Strip UTF-8 characters invalid for use in XML markup

November 30, 2015 | Leave a comment

When you put UTF-8 encoded strings into an XML document you should remember that not all UTF-8 characters are accepted in an XML document http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#charsets You should strip away the invalid characters, else you’ll have an XML fatal parsing error tossed during parsing. It’s rather easy to accomplish this using the following function.

<?php
/* Remove all UTF-8 Chars that are not acceptable for usin in an XML payload */
function utf8_for_xml($string)
{
    return preg_replace ('/[^\x{0009}\x{000a}\x{000d}\x{0020}-\x{D7FF}\x{E000}-\x{FFFD}]+/u', ' ', $string);
}
?>

<?php

/* Remove all UTF-8 Chars that are not acceptable for usin in an XML payload */

function utf8_for_xml($string)

{

return preg_replace ('/[^\x{0009}\x{000a}\x{000d}\x{0020}-\x{D7FF}\x{E000}-\x{FFFD}]+/u', ' ', $string);

}

Using PHP Context Streams to FTP files onto another server.

November 30, 2015 | Leave a comment

Here I’m going to show you how to use PHP streams to connect to an FTP server, create a new file and place content into this file. We also need an additional stream context telling PHP to overwrite the file if it exists. A common stumble I see in scripts like this all the time.… Read More

Auto-Loading PHP Script Widgets

November 30, 2015 | Leave a comment

The architecture for an application I created for a client required a method to auto-load a set of widgets (aka: individual PHP scripts) located in the “widgets” directory on the server. This solution worked perfectly.

<?php

$directory = dirname(__FILE__) . '/widgets';

// Get rid of the parent directories that scandir() picks up in a Linux environment:
$widgets = array_diff(scandir($directory,  SCANDIR_SORT_ASCENDING), array('..', '.'));

foreach ($widgets as $widget) {
    include_once($directory . '/' . $widget);
}
?>

<?php

$directory = dirname(__FILE__) . '/widgets';

// Get rid of the parent directories that scandir() picks up in a Linux environment:

$widgets = array_diff(scandir($directory, SCANDIR_SORT_ASCENDING), array('..', '.'));

foreach ($widgets as $widget) {

include_once($directory . '/' . $widget);

}

Of course, you can enhance this script by refactoring it into a function and adding additional filters to allow… Read More

Create Table Columns from an Array of Data using PHP

November 30, 2015 | Leave a comment

Recently I needed to take a list of URL’s from a database and present them in an HTML table. I needed to split the list into an equal number of list items per column in the table. The PHP script function below accepts a single array of items which could be URL’s, words, phrases, or… Read More

Making strings safe for use in a URL with PHP

November 30, 2015 | Leave a comment

These days taking advantage of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) by packing the URL with a string of words is commonplace but not all strings are safe to use in a URL. The following PHP script function will prepare your string for use in a URL.

/**
 * Make a string safe for use in a URL.
 */

setlocale(LC_ALL, 'en_US.UTF8');

function toAscii($str)
{
    $clean = iconv('UTF-8', 'ASCII//TRANSLIT', $str);
    $clean = preg_replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9\/_| -]/", '', $clean);
    $clean = strtolower(trim($clean, '-'));
    $clean = preg_replace("/[\/_| -]+/", '-', $clean);

    return $clean;
}

/**

* Make a string safe for use in a URL.

setlocale(LC_ALL, 'en_US.UTF8');

function toAscii($str)

{

$clean = iconv('UTF-8', 'ASCII//TRANSLIT', $str);

$clean = preg_replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9\/_| -]/", '', $clean);

$clean = strtolower(trim($clean, '-'));

$clean = preg_replace("/[\/_| -]+/", '-', $clean);

return $clean;

}

Delete all files matching patter using PHP glob()

November 29, 2015 | Leave a comment

When you have the need to do a little house cleaning on your storage system programmatically you can use PHP’s glob() and array_map() functions to make easy work of this. In this example, we are going to find all text files in “some/dir/” and unlink (aka: delete) them. The PHP glob() function gets us our list of… Read More

Get a list of files or directories using PHP glob()

November 29, 2015 | Leave a comment

The PHP glob() function returns an array of filenames or directories matching a specified pattern. This function returns an array of files or directories or FALSE on failure. Syntax: glob(pattern,flags) Example:

print_r(glob("*.txt"));

1	print_r(glob("*.txt"));

The output of the code above could be:

Array
(
[0] => target.txt
[1] => source.txt
[2] => test.txt
[3] => test2.txt
)

Array

(

[0] => target.txt

[1] => source.txt

[2] => test.txt

[3] => test2.txt

)

Checking for Oversized Uploads using PHP

November 29, 2015 | Leave a comment

It’s always good practice to validate the uploads that you allow from the end-user are not exceeding your application or system limitations. Here is an example of how to check if an uploaded file exceeds the default limit value held in your php.ini configuration.

<?php

if ( $_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'POST' && empty($_POST) &&
     empty($_FILES) && $_SERVER['CONTENT_LENGTH'] > 0 )
{
  $displayMaxSize = ini_get('post_max_size');

  switch ( substr($displayMaxSize,-1) )
  {
    case 'G':
      $displayMaxSize = $displayMaxSize * 1024;
    case 'M':
      $displayMaxSize = $displayMaxSize * 1024;
    case 'K':
       $displayMaxSize = $displayMaxSize * 1024;
  }

  $error = 'Posted data is too large. '.
           $_SERVER[CONTENT_LENGTH].
           ' bytes exceeds the maximum size of '.
           $displayMaxSize.' bytes.";
}

?>

<?php

if ( $_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'POST' && empty($_POST) &&

empty($_FILES) && $_SERVER['CONTENT_LENGTH'] > 0 )

{

$displayMaxSize = ini_get('post_max_size');

switch ( substr($displayMaxSize,-1) )

{

case 'G':

$displayMaxSize = $displayMaxSize * 1024;

case 'M':

$displayMaxSize = $displayMaxSize * 1024;

case 'K':

$displayMaxSize = $displayMaxSize * 1024;

}

$error = 'Posted data is too large. '.

$_SERVER[CONTENT_LENGTH].

' bytes exceeds the maximum size of '.

$displayMaxSize.' bytes.";

}