Tech Stuff - PHP
This is a section on PHP which contains notes and code examples of the various uses we have (and occasionally do) use to support our web site.
There is a mass of info out there for PHP as befits an extremely popular and powerful scripting language. We document this stuff mostly because we always forget what we did, why we did it and our modest insights at the time: this stuff is genuine stiffware.
Note: Our scripting language of choice is now ruby, we still use PHP (as befits anyone with a C background) but, meh, not so much these days. We kinda stopped most devlopment in PHP around PHP 5.4.
| PHP Tool Kit |
PHP is good at manipulating files as befits a powerful scripting language. This web kit currently includes global string replacement, global line insertion and deletion, find all files containing blah, blah, update or synchronize webs or directories (a poor man's 'publish'). We use it regularly when we screw things up....which is mighty frequently. |
| PHP Mail |
A PHP script to mail this page (the one we use when you click the 'mail this page' in the page header). Currently a simple URL reference but we're working on an embedded HTML version (not so simple when you have SSIs). The same page also is used for feedback and bug report mailing with the addition of a simple hidden field. After mail injection attacks it now includes a lot of checks to avoid abuse - including a new SQLite3 database. |
| PHP and SQL |
We needed a quick way to look at a MySQL database via the web. We could not find a simple database web viewer so we put this together in a few minutes - the code reflects it! It optionally lists all the tables in a database, or all the data in a specified table or the structure of a specified table. Later versions will let us repair and fix the data. |
| PHP and SQLite3 |
We needed a quick, no maintenance, database to manage and control access to our mail this page service after a spam injection attack. SQLite3 really is quite superb for this job. Couple of trivial points that are not well covered in the documentation meant that it took a couple of hours longer than we wanted to implement. |
| PHP and SSI |
We use SSI a lot and need to mix the two technologies regularly, besides SSI is just a lot better, and a lot safer, at doing the simple things IOHO. |
Problems, comments, suggestions, corrections (including broken links) or something to add? Please take the time from a busy life to 'mail us' (at top of screen), the webmaster (below) or info-support at zytrax. You will have a warm inner glow for the rest of the day.
