730 PHP Tutorials. Page 3

Unfortunately, computing is more like an art than it is a science and things go wrong. I know that s a shocker but it s true. As such, there are common problems you might encounter when installing PHP. What? You mean PHP isn t perfect?! Well, as a language it almost is, but installing it can be a bear for the inexperienced. So let s take a look at what might happen and try to keep that blood pressure down, will ya? // ); //]] One of the more com...

With some PHP basics under our belt, it s time to introduce one of the most important things when writing web applications: security. I don t mean just protecting credit cards or other personal information. Rather, I am talking about writing secure, solid code from the very first line to the very last. With this topic, which I call PHP Paranoia, I intend to teach you not only the function calls necessary to accomplish a task, but also the thoug...

In the previous article I started this series by discussing a few of the more common and serious stylistic mistakes in PHP scripts. In this article I ll continue introduce a few more good ideas which make your code more professional and save you a considerable amount of headache and development time. Let s get started by discussing a very common fault in many PHP scripts: reinventing the wheel. More common stylistic errors Tip 4: Don t reinvent t...

The release of version 4.3 of PHP caused a collective sigh of relief from developers who rely on the GD library extension to provide image-manipulation capabilities to their scripts. GD is very powerful, but it can be a real pain to configure and install when compiling the PHP interpreter. Luckily, the latest incarnation of PHP included a built-in version of the library that was supposed to make things easier for everyone. // ); //]] Unfortunate...

If you re looking for a comprehensive series on how to create an expansible blog application with PHP 5, then this group of tutorials might be what you ve been expecting to find. Welcome to the concluding installment of the series Building a blogger with PHP. Made up of three friendly articles, this series provides you with all the information you need to start building a blog system with PHP in a few easy steps.

Are you one of those web developers searching for a comprehensive approach to constructing an expandable website engine with PHP 5? If your answer is a resounding yes, then this series might appeal to you. Welcome to the final part of the series Building an extensible website engine with PHP 5. In two tutorials, this series teaches you how to build a versatile website system which allows you to generate dynamic web documents by using a few simp...

Welcome to the third part of the series Network Programming in PHP. In three tutorials, this series explains the basics of network programming in PHP, by developing a query processor class in PHP 5, which uses some of the most popular PHP network functions, in order to implement the logic of its methods.

Sujith Nair Many of you would agree with me when I say that programming is an art. Logic of course is an essential part, but so is the manner in which the whole code is written. I strongly believe that a programmer should not ignore this aspect of documentation of code. For php programmers there is always PEAR that gives you guidelines on How to s regarding php programs and packages. Perhaps the most important part of the PEAR projec...

One of the most important tasks when building software applications is gaining a clear understanding of which parts of the application can be configured by the user, and which parts cannot. For example, if you re building a generic tool to administer databases, you would obviously want the DBA to be able to configure the application for different databases by inputting the database names and access parameters for each. However, you might not want...

In this article, I will briefly describe how to compile PHP with ORACLE 8i support. When I tried to compile php with oracle support on Solaris 2.6, I received lots of problems. After tedious search on the internet, I have found a solution. I have following configuration: ORACLE 8.1.6 PHP 4.0.6 Apache 1.3.19 (Already Installed) Firstly unpack php as root: #tar zxvf php-4.0.6.tar.gz #cd php-4.0.6 Because apache is already installed, I want PHP to ...

This is documentation for installing Apache 1.3.9, PHP 3.011, Perl 5.00502 and MySQL 3.21.29, but should work with ANY recent (or more recent) versions of this software. Note if you have ActiveState for Perl installed, either uninstall it, or skip the installation section below for Perl, simply make sure the the shebang line (the first line of your Perl script) points to the path of the ActiveState file perl.exe. See more in Step Two...

Why is PHP become more like Java, when the PHP developer community seems to want anything but that to happen? What is Zend thinking?

Imagine if you took Dreamweaver MX 2004 and put it on a low-carb diet for about 8 months. The result would be Contribute 3. This Dreamweaver Lite software program has a similar look and feel to Dreamweaver, but is not intended for use by web developers or coders. Not only is it not fully functional with dynamic pages, it doesn t even allow you access to the raw code. That being said, what this software can do for you as a developer is free up ...

