when disabling the function you would notice that sometimes the post won't have any newlines at all.

Summarize

Using WordPress's wpautop making our life very hard. As I see it, WordPress should give their developers more freedom while writing their plugins.
This might not be the most useful way to write this fix, but then you may ask if its useful to use WordPress

Some of the functions were found on Google or in different websites, I didn't write them all although I did write the "logic". I have tried to keep my sources written in the code's comments (such as stackoverflow), so if you would find something that belongs to you, please contact me to add your name or remove the script.

Hope this guide will help other as it helped me.

-Shak

1. PHP 5.2 or greater (would be a bit sad to know that someone is still using PHP 4) 
2. Upgrade PEAR to latest version 
3. Upgrade PECL to latest version 
4. Installing PHP ZipArchive library by using PECL's zip package

Installation 

I will use pecl to install ZipArchive PHP library.

1. Open terminal and execute pecl install zip
2. Updating your php.ini:
1. Linux: find your php.ini file and add "extension=zip.so"
2. Windows: same as one, just add "extension=zip.dll" 
3. Restart httpd\apache 
1. service httpd restart
2. apache2ctl restart
3. or any other way that you like

Usage Example

There are many different ways to use and build Zip helpers. I will just demonstrate an example for using ZipArchive. 

 Pastebin: http://pastebin.com/J2M0jjQG

 Inline... 

/**
 * ZipArchiveHelper class
*/
class ZipArchiveHelper {
	/**
	 * @var ZipArchive $_zipArchive
	*/
	private $_zipArchive;
	/**
	 * @var array $_excludeList
	*/
	private $_excludeList;

	const TIMEOUT = 5000; 

	/**
	 * Get files list by path
	 * @param string $sourcePath
	 * @return RecursiveIteratorIterator
	*/
	private function _getFilesList($sourcePath){
		$dirlist = new RecursiveDirectoryIterator($sourcePath);
		$filelist = new RecursiveIteratorIterator($dirlist);

		return $filelist;
	}

	/**
	 * Create Zip File
	 * @param string $zipFileName
	 * @param string $sourcePath
	 * @param array[optional] $excludeList
	 * @return string|false
	*/
	public function createZipFile($zipFileName,$sourcePath,array $excludeList = array()){
			//Set PHP timeout
			ini_set('max_execution_time', self::TIMEOUT);

			//set exclude list
			$this----->_excludeList = $excludeList; 

			//set new zip archive object
			$this->_setZipArchive(); 

			//generate new file
			$this->_newZipFile($zipFileName); 

			//compress
			$this->_compress($sourcePath); 

			//get status
			$retValue = $this->_zipArchive->getStatusString(); 

			//close zip archive manager
			$this->_zipArchive->close();

			return $retValue;
	}

	/**
	 * Set new ZipArchive instance
	 * Seperated and protected for future unit tests
	 * @return void
	*/
	protected function _setZipArchive(){
		$this->_zipArchive = new ZipArchive;
	}

	/**
	 * Open new|existing zip file
	 * @param int $type - 	Overwrite by default. (you may use other options, e.g ZipArchive::CREATE)
	 * @throw Exception
	 * @return void
	*/
	protected function _newZipFile($zipFileName,$type=ZipArchive::OVERWRITE){
		if ($this->_zipArchive->open("$zipFileName", $type) !== TRUE) {
				throw new Exception("Could not open archive");
		}
	}

	/**
	 * Validate file by checking if exists and not excluded type
	 * @param string $fileName
	 * @return bool
	*/
	private function _isValidFile($fileName){
		if (!is_file($fileName)){
			return false ;
		} 

		foreach($this->_excludeList as $toExclude){
			if (strpos($fileName,$toExclude) !== false){
				return false;
			}
		}	

		return true;
	}

	/**
	 * Compress to ZIP file
	 * @return bool
	*/
	private function _compress($sourcePath){
		//get file list
		$filelist = $this->_getFilesList($sourcePath); 

		//add files to new zip file
		foreach ($filelist as $fileName=>$value) {
			if(!$this->_isValidFile($fileName)){
				continue ;
			}

			//you should use sprintf for this to work on both *NIX and Windows OS
			//note that str_replace is just for my example, you don't really have to use it.
			$value = sprintf("%s",str_replace($sourcePath,'',$value));

			if (!$this->_zipArchive->addFile($fileName,$value)){
				 throw new Exception("ERROR: Could not add file: $fileName");
			}
		}

		return true;
	}
}
//PHP >= 5.3 just throws this annoying warning
date_default_timezone_set('Asia/Jerusalem');

$zipHelper = new ZipArchiveHelper();
try {
	var_dump($zipHelper->createZipFile(
		'shakedos.zip',
		'/tmp/zend_debug',
		array('.svn')
	));
} catch (Exception $e){
	var_dump($e->getMessage());
}

Known Issues

1. Did you define your PHP extension directory correct ? 
2. Windows and *NIX system works different by using the opposite slash  "/"(*NIX) or "\"(Windows) - my solution is to use sprintf() 
    http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4620205/php-ziparchive-corrupt-in-windows
3. Downloading the script sometimes requires to send some different header, the following example was taken from the stackoverflow link above:

header("Cache-Control: public");
header("Pragma: public");
header("Expires: 0");
header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
header("Cache-Control: public");
//header("Content-Description: File Transfer");
//header("Content-type: application/zip");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"YOUR_FILE_NAME_HERE.zip\"");
//header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
header("Content-length: " . filesize($filename));

Hope I helped, 

1. open terminal or cmd 
2. execute php --ini if php is undefined you should add it to your PATH or just execute "/your/path/to/php --ini"
3. php.ini has several modes (path is different sometimes...):
1. using one file: 

