If your php application is processing media files like mp3, then it might need to find details of the mp3 file like its playtime, bitrate, encoder etc. There is a very useful php library called Getid3 that can extract information from mp3 files. Its written in pure php and does not have any dependencies. Needs… Read More »
Websockets Websockets is a new feature available in browsers as a part of the Html5 specs that allows javascript clients to open bi directional socket connections to a server. Currently all major desktop browsers support the api. Websocket is not an independant socket protocol, but is based on the TCP protocol just like HTTP. Therefore… Read More »
Applications often allow users to select their timezones for reporting the proper time properly. Here is a quick function that can be used to generate a dropdown list of timezones that is easy to read and understand. <?php function get_timezones() { $o = array(); $t_zones = timezone_identifiers_list(); foreach($t_zones as $a) { $t = ''; try… Read More »
Here is a php array containing the language codes and language names as specified by the iso 639-1 standard. Useful when . <?php /** ISO 639-1 Language Codes Useful in Locale analysis References : 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes 2. http://blog.xoundboy.com/?p=235 */ $language_codes = array( 'en' => 'English' , 'aa' => 'Afar' , 'ab' => 'Abkhazian' , 'af'… Read More »
Imagick In a previous article we saw how to use to create a snapshot or thumbnail of the pdf. Now we are going to do the same in php using the Imagick class which provides the bindings for imagemagick library inside php. The library is available in the form of a class Imagick that does… Read More »
Curl According to the official website. curl is a command line tool for transferring data with URL syntax, supporting DICT, FILE, FTP, FTPS, Gopher, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP, IMAPS, LDAP, LDAPS, POP3, POP3S, RTMP, RTSP, SCP, SFTP, SMTP, SMTPS, Telnet and TFTP. curl supports SSL certificates, HTTP POST, HTTP PUT, FTP uploading, HTTP form based upload,… Read More »
Barcodes Barcodes are used in various business class applications to print information in encoded format such that it can be read later by barcode reading devices. Common places to see barcodes are product covers in shops, membership cards and documents like invoices etc. As php is now increasingly being used to develop such applications, barcodes… Read More »
Text templates are often used to generate content like notification emails, invoices filled with the details of a customer or user. The best example would be a bulk email program that sends out emails to multiple users filling the details of the particular user in every individual mail. Text templates have place holders for fields… Read More »
Domdocument The domdocument class of Php is a very handy one that can be used for a number of tasks like parsing xml, html and creating xml. It is documented here. In this tutorial we are going to see how to use this class to parse html content. The need to parse html happens when… Read More »
Often numbers are to be written with a proper suffix, like 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 15th, 21st and so on. So here is a quick function to do the same for a number. Technique 1 /* This function will add st, nd, rd, th to the end of numbers */ function ordinal($i) { $l = substr($i,-1);… Read More »
Php and tcp/ip sockets This is a quick guide to learning socket programming in php. Socket programming php is very similar to C. Most functions are similar in names, parameters and output. However unlike C, socket programs written in php would run the same way on any os that has php installed. So the code… Read More »
What are callbacks Callback is a piece of code that is passed to some other functions as a parameter, such that it can be executed before or after a certain event or change of state. A common example of callbacks can be seen in javascript when using the jquery ajax function. $.ajax({ url: 'ajax/test.html', success:… Read More »
The idea behind serializing a variable is to create a storable string format of it, such that the same variable can be recreated later when required using the string. 1. serialize and unserialize These are the traditional functions to serialize and unserialize data in PHP. $a = array('a' => 'Apple' ,'b' => 'banana' , 'c'… Read More »
Github Login Github has become a very popular social login on websites related to programming and development. Github itself is a big storehouse of opensource projects and community of developers. Github oAuth documentation can be found at http://developer.github.com/v3/oauth/. Register website with Github oAuth The first thing to do would be to register your website with… Read More »
Yahoo OpenId In the previous article, we learned how to integrate . Its good to know that Yahoo is also an openid provider and “Login with Yahoo” can be added to a website in a very similar manner. Yahoo’s openid discovery url is http://me.yahoo.com/. The rest of the code is very simple. Code <?php /*… Read More »
OpenId A very popular login method now a days is to allow users to login through their google, openid etc accounts. One popular protocol being used is the OpenId. According to wikipedia : OpenID is an open standard that describes how users can be authenticated in a decentralized manner, eliminating the need for services to… Read More »
Clientside certificates are often used in soap webservices. For example the wsdl file link might require a clientside certificate. The server throws an error like this : HTTP Error 403.7 – Forbidden: SSL client certificate is required. Curl Command To use clientside certificate with curl , test the following command curl –cert certificate_file.pem https://www.example.com/some_protected_page or… Read More »
Localisation Localisation involves changing various parts of application output like display of dates , time , numbers , language etc according to the standards of the geographical region of a user. Localisation is an important feature of applications that targets users across the globe and not just one region. So here are a set of… Read More »
Part 2 26. Avoid direct SQL query , abstract it $query = "INSERT INTO users(name , email , address , phone) VALUES('$name' , '$email' , '$address' , '$phone')"; $db->query($query); //call to mysqli_query() The above is the simplest way way of writing sql queries and interacting with databases for operations like INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE etc. But… Read More »
Part 1 11. Do not gzip output in your application , make apache do that Thinking of using ob_gzhandler ? No dont do that. It doesnt make sense. Php is supposed to write your application. Dont worry about how to optimise data transfer between server and browser inside Php. Use apache mod_gzip/mod_deflate to compress content… Read More »