PHP Expert Programmer

Php extract method

2009-03-01T09:23:00.000-08:00

"extract()" Method

Experimentally I found that calling extract() also shows the number of keys if the key is set and is not numeric ! Maybe there was a better definition than mine . Please have a look to this scripts :<?PHP
$var["i"] = "a";
$var["j"] = "b";
$var["k"] = 1;
echo extract($var); // returns 3
?>

<?PHP
$var2["i"] = "a";
$var2[2] = "b";
$var2[] = 1;
echo extract($var2); // returns 1
?>

(Arash Moslehi)

Sending Email with Attachment

2009-02-08T10:30:00.000-08:00

The last variation that we will consider is email with attachments. To send an email with attachment we need to use the multipart/mixed MIME type that specifies that mixed types will be included in the email. Moreover, we want to use multipart/alternative MIME type to send both plain-text and HTML version of the email. Have a look at the example:

<?php
//define the receiver of the email
$to = 'youraddress@example.com';
//define the subject of the email
$subject = 'Test email with attachment';
//create a boundary string. It must be unique
//so we use the MD5 algorithm to generate a random hash
$random_hash = md5(date('r', time()));
//define the headers we want passed. Note that they are separated with \r\n
$headers = "From: webmaster@example.com\r\nReply-To: webmaster@example.com";
//add boundary string and mime type specification
$headers .= "\r\nContent-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"PHP-mixed-".$random_hash."\"";
//read the atachment file contents into a string,
//encode it with MIME base64,
//and split it into smaller chunks
$attachment = chunk_split(base64_encode(file_get_contents('attachment.zip')));
//define the body of the message.
ob_start(); //Turn on output buffering
?>
--PHP-mixed-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="PHP-alt-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>"

--PHP-alt-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hello World!!!
This is simple text email message.

--PHP-alt-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>
Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

<h2>Hello World!</h2>
<p>This is something with <b>HTML</b> formatting.</p>

--PHP-alt-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>--

--PHP-mixed-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>
Content-Type: application/zip; name="attachment.zip"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment

<?php echo $attachment; ?>
--PHP-mixed-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>--

<?php
//copy current buffer contents into $message variable and delete current output buffer
$message = ob_get_clean();
//send the email
$mail_sent = @mail( $to, $subject, $message, $headers );
//if the message is sent successfully print "Mail sent". Otherwise print "Mail failed"
echo $mail_sent ? "Mail sent" : "Mail failed";
?>

As you can see, sending an email with attachment is easy to accomplish. In the preceding example we have multipart/mixed MIME type, and inside it we have multipart/alternative MIME type that specifies two versions of the email. To include an attachment to our message, we read the data from the specified file into a string, encode it with base64, split it in smaller chunks to make sure that it matches the MIME specifications and then include it as an attachment.

Sending HTML Email

2009-02-08T10:24:00.000-08:00

The next step is to examine how to send HTML email. However, some mail clients cannot understand HTML emails. Therefore it is best to send any HTML email using a multipart construction, where one part contains a plain-text version of the email and the other part is HTML. If your customers have HTML email turned off, they will still get a nice email, even if they don't get all of the HTML markup. Have a look at the example:

<?php
//define the receiver of the email
$to = 'youraddress@example.com';
//define the subject of the email
$subject = 'Test HTML email';
//create a boundary string. It must be unique
//so we use the MD5 algorithm to generate a random hash
$random_hash = md5(date('r', time()));
//define the headers we want passed. Note that they are separated with \r\n
$headers = "From: webmaster@example.com\r\nReply-To: webmaster@example.com";
//add boundary string and mime type specification
$headers .= "\r\nContent-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=\"PHP-alt-".$random_hash."\"";
//define the body of the message.
ob_start(); //Turn on output buffering
?>
--PHP-alt-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hello World!!!
This is simple text email message.

--PHP-alt-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>
Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

<h2>Hello World!</h2>
<p>This is something with <b>HTML</b> formatting.</p>

--PHP-alt-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>--
<?
//copy current buffer contents into $message variable and delete current output buffer
$message = ob_get_clean();
//send the email
$mail_sent = @mail( $to, $subject, $message, $headers );
//if the message is sent successfully print "Mail sent". Otherwise print "Mail failed"
echo $mail_sent ? "Mail sent" : "Mail failed";
?>

In the preceding example we add one additional header of Content-type:multipart/alternative and boundary string that marks the different areas of the email. Note that the content type of the message itself is sent as a mail header, while the content types of the individual parts of the message are embedded in the message itself. This way, mail clients can decide which part of the message they want to display.