   Configuration File (php.ini) Path: /etc/php5/cli
   Loaded Configuration File: /etc/php5/cli/php.ini

2. using several different files (will help to maintain common settings between cli php.ini and httpd php.ini

   Scan for additional .ini files in: /etc/php5/conf.d
   Additional .ini files parsed: /etc/php5/conf.d/ctype.ini,
   /etc/php5/conf.d/curl.ini, 
   /etc/php5/conf.d/dom.ini,
   /etc/php5/conf.d/gd.ini,
   /etc/php5/conf.d/hash.ini,
   ............more .ini files here............  

   files content could be "extension=gd.so" (unix) or "extension=gd.dll" (windows)

4. there are two more options to get your ini files: 
1. execute in cli mode: "php --i | grep .ini"
2. write your own script and check via browser:
   <?php phpinfo(); ?>  

That's it, now you can just edit your php.ini with anything you think you will need for future PHP programming. 
More about php.ini may be found at http://php.net/manual/en/ini.php 

Federico Cargnelutti - MySQL Split String Function


Stackoverflow - MYSQL - Array data type, split string

Everything worked great while using different delimiters, such as: "," , "||", "@@@", "###" or any other delimiter. I was using delimiters which their length > 1, exmaple: 

select split_str(‘ABC,,BA,,abc’,',,’,3);
//result: “abc”

Seems good, ha? But then I`v noticed that there is a problem. When my full string contains two bytes characters (e.g: ¼), everything is breaking a part. Lets see the following exmaple:

select split_str(‘ABC¼,,BA,,abc’,',,’,3);
//result: “,abc” (delimiter was still there)

So how do we fix it?  Seems that we need to change split_str function, all we have to do is to use CHAR_LENGTH() and not LENGTH(). There is a difference between those functions which you can read at MySQL.com website or just read the following quote: 

CHAR_LENGTH(str)

Returns the length of the string str, measured in characters. A multi-byte character counts as a single character. This means that for a string containing five two-byte characters, LENGTH() returns 10, whereas CHAR_LENGTH()returns 5.

 Enough talking. This is the function after my little fix: 

CREATE FUNCTION SPLIT_STR(
  x VARCHAR(255),
  delim VARCHAR(12),
  pos INT
)
RETURNS VARCHAR(255)
RETURN REPLACE(SUBSTRING(SUBSTRING_INDEX(x, delim, pos),
       CHAR_LENGTH(SUBSTRING_INDEX(x, delim, pos -1)) + 1),
       delim, '');

Then using the same example I`v used above:

select split_str(‘ABC¼,,BA,,abc’,',,’,3);
//result: “abc”

I want to say thank to Federico Cargnelutti that helped us by writing the above function.


Shak.

1. A nice sentence or a motto that I really liked: 

   "When you do a search, and it comes back with no results, it’s a sign that you need to write something." (Taken from Here
    

2. Didn't find any straight answer on Google for my question: "How to insert\update a bit field with PHP": 

So with MySQL you would use:

INSERT INTO t SET b = b'1'; // Or b'0' 

 And with PHP you would use boolean type: 

//$db instanceof ActiveRecord, that's only for the following example
//you can use other ways to insert\update your MySQL DB. 

$db->insert(array('b'=>true,'c'=>false)); //true = b'1' , false = b'0'

$db->update(array('b'=>true,'c'=>false)); //true = b'1' , false = b'0'

Hope I helped,
Shak.

Base URL is sub.domain.end, for example: 

if your full URI is http://www.yoursite.com/some/params/id/1, so base URL will be www.yoursite.com

Redirect to application base URL

Sometimes you would want to be able to redirect from one page to  your main homepage, for example:

1. User A enter Site B.com login page
2. User B enter username and password and he had been successfully logged in
3. User B is being redirect to Site B.com

As I like to say, if you are reading this post, you would probably need some help about its subject:

There are two ways:

public function loginAction(){
.
.
  if (user is logged in successfully) {
      $this->_helper->redirector->gotoUrl();    //Option 1
      // OR setGotoUrl() uses gotoUrl() when no param is being passed
      $this->_helper->redirector->setGotoUrl(); //Option 2
  }
.
.
}

 How do I get base URL string?  

public function loginAction(){
 $baseURL = $this->getRequest()->getHttpHost();
 /*
   When using redirect helper and full URL
   you will have to attach http(s)://
   which means you will have to use isSSL() method
 */
}

Note:

My suggestion is to create  BaseControoler that will handle your current HTTP request & base URL: 

class BaseController extends Zend_Controller_Action{
 	/**
 	 *  @var Zend_Controller_Request_Http $_request
         */
	protected $_request;

	protected function init(){
 	 	//Save request
 	 	$this->_request = $this->getRequest();
 	        //Save httpHost (base URL)
 	 	$this->_httpHost = $this->_request->getHttpHost();
 	 	$this->siteInit();
  	} 

 	protected siteInit(){
 	 	/*
 	 	 	You don't really need it
 	 	 	I just prefer to know that if someone creates
 	 	 	another controller he won't have to call parent::init()
 	 	*/
 	}
}

After creating BaseController you have to setup your own controller(s): 

//Extend BaseController
class IndexController extends BaseController {

 	public function indexAction(){
 	 	var_dump($this->_httpHost,$this->_request->getParams());
 	}
}

That it for today, 

Shak

For long time I had an annoying problem with my speakers on my Asus n53j laptop. I`v googled this problem for long time and nothing. But finally I`v found the VERY-EASY solution: 

1. Open alsamixer in terminal
2. Choose your sound card (F6) 
3. Continue till you see this screen:
    
4. Go to "Speakers" and make volume up to 100 

Use it carefully  

Shak.