Mastering some of the most popular design patterns with PHP 5 can be sometimes an overwhelming process that requires hard work and experience. However, if you want to tackle the challenge and expand your existing background on them, this article might eventually find a place on your quick reference list.

mod_gzip is an Apache module which compresses static html pages using Gzip, according to IETF standards for browsers that accept gzip enconding (IE, Netscape, etc). mod_gzip may accelerate the download time for pages 4/5 times and I strongly suggest you use mod_gzip in your webserver. However, due to a lack of a filtering mechanism between modules in Apache 1.x.x, there is no way to compress PHP generated output using mod_gzip. Therefore, we hav...

Today we ll revisit our discussion of control structures with the introduction of three new ones: do...while(), if....elseif, and the switch statement. // ); //]] Last time we discussed control structures we introduced the standard if() statement, the while() statement as well as the for() statement. Today we ll introduce two new variations of these control structures as well as introduce a completely new structure switch() and explain the simil...

In the last few years, XML has received great media attention, and most languages support the parsing and extraction of data from XML documents. Besides being a great three-letter anacronym to sprinkle on your resum, XML is actually a useful data storage structure for PHP programmers. Before you begin to use XML, you must first determine if your project really needs what XML offers. There are alternative data storage formats like fixed-w...

Now, I don t know about you guys, but I don t think the paperless office is a feasible idea. At least not without a lot more thinking, and a lot more work.

In the first part of this article, I explained my rationale for an application I like to call The Vault, a centralized document management system which uses different types of permissions to protect access to group documents. I then spent some time building a wish list of features that I would like the application to support, followed by an explanation of the rules required to govern the system, and of the document check-in/check-out process I pl...

You ve seen them all over the web--image galleries for your viewing pleasure! You ve looked for decent image gallery software, but none of them seem to suit your needs, while others have a lot of extra features you don t need. And while you ve seen some others that are just what you re looking for, you can t easily integrate them into your website. To solve this problem, I wrote my own photo gallery script and I m going to share it with you in t...

[Editor s note: If you haven t read the previous installment of this project, you should read it through before beginning this article.] In the last installment of our Image Gallery project, we just finished the creation of the get_items function. That was one long function! Fortunately, the others are shorter. We have three different functions that do about the same thing. They take the items in the array lst and display them in table format....

Working with interpreter classes in PHP 5 can be a useful experience for any PHP developer. Welcome to the final part of the series that began with Building Interpreter Classes with PHP 5. Composed of three educational tutorials, this series teaches you how to implement the interpreter pattern with PHP, by covering not only the corresponding theoretical concepts, but also showing you concrete cases where this pattern can be applied in a useful ...

I m just a few days away from launching a comprehensive support website for my book, Beginning PHP and MySQL 5, Second Edition, and among other features, have built a search engine for sifting through the more than 500 code snippets found throughout the book. This was an interesting exercise because it involves a number of storing a fairly significant amount of text within a MySQL database, using MySQL s full-text search facility, and devising...

Rich Site Summary feeds, better known as RSS, are a great example of how XML is making a major impact in regards to the way information is consumed. This XML dialect is a popular format for summarizing information, typically, but not exclusively news-oriented data consisting of common attributes like a title, summary, author, and publish date. Building and distributing RSS feeds has become an increasingly popular practice for several reasons: Com...

Setting up polls or voting systems is a great way to get users more involved in your website, and keep them coming back for more. But with fraud hanging over the professional political elections, how do you keep your visitors from screaming for a recount--or worse, stuffing the ballot box? Ian Felton describes a simple system for setting up an online poll and preventing abuses.

The abstract factory pattern can be useful if you re developing a PHP application that needs to create diverse objects in multiple contexts. If you re interested in learning the basics of this design pattern, this set of articles might be what you re looking for. Welcome to the second installment of the series Using abstract factory classes in PHP 5. In a step-by-step guide, this series teaches you how to create abstract factory classes in PHP ...