Sending a Simple Text Email

2009-02-08T10:23:00.000-08:00

At first let's consider how to send a simple text email messages. PHP includes the mail() function for sending email, which takes three basic and two optional parameters. These parameters are, in order, the email address to send to, the subject of the email, the message to be sent, additional headers you want to include and finally an additional parameter to the Sendmail program. The mail() function returns True if the message is sent successfully and False otherwise. Have a look at the example:

<?php
//define the receiver of the email
$to = 'youraddress@example.com';
//define the subject of the email
$subject = 'Test email';
//define the message to be sent. Each line should be separated with \n
$message = "Hello World!\n\nThis is my first mail.";
//define the headers we want passed. Note that they are separated with \r\n
$headers = "From: webmaster@example.com\r\nReply-To: webmaster@example.com";
//send the email
$mail_sent = @mail( $to, $subject, $message, $headers );
//if the message is sent successfully print "Mail sent". Otherwise print "Mail failed"
echo $mail_sent ? "Mail sent" : "Mail failed";
?>

As you can see, it very easy to send an email. You can add more receivers by either adding their addresses, comma separated, to the $to variable, or by adding cc: or bcc: headers. If you don't receive the test mail, you have probably installed PHP incorrectly, or may not have permission to send emails.

how to remove html tags from text in php

2009-02-06T07:30:00.000-08:00

if you are reading my post, its probably because you want to remove html tags from your posts or forums or whatever.

when i first started to do this, i wanted to remove all the html tags from a strin i had in my posts. this is an example:

<?
$string = "<h1>BIG HTML TAGS</h1>";
?>

ok as you can see, this will output:

BIG HTML TAGS

but i dont want that, i want to stop and prevent html from being posted on my forums. i tried using htmlspecialchars() and htmlentities() but none did what i wanted.

but finally i found it, the function is called strip_tags()

so if i wanted to remove the <h1> tags from my string i would just simply do this:

<?
$string = "<h1>BIG HTML TAGS</h1>";
$string = strip_tags($string);
?>

and this would be the ouput:

BIG HTML TAGS

X-Cart – ecommerce shopping cart software

2008-08-17T17:59:00.000-07:00

X-Cart – ecommerce shopping cart software:

X-Cart shopping cart software is based on PHP Smarty templates, this makes it very flexible and easy to modify. The data is stored in MySQL database.

W3C XHTML 1.0 compliance of X-Cart storefront out of the box.

You receive a complete source code and SQL tables for MySQL database to make them extended or customized easily.

X-Cart is a turnkey package. Installation is handled by web-based step-by-step wizard to make the system running immediately after receiving it.

X-Cart is search engine friendly. It has integrated HTML catalog functionality to gain benefits of dynamic content and static HTML preferred by search engines.

We bundle our software with 24x7 free technical support for beginners. Our experts are always ready to answer questions, even handle installation & configuration tasks.

We also offer custom programming services. Every client can get a storefront with a unique look. We can customize the software to completely fit the structure of your business.

Additional software licenses come at discounted rates.

More advantages:

Robust feature rich ecommerce shopping cart software is a key in online business success. Its potential can be multiplied many times if accompanied by coherent resources & services to give a hand on the way to online success not leaving you alone when operating live ecommerce website:

Moneyback guarantee

We offer unconditional 30-day money back guarantee as a sign of our products quality to ensure best customers' experience in any case. Simply request a refund within 30 days since purchase to have all the money back.

Community forums

The value of help provided by community forums should not be underestimated. Share experience with thousands of real business owners to find answers & hints to be successful. The forums are intentionally made available for clients only to ensure community forums are the meeting point of people who actually are in the business.

Responsive support

Free technical support offered with each license guarantees successful project launching. We designed our software to minimize the need of this, so free technical support is a warranty card to keep you confident.

