PHP Suit

Blog: Tips and tricks from other pages VII

admin — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:28:34 +0000

PHP under control, LINQ and cURL examples...

phpUnderControl is an addon application for the continuous integration tool CruiseControl, which integrates some of the best PHP development tools. This project aims to make your first steps with CruiseControl and PHP as easy as possible. Therefore phpUnderControl comes with a command line tool that performs all modifications to an existing CruiseControl installation.

phpUnderControl

A set of PHP classes mimicing C#3.0's LINQ (Language Integrated Query) extension methods.

PHPLinq

(Con: I read about the PHP Implementation of LINQ called PHPLinq. Frankly, I was sceptical about it. Finally, I gave it a try. I still remain sceptical... - Is PHPLinq As Cool As Real LINQ?)

We try to collect examples on how to program the PHP/CURL interface here. If you have any source snippests you want to share with the rest of the world, please let us know!

PHP / cURL examples collection

Tip: Create a zip file from folders

admin — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:24:54 +0000

How to compress files from some folder into one ZIP file in PHP?

For a future project I needed these days some easy to use zip or gzip class to create a zip file from files / folders inside a specified directory. A short search on Google has lead me to the Create ZIP File PHP class from Rochak Chauhan. I tested two other scripts before and must say that this script works great for single files if you add them manually. To compress a whole directory with an unknown number of files into one zip file I created some class extension to get this job done.

Create a zip file from folders on the fly

Tip: Bot detection

admin — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 14:31:42 +0000

A tutorial for detecting the robots in PHP scripts.

Very simple script... But the most valuable part is the bot's UAs list.

Bots or Crawlers, are basically search engines crawling around the internet. This is how you get your pages on search engines (well, a major way). Bot Detection isn't something super vital, but if your CMS or website already has practically everything, then you need Bot Detection.

Bot Detection with PHP

Blog: Tips and tricks from other pages VI

admin — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:35:56 +0000

Some PHP snippets, the cURL-based HTTP class, session starter that works across the browsers and a little tip for your .htaccess to lowering load and save the bandwith. Go on!

A small list of some useful code snippets which might help you when writing your PHP scripts - mail check, password generator, check IP, XSLT transform, sending mail etc.

10 code snippets for PHP developers

I expanded the previous sample of Basic cUrl and PHP Usage. I added the headers processing which can be useful to handle cookies. It is now easier to use but basic PHP knowledge is required.

eHTTP client class

If a session based web application is used by a visitor using Internet Explorer it's possible that this user get some trouble. This will happen if parts of the application are accessed for example via a shortcut on the desktop and the application opens then in a new Explorer window. At this moment a second session is started with a different ID, if the used web application has some session based authentication system the user has to login again. At the same time the user has to logout twice! In browsers like Mozilla Firefox new windows are treated the same way then tabs where the problem doesn't exists.

Cross-browser session starter

The number one turn off for a website has to be loading times. If your server supports mod_expires you can improve your loading times by 66%, as well as saving your self bandwidth.

Save Bandwidth and Loading Times

A new open-source PHP compiler

admin — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:04:30 +0000

I've found a new promising project in early beta stage: phc - the open-source PHP compiler.

phc is an open source compiler for PHP with support for plugins. In addition, it can be used to pretty-print or obfuscate PHP code, as a framework for developing applications that process PHP scripts, or to convert PHP into XML and back, enabling processing of PHP scripts using XML tools.

phc for PHP programmers:

* Compile PHP source into an (optimized) executable.
* Compile a web application into an (optimized) extension.
* Pretty-print PHP code.
* Obfuscate PHP code.
* Combine many php scripts into a single file.
* Optimize PHP code using classical compiler optimizations.

phc for tools developers:

* Analyse, modify or refactor PHP scripts using C++ plugins.
* Convert PHP into a well-defined XML format, process it with your own tools, and convert it back to PHP.
* Operate on ASTs, simplified ASTs, or 3-address code.
* Analyse or optimize PHP code using an SSA-based IR.

Link: phc

Tip: Mail address checking

admin — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 23:05:27 +0000

A PHP snippet, which checks given mail address not only by regular expression (right form of address, i.e. "must contain one '@' character"), but checks if the mail server has the given mailbox.