In this first part of Building an Invoicing System, we are going to look at invoice management. Why would anyone want an online invoicing system? Well, if you are a freelance web developer like myself, you will undoubtedly need to invoice your clients so as to be able to get paid at the end of the month. This application will help you to manage your client details as well as your invoices.

If learning how to incorporate creational design patterns into your own PHP 5 applications is a high-priority topic for you, then this set of comprehensive articles might be what you re looking for. Welcome to the concluding installment of the series Using Bridge Classes with PHP 5. These tutorials will teach you how to implement the bridge pattern in PHP by providing you with many hands-on examples that can be included in your existing and fut...

Discussion forums usually need an administrator to handle various tasks that you wouldn t want just any forum user doing, such as banning other users. This article, the second of two parts, will show you how to set up an administration area for a threaded discussion forum, and some of the functions you might want an administrator to manage.

We ve all come across some sort of online survey that asks a few questions about our interests or our online shopping experience. In this article we re going to walk you through the creation of a similar online survey that you can use on your own web site. Basically we re going to create a survey of 10 to 12 questions that gather information about the user, as well as their views and opinions. We ll do this in two ways. The first way we re going...

Last time we set up our form, took the data from that form and emailed it to an email address of our choosing. This time we re going to take the same form data, put it in a database, read the total values and display them on a page. If you haven t read the first part, you can do so by clicking here. Storing Data In A Database Now that we can collect the data from the form, we want to put it in a database for storage and compilation. So first thi...

Do you want to send today s entry to your blog? Do you have a newsletter that cannot detect false receiver email addresses? Even though mailing lists are often supported by software such as mailman, ezmlm or majordomo it can be of great value to be able to receive mails via php. Newsletter, trouble-ticket-systems, an archive of mails, or an email based administration of websites or onlineshops are being enabled, if received mails are automatical...

Many methods exist to creating printer versions. A few of these include: creating a separate HTML page for every page on your website that is formatted to print well. using a database to hold the page content and display the content via either the normal template or the stripped-down printer template. including a header.php file above your content and footer.php below your content. The method I will describe here is different from the usual meth...

In this third article in our series, we will look at the type of functions for which we need to use our search information, then take a look at retrieving records based on various search criteria.

In this article, we will set up an automatic search listener to execute the code for our searchable inventory system. With this final piece, we will assemble all of the parts of our application into a working search tool. It will allow us to search for records using any combination of the search forms, as well as sort those records by almost any of the resulting column headers.

Businesses that hope to sell items through their website need a searchable inventory system for the web. This article, the first in a four-part series, will start you on your way to building one.

In this second part of an article about setting up a searchable inventory system, we will cover our helper Search class, and some of the things this class will need to be able to do.

Most websites have some method of interacting with a visitor. Some have a chat system and others have shoutboxes or other ways to attract the visitor to return. One of the most used methods is a discussion forum. And this is what we are going to create and discuss in this article (the first of two parts).

Many people do not realize that PHP can be used to create non-HTML data. This is especially useful for creating images on the fly. It could be simple bar graphs that display data from a database, or even simpler, just a way to create graphic buttons on the fly. When I am putting up a site quickly, I find that it is a waste of my time to sit and fiddle with an image editor to create nice-looking graphical buttons and menus. Instead I will pick a ...

Printing HTML pages directly from browsers usually does not give the best printing output, compared to output from word processors such as Microsoft Word. For web-based systems that generate letters, reports and documents, an output that looks authentic and original is very important. Furthermore, printing output directly from browsers is usually dependant on the browser s configuration. Therefore web-based applications may face difficulties in ...

What to do if your domain host does not allow you to read the server log for your domain, stopping you from analyzing your website traffic the way you d like to? Well, create your own logfile of course ! I recently set up a new domain (coolt.nu, it s in Swedish, you might not want to visit it :) and faced the problem that my domain host wouldn t generate the statistics I wanted. I also found that they would not let me read/process the logfile my...

We have recently built and delivered an e-commerce project which runs both on Linux and Windows, talking optionally to either Microsoft SQL Server or MySQL. The software was built with PHP4 and is now deployed on a Windows NT server under IIS and SQL server. It runs equally happily (and somewhat faster) on Linux and MySQL. We thought there might be some people who would like to know a little about how it was done. Background The project objectiv...