Partnership

Regardless of whether you are a web hosting provider, developer, payment gateway or ISP, we can setup a partner relationship profitable for both parties. Read about our Affiliate program and see Reseller prices.

Website: http://www.x-cart.com/

PHP Email Address Validation

2008-07-29T15:17:00.000-07:00

<?Php
function check_email_address($email) {
// First, we check that there's one @ symbol, and that the lengths are right
if (!ereg("^[^@]{1,64}@[^@]{1,255}$", $email)) {
// Email invalid because wrong number of characters in one section, or wrong number of @ symbols.
return false;
}
// Split it into sections to make life easier
$email_array = explode("@", $email);
$local_array = explode(".", $email_array[0]);
for ($i = 0; $i < sizeof($local_array); $i++) {
if (!ereg("^(([A-Za-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-][A-Za-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~\.-]{0,63})|(\"[^(\\|\")]{0,62}\"))$", $local_array[$i])) {
return false;
}
}
if (!ereg("^\[?[0-9\.]+\]?$", $email_array[1])) { // Check if domain is IP. If not, it should be valid domain name
$domain_array = explode(".", $email_array[1]);
if (sizeof($domain_array) < 2) {
return false; // Not enough parts to domain
}
for ($i = 0; $i < sizeof($domain_array); $i++) {
if (!ereg("^(([A-Za-z0-9][A-Za-z0-9-]{0,61}[A-Za-z0-9])|([A-Za-z0-9]+))$", $domain_array[$i])) {
return false;
}
}
}
return true;
}
?>

Using the function above is relatively simple, as you can see:

<?Php
if (check_email_address($email)) {
echo $email . ' is a valid email address.';
} else {
echo $email . ' is not a valid email address.';
}
?>

PHP MySQL Database Class

2008-07-29T14:34:00.000-07:00

A class for very basic MySQL database connectivity. Written to reduce redundant code in my own projects aswell as aid in debugging and error reporting during the developement phase. Currently connects to a database, execute external files containing SQL commands, insert and update from an array of key => value pairs, insert and update with sql command, query (one result), query (multiple rows), and dump a select query to a table. The zip file contains the class aswell as a demonstration script.

Download Version 1.0.4: db-1.0.4.zip

Returning an array of variables from PHP function

2008-07-29T13:36:00.000-07:00

From a function we can get back a set of variables by using an array. A function returns any variable to the main script by using return statement. Here we will try to return a set of variables by using an array. Our main script will receive the array and we will use while each statement to display all elements of an array.

We will change a script a bit and try to pass ( as input ) a string to the function. This string we will break by using split command and create an array. This array we will return to main script for displaying.

<?Php

function test($my_string){
// creating an array by split command
$my_array=split(" ",$my_string);
return $my_array; // returning the array
}

// sending a string to function as input //
$collect_array=test("Hello welcome to plus2net");

// displaying the elements of the collected array
while (list ($key, $val) = each ($collect_array)) {
echo "$key -> $val <br>";
}

?>

Turnkey PHP shopping cart software

2008-07-28T13:14:00.000-07:00

Complete ready-to-run PHP shopping cart software

No programming required

Cost-effective

All major ecommerce features

Easy design integration in any HTML editor

A set of ready-to-use skin templates included

Search Engine friendly

Online credit card processing

Integrated with Google Checkout and PayPal Pro

Real-time shipping quotes

Order notifications by email and SMS

Easy localization

Free installation service

Free 24/7 customer support

WEBSITE: http://www.shop-script.com/

Joomla - Cutting Edge Content Management

2008-07-24T14:39:00.000-07:00

[caption id="attachment_11" align="alignleft" width="165" caption="Joomla"][/caption]

Joomla! is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Joomla! is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable.

Joomla! is different from the normal models for content management software. For a start, it's not complicated. Joomla! has been developed for everybody, and anybody can develop it further. It is designed to work (primarily) with other Open Source, free, software such as PHP, MySQL, and Apache.

It is easy to install and administer, and is reliable.

Joomla! doesn't even require the user or administrator of the system to know HTML to operate it once it's up and running.

To get the perfect Web site with all the functionality that you require for your particular application may take additional time and effort, but with the Joomla! Community support that is available and the many Third Party Developers actively creating and releasing new Extensions for the 1.5 platform on an almost daily basis, there is likely to be something out there to meet your needs. Or you could develop your own Extensions and make these available to the rest of the community.