Here is the code, without further modifications, taken directly from my live webservice:

static function checkEmail($email)
{
	if(eregi("^[a-zA-Z0-9_]+@[a-zA-Z0-9\-]+\.[a-zA-Z0-9\-\.]+$]", $email))
		{
			return false;
		}
	list($Username, $Domain) = split("@",$email);
	if(getmxrr($Domain, $MXHost))
	{
		return true;
	}
	else
	{
		if(@fsockopen($Domain, 25, $errno, $errstr, 30))
		{
			return true;
		}
		else
		{
			return false;
		}
	}
}

See also the Two-step e-mail validation in PHP article.

Tip: Getting filename and extension in PHP

admin — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:08:06 +0000

Roshan Bhattarai shows how to simple obtain the filename and extension from the file path.

Getting the extension from a file name or name of the file from the full path is not a big hassle for the experienced programmer but it might be a annoying task for the beginners of PHP. Now let me find the solution for them using two functions of PHP called explode() and pathinfo()

Getting filename and extension in PHP using explode(), basename() and pathinfo()

Blog: Interesting PHP opensource projects

admin — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 22:47:48 +0000

A bunch of interesting PHP scripts ready-for-use: Microblog, social community portal, DB manager, bookmarks manager and last (but not least): Working with video in real time.

I've recently found the Open Source PHP catalog and I've found some interesting scripts. Here they are:

dbscript is a new framework with little real-world usage yet, but it "borrows" good designs from other languages, such as the content-negotiating-View class, and Model Security. dbscript's RESTful Web services are trying to be compatible with Ruby on Rails.

dbscript

SQL Buddy is a web based MySQL administration tool that focuses on usability, and simplicity. Great alternative to phpMyAdmin.

SQL Buddy

With Online-Bookmarks you have the possibility to gain a multiuser Bookmark management system that keeps Bookmarks, Favorites and Links online, where they actually are needed. It makes it easy to store browser URL's central and access them from anywhere. Share site experiences with others in a social-bookmarking manner or keep your bookmarks private and safe as you like. It is also possible to import/export Favorites from and to the most common browsers, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Opera and Netscape.

Online-Bookmarks

Elgg is an open, flexible social networking engine, designed to run at the heart of any socially-aware application. Building on Elgg is easy, and because the engine handles common web application and social functionality for you, you can concentrate on developing your idea.

Elgg

Tiny Tiny RSS is a web-based news feed (RSS/Atom) aggregator, designed to allow you to read news from any location, while feeling as close to a real desktop application as possible.

Tiny Tiny RSS

You can upload videos using PHP same as uploading other files on the web such as images, documents but little bit more work require for setting web server, because videos is little bit big in size, and upload large files require some extra settings. you will use file html input tag to upload videos, also you can use any third party tool to upload videos on the server.

Uploading, Grabbing Thumbnail and Displaying Videos in real time using PHP

Blog: Tips and tricks from other pages V

admin — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:56:51 +0000

Charts and thumbnails

Generate thumbs by visiting a URL such as your.com/thumbs/images/image.50x50.jpg. This will create a 50x50px thumbnail of your.com/images/image.jpg. The thumb will be stored on your server at your.com/thumbs/images/image.50x50.jpg so the next request for the same image will be loaded without loading php for ultra fast image cache.

Image Cache using phpThumb and .htaccess

pChart is a PHP class oriented framework designed to create aliased charts. Most of todays chart libraries have a cost, our project is intended to be free. Data can be retrieved from SQL queries, CSV files, or manually provided. This project is still under development and new features or fix are made every week. Focus has been put on rendering quality introducing an aliasing algorithm to draw eye candy graphics. Rendering speed has been dramatically enhanced since the first version, we'll still continue optimising the code!

pChart - a PHP class to build charts

Tip: Load URL content

admin — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 18:44:33 +0000

An interesting URL fetcher by Bin-Co. It workarounds all the curl, fsockopen and file_get_contents problems and provides a nice way to do content fetching.

PHP make fetching remote content very easy by including functions like file_get_contents() that has URL support. Unfortunately, this is a huge security threat - and many servers have disabled this feature in PHP. Also this is not the most optimized method to fetch an URL. Also, it is impossible to submit data using the POST method using this function.

Load() Function for PHP - Fetch URL Content