This document describes how to customize the session handlers in PHP4. We will provide examples of how to write a fully functional session handler that works with DBM files and one that works with a MySQL database. New to PHP4 was a set of native session handling functions which was badly missing from PHP3. By default, each session is stored as a separate file in your temporary directory (eg. /tmp in Unix). This may or may not be appropriate dep...

One of the key components of an e-commerce web site is credit card processing capabilities. One such credit card processing service, that is supported by PHP, is CashRegister, from CyberCash. The CashRegister service enables merchants to make financial transactions over the Internet in real-time. CashRegister works by first you (the merchant) receiving an order request from a customer and sending an authorization request to the CashRegister serv...

In a previous job when I was responsible for hiring PHP developers, I always used to ask questions about database abstraction in my interviews. It s amazing how often candidates with the best-looking CV s, and impressive looking project lists, were tripped up by their lack of knowledge of what a database abstraction layer is, and were unfamiliar with any of the main database abstraction layers. I can t really blame them. It s not obvious to newb...

I m almost ashamed to admit it, but a long time ago, I used to be a Perl programmer.

One of the most important factors in dynamic web page development is database definition. If your tables are not set up properly, it can cause you a lot of headaches down the road when you have to perform miraculous SQL calls in your PHP code in order to extract the data you want. By understanding data relationships and the normalization of data, you will be better prepared to begin developing your application in PHP. Whether you work with mySQL...

Have you ever been annoyed by template engines that force you to keep your templates in flat files? Ever feel like that Content Management System you just created isn t as dynamic as you originally thought? If you have ever felt like this, you may benefit from having your templates in a database.

Let me be completely frank with you.

Some once famously said, the more things change, the more they remain the same. And nowhere is this more true than in the area of programming languages.

I was sitting writing a kind of helpdesk call management program in PHP and found that I needed to work out how much time had elapsed since somebody had last bothered to contact the client about their problem. In the past, when I used to use ASP, the solution was simple - ASP has a command called DateDiff which takes two dates and can tell you how many seconds has passed between them, how many days, months and so on. After scouring the PHP manua...

In a previous series of articles, I covered the IBM DB2 Universal Database (DB2 UDB) plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET that lets Microsoft-trained application developers quickly develop .NET applications that run against DB2 UDB databases, whether they reside on the z/OS, i5/OS, AIX, Windows, Linux, HP-UX, or Solaris operating systems. Universal is truly an appropriate part of the DB2 UDB name because the approach used for appl...

Debugging is an important part of coding. One way to make the debugging process easier is to write quality code to begin with. This article, the first of two parts, will point out some of the most common coding errors, and help you identify problems in your code. It is excerpted from chapter 12 of

If you have ever written your own scripts in PHP or another programming language, you know the frustration that comes from debugging your work. Write an HTML page and leave off a closing /table tag, or even something vital like the body tag, and most of the browsers in use today will display the page as you intended, even with the errors. But programming languages in general - and PHP specifically - are not nearly as forgiving; le...

Are you interested in expanding your existing knowledge of different structural design patterns with PHP 5? Then look no further because you ve come to the right place. Welcome to the second installment of the series Using Bridge Classes with PHP 5. This group of three articles walks you through the basics of how to apply the bridge pattern in PHP-based applications, and it also teaches you how to use bridge objects in real world development en...

In the first part of this three-part series, we ll examine the basic outlines of creating a blog application with PHP 5. If you re currently working with PHP 4, this program can be adapted to that version of the language.

In your travels across the Web, you ve probably seen (maybe even participated in) online polls, quick measurements of what visitors to a site think of the hot-button issues of the day. And back when portals where a Good Thing, online polls appeared on each and every one of them; they were - and still are - a simple and effective method of promoting a sense of community amongst the visitors to a Web site, and of generating demographic data on a si...