Easy PHP Calendar

2008-07-23T13:26:00.000-07:00

The Easy PHP Calendar is a powerful PHP calendar script that is easily integrated into web sites and is simple to customize. This attractive, full-featured calendar is suitable for display on a calendar of events page, home page, or any other page that needs a calendar.

* The Easy PHP Calendar was formerly known as the Easily Simple Calendar.

Key Features:

mySQL database support

Flat-file database support - No mySQL server required!

Single events, recurring events and floating events plus multiple categories

Complete and easy event and setup administration

Mouse-over and pop-up event details

Customizable categories and multiple event administrators

Rich event descriptions including font sizes/colors and images

and much more...

With the Easy PHP Calendar, you can easily customize colors, font sizes, table sizes and more by adjusting a single CSS file. It's simple to take complete control over the PHP calendar's looks and how it interacts with users! With support for multiple date, time and language formats, the Easy PHP Calendar can be used for anywhere in the world!

The Easy PHP Calendar is well-supported through the user forums. Take your time to view the online demonstration, download a free trial version, and you'll see that the Easy PHP Calendar is the PHP calendar script for you!

DOWNLOAD

Selecting random record from MySQL database table

2008-07-07T13:15:00.000-07:00

The simplest way of selecting random rows from the MySQL database is to use "ORDER BY RAND()" clause in the query.

Solution 1 [SQL]: SELECT * FROM `table` ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 0,1;

The problem with this method is that it is very slow. The reason for it being so slow is that MySQL creates a temporary table with all the result rows and assigns each one of them a random sorting index. The results are then sorted and returned.

There are several workarounds to speed things up.

The basic idea is to get a random number and then select a specific row using this number.

In the case that all the rows have unique ids we will just have to pick a random number between the smallest and the biggest id and then select the row with id that equals that number. To make this method work when ids are not evenly distributed we will have to use ">=" operator instead of "=" in the last query.

To get the minimum and maximum id values in the entire table we will use MAX() and MIN() aggregate functions. These functions will return minimum and maximum value in the specified group. The group in our case is all the values of `id` column in our table.

Solution 2 [PHP]: $range_result = mysql_query( " SELECT MAX(`id`) AS max_id , MIN(`id`) AS min_id FROM `table` "); $range_row = mysql_fetch_object( $range_result ); $random = mt_rand( $range_row->min_id , $range_row->max_id ); $result = mysql_query( " SELECT * FROM `table` WHERE `id` >= $random LIMIT 0,1 ");

As we mentioned this method is limited to tables with unique id for each row. What to do if it's not the case?

The solution is to use the MySQL LIMIT clause. LIMIT accepts two arguments. The first argument specifies the offset of the first row to return, and the second specifies the maximum number of rows to return. The offset of the initial row is 0 (not 1).

To calculate the offset to the first row we will generate a random number between 0 and 1 using MySQL's RAND() function. Then we will multiply this number by number of records in the table, which we will get using COUNT() function. Since LIMIT arguments must be integers and not float values we will round the resulting number using FLOOR() function. FLOOR() is an arithmetic function that calculates the largest integer value that is smaller than or equal to the expression. The resulting code will look like this:

Solution 3 [PHP]: $offset_result = mysql_query( " SELECT FLOOR(RAND() * COUNT(*)) AS `offset` FROM `table` "); $offset_row = mysql_fetch_object( $offset_result ); $offset = $offset_row->offset; $result = mysql_query( " SELECT * FROM `table` LIMIT $offset, 1 " );

In MySQL 4.1 and later we can combine two previous methods using subquery like so:

Solution 4 [SQL]: SELECT * FROM `table` WHERE id >= (SELECT FLOOR( MAX(id) * RAND()) FROM `table` ) ORDER BY id LIMIT 1;

This solution has the same weakness as the solution 2 e.g. it only works for tables with unique ids.

Remember the reason we started looked for alternative ways of selecting random rows? Speed! So how do these methods compare in terms of execution times. I am not going to go into specifics of hardware and software configuration or give precise numbers. The approximate results are:

The slowest method is solution 1. Let's say that it took 100% of time to execute.

Solution 2 took 79%.

Solution 3 - 13%.

Solution 4 - 16%.

The winner is solution 3.

Drag N Drop File Upload With Progress Bar

2008-07-04T13:35:00.000-07:00

Make your site more user friendly. With Rad Upload's drag and drop functionality, your visitors can transfer files to your server just as easily as copying from one folder to another.

The lite edition is available for free download. It does not expire and contains most of the features of the standard edition. Rad Upload Plus has many advanced features such as client side filtering and on the fly GZip compression.

PHP Captcha Security Images for Anti Spamming

2008-07-04T13:13:00.000-07:00

<?php
session_start();

/*
* File: CaptchaSecurityImages.php
* Author: Simon Jarvis
* Copyright: 2006 Simon Jarvis
* Date: 03/08/06
* Updated: 07/02/07
* Requirements: PHP 4/5 with GD and FreeType libraries
* Link: http://www.white-hat-web-design.co.uk/articles/php-captcha.php
* 
* This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or 
* modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License 
* as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 
* of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
* 
* This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, 
* but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of 
* MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the 
* GNU General Public License for more details: 
* http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
*
*/

class CaptchaSecurityImages {

   var $font = 'monofont.ttf';

   function generateCode($characters) {
      /* list all possible characters, similar looking characters and vowels have been removed */
      $possible = '23456789bcdfghjkmnpqrstvwxyz';
      $code = '';
      $i = 0;
      while ($i < $characters) { 
         $code .= substr($possible, mt_rand(0, strlen($possible)-1), 1);
         $i++;
      }
      return $code;
   }

   function CaptchaSecurityImages($width='120',$height='40',$characters='6') {
      $code = $this->generateCode($characters);
      /* font size will be 75% of the image height */
      $font_size = $height * 0.75;
      $image = imagecreate($width, $height) or die('Cannot initialize new GD image stream');
      /* set the colours */
      $background_color = imagecolorallocate($image, 255, 255, 255);
      $text_color = imagecolorallocate($image, 20, 40, 100);
      $noise_color = imagecolorallocate($image, 100, 120, 180);
      /* generate random dots in background */
      for( $i=0; $i<($width*$height)/3; $i++ ) {
         imagefilledellipse($image, mt_rand(0,$width), mt_rand(0,$height), 1, 1, $noise_color);
      }
      /* generate random lines in background */
      for( $i=0; $i<($width*$height)/150; $i++ ) {
         imageline($image, mt_rand(0,$width), mt_rand(0,$height), mt_rand(0,$width), mt_rand(0,$height), $noise_color);
      }
      /* create textbox and add text */
      $textbox = imagettfbbox($font_size, 0, $this->font, $code) or die('Error in imagettfbbox function');
      $x = ($width - $textbox[4])/2;
      $y = ($height - $textbox[5])/2;
      imagettftext($image, $font_size, 0, $x, $y, $text_color, $this->font , $code) or die('Error in imagettftext function');
      /* output captcha image to browser */
      header('Content-Type: image/jpeg');
      imagejpeg($image);
      imagedestroy($image);
      $_SESSION['security_code'] = $code;
   }

}

$width = isset($_GET['width']) && $_GET['height'] < 600 ? $_GET['width'] : '120';
$height = isset($_GET['height']) && $_GET['height'] < 200 ? $_GET['height'] : '40';
$characters = isset($_GET['characters']) && $_GET['characters'] > 2 ? $_GET['characters'] : '6';

$captcha = new CaptchaSecurityImages($width,$height,$characters);

?>
Download Link

PHP Expert Programmer

Php extract method

"extract()" Method

Sending Email with Attachment

Sending HTML Email

Sending a Simple Text Email

how to remove html tags from text in php

BIG HTML TAGS

X-Cart – ecommerce shopping cart software

X-Cart – ecommerce shopping cart software:

More advantages:

Moneyback guarantee

Community forums

Responsive support

Partnership

PHP Email Address Validation

PHP MySQL Database Class

Returning an array of variables from PHP function

Turnkey PHP shopping cart software

Joomla - Cutting Edge Content Management

Easy PHP Calendar

Key Features:

Selecting random record from MySQL database table

Drag N Drop File Upload With Progress Bar

PHP Captcha Security Images for Anti Spamming