Last week, we began our overview of the object-oriented features of PHP 5. This week, we will start discussing design patterns. This article, the second of several parts, is excerpted from chapter two of the book

Normally, in object oriented programming, object creation is not difficult. But what if your object needs to be created based on different conditions or other matters of context? Then you will spend hours in debugging and updating--unless you know about design patterns. David Fells explains how they work, and uses the creation of a maze to illustrate his points.

We asked you to choose the products that helped you to do your job effectively. Developer.com wanted to recognize the technologies and products that significantly influenced the work done by programmers. In addition to the existing nine categories, this year we added an Open Source category to reflect the influence those products have on the computer industry. Last years results held more surprises than we expected. We were not sure what to expec...

In recent weeks I ve been working on an e-commerce project. Among the project goals included building an Ajax-driven shopping cart which is intended to further enhance the user s shopping experience. In the latest installment of this ongoing PHP series, I ll show you how to build a shopping cart using PHP, session handling, and the Prototype JavaScript library (introduced in an earlier installment). The cart allows users to add and delete produc...

If you re interested in learning how to use recursion in PHP, look no further. Welcome to the third (and last) tutorial of the series Recursion in PHP. In three parts, this series walks through the fundamentals of recursive functions in PHP, in addition to explaining how to define and utilize recursive methods in object-based applications.

Are you interested in expanding your knowledge of creational design patterns and learning how to work with director and builder objects in PHP 5? If your answer is yes, then I think you should start reading this article right now! Welcome to the concluding part of the series How to Use Builder Objects in PHP 5. This series leads you through the application of the builder pattern in PHP, and shows you how to use it with copious hands-on examples...

Want to gain a good grounding in how to apply the Observer pattern in PHP? Then you re in the right place! Welcome to the second part of the series The Observer Pattern in PHP. Composed of three tutorials, this series teaches you the key concepts of the popular Observer design pattern, and shows you how to apply it in the context of real-world PHP applications.

Are you interested in learning how to manipulate low-level sockets in PHP? Your search has finished. This is the second part of the series Handling sockets in PHP, and hopefully you ll find in it valuable material regarding the creation and manipulation of sockets with PHP, in conjunction with numerous illustrative hands-on examples that will help you build socket servers in a few easy steps.

This is the first part of a three-part series that covers separating logic from presentation in PHP applications. In this article you will learn to develop a template system that is advanced enough to meet the requirements of a majority of applications.

Everyone is looking for ways to make their sites attract more repeat traffic. Even after you have content, bulletin boards and search functions, there s still more you can do. As you probably know, different people that come to your site probably come for different parts of your site, but there s no way to please everyone, is there?

Introduction The last piece of Web development I did before traversing the wild road of upper management was back in 1997, building Java UI components for a small company s product line of components for developers. That was when applets were all the rage, mostly because of the total freedom given to the developer for creating a dynamic UI within a Web browser. Before that, I spent three years developing HTML pages and CGI scripts with Perl. I fe...

In some situations you might need to display a progress bar—for example, when you are performing many tasks on the back end and they take a while to complete. In these cases it is a good idea to give some indication to the user that you are in fact still performing tasks and that their browser hasn t simply locked up. There are various methods of doing this, using pure PHP, or including JavaScript, CSS, Ajax,and more. We will explore a cou...

This document describes how to display safely formatted output from user input. We will discuss the dangers of displaying unfiltered output and then provide a safe means of displaying formatted output. Download ying20000718.zip and extract it into your web documents directory. Dangers of Unfiltered Output If you just took the user s input and displayed it as is, you may break your webpage. For example, someone can maliciously embed javascript in...

It s no secret; writing code documentation ranks right up there with attending meetings and the using the telephone as among the least favorite aspects of any developer s job. This shouldn t really come as a surprise though, since not only is writing documentation a pretty unexciting task, but it can be difficult to maintain over the lifetime of a project given changing features and code refactoring. Nonetheless, it s a crucial task if you and yo...

Every RDBMS worth its salt comes with one or more database administration tools that SQL developers can use to perform common tasks like executing queries, setting user privileges and viewing server status. For example, Oracle developer tend to swear by Quest Software s TOAD, while Microsoft SQL Server devotees use the ubiquitous Enterprise Manager and SQL Query Analyzer.