PHP Knowledge Base Update -- August 9th, 1999

The PHP development group today announced the second public Beta of PHP 4.0. This release features a significant amount of bug fixes, and is a big step towards making PHP 4.0 a stable development platform. In addition to bug fixes in the language engine itself, many modules have been checked and updated to be PHP 4.0 compatible, so the number of scripts that will successfully execute is significantly larger than that of Beta 1. Finally, the Apache .conf/.htaccess conversion scripts supplied with Beta 1 have been fixed and improved, so the transition from PHP 3.x should be smoother. You can download it at: http://www.php.net/version4/ I'm leaving (Australia) on a trip to the US and Canada next Monday. The PHPKB summaries will be a little erratic from then until the end of September. If you've got some time, good php knowledge, copy and paste skills and you're willing to help let me know... <shameless type="outreach"> One of the main reasons for the trip is so I can scope out work opportunities. I'll be visiting SF, Boston, Ottawa, NY and LA. Send me mail if you think we could help each other out. I'll be attending the O'Reilly Open Source Software Convention <http://conferences.oreilly.com> while I'm there. Mail me if you want to meet up. (Or if you can help me get from Monterey to SF Airport on the night of the 24th ;) </shameless> Sorry for the off topic trip chat, Nathan ------------------------------------------------------------ How can I translate a date into another language? http://e-gineer.com/e-gineer/phpkb/view.phtml/qid/560 ------------------------------------------------------------ Mark Maggelet, sklar@student.net Are you running on a system with locale support? If so, you can use setlocale() and strftime() for this. On my Linux box, the PHP <?php setlocale('LC_TIME','en_US'); print strftime('%A, %B %d').'<P>'; setlocale('LC_TIME','fr_FR'); print strftime('%A, %B %d'); ?> produces: Monday, August 09 lundi, aout 09 If you don't have locale support then you could just modify this function to suit your needs: function month_to_int($mon) { $months = array('Jan'=>'01', 'Feb'=>'02', 'Mar'=>'03', 'Apr'=>'04', 'May'=>'05', 'Jun'=>'06', 'Jul'=>'07', 'Aug'=>'08', 'Sep'=>'09', 'Oct'=>'10', 'Nov'=>'11', 'Dec'=>'12'); return($months[$mon]); } you can switch the order ('01=>'Jan',...) to get int_to_month and put whatever values you want for month names and do something similar for week I guess. ------------------------------------------------------------ How can I get a string of words from a form into an array? Should I use explode() or split() to separate a string of words? http://e-gineer.com/e-gineer/phpkb/view.phtml/qid/561 ------------------------------------------------------------ Jason Brooke If you know that there will only be single spaces between the words then you can use explode $stuff = explode(" ",$field); http://www.php.net/manual/function.explode.php3 If you are getting the string from a form or it might contain extra spaces then you probably should use split which will match regular expressions: $stuff = split(" +",$field); http://www.php.net/manual/function.split.php3 ------------------------------------------------------------ How can I write the resulting HTML from a PHP script to a file? http://e-gineer.com/e-gineer/phpkb/view.phtml/qid/563 ------------------------------------------------------------ Shantonu Sen, Robert Aden, gigandet@eurecom.fr Try the following script which writes the result of a second PHP script to a file. <?php $filename = "http://servername/admin_prob.php3?id=2"; $filename2 = "/tmp/zzz.html"; $fd = fopen( $filename, "r" ); $fd2 = fopen($filename2, "w"); while (!feof($fd)) { $line = fgets($fd, 1024); fputs($fd2,$line); } fclose($fd); fclose($fd2); ?> Alternatively if you're just trying to get the output to a file, and you're using unix, you can try using lynx and the -source flag: lynx -source http://domain.com/path/test.php3?variable=3 >temp.html the url might need quotes. you can set up a script to sequentially pass all the variables. ------------------------------------------------------------ Will PHP return an error if I have a call to an undefined function but that code branch is not run? http://e-gineer.com/e-gineer/phpkb/view.phtml/qid/564 ------------------------------------------------------------ prgr@u5.com In good old compiled languages like C++ you are not allowed to do that. I would think that it is an approach to be disrecommended - such things are not a part of the language definition (I assume) so even if it works now - the PHP-developer team might change it without notice, especially if they later were to make a "compiler" for php3. But - why not just write an empty function now and replace it later if you need? Your code would work just the same - and you are on the safe side! You can always use 'require' and 'include' to control which files containing functions that are loaded. ------------------------------------------------------------ How can I setup PHP with Netscape Enterprise Server? http://e-gineer.com/e-gineer/phpkb/view.phtml/qid/565 ------------------------------------------------------------ Helio, Kristian Köhntopp First, take a look at http://www.webgenx.com/Kwazy/phpunix.html The obj.conf of a Netscape Enterprise 3.0 server is missing an entry to handle the content-type magnus-internal/cgi for the Default object. That content type is just exactly what the kwazy plugin generates. It is only logical that such an entry must be present in the default object, though. We want to be able to execute php3 scripts anywhere in the Netscape tree - php3 scripts are CGI programs in our configuration, so we have to provide a service entry for them. Obviously that service entry is not present in the standard configuration, because in the standard configuration CGI programs can only be executed in the /cgi-bin subtree. So all you have to do is to add to the obj.conf file of your server an entry like <Object name="default"> ... Service method="(GET|HEAD)" type="magnus-internal/cgi" fn="send-cgi" ... </Object> just before all the other Service entries in your default object, after you followed the kwazy installation description. Step by Step installation instruction: 1. Compile the module as supplied. You get a file redirect_cgi.so. 2. Install that file in /opt/local/suitespot-3.0/https-ghost/plugins/redirect or wherever your plugins directory is. 3. Do not change your magnus.conf as detailed in the original installation instructions. Instead add the following line to your obj.conf: Init fn="load-modules" \ funcs="redirect-cgi" \ shlib="/opt/local/suitespot-3.0/plugins/redirect/redirect_cgi.so" \ NativeThread="no" just after the other Init-directives in your obj.conf, before the definition of the Default object. Note the pathname, it must match the pathname from step 2. You can stop and restart the server now, if you like. You can verify that the module is loaded using /usr/proc/bin/pldd on the server process on Solaris. You must get the redirect_cgi.so listed by pldd. 4. In your obj.conf locate the lines ObjectType fn="type-by-extension" ObjectType fn="force-type" type="text/plain" in your default object. Insert the following line between them: ObjectType fn="redirect-cgi" \ cgi_path="/opt/local/www/cgi-bin/php" \ type="magnus-internal/php" If you are using my version of that module, you have to add the parameter 'debug="no"' or 'debug="yes"' to that line. 5. In your obj.conf, locate the lines ObjectType fn="force-type" type="text/plain" Service method="(GET|HEAD)" type="magnus-internal/imagemap" fn="imagemap" in your default objects and insert the following lines between them: Service method="(GET|HEAD)" \ type="magnus-internal/cgi" \ fn="send-cgi" as I explained above. This is the single step that is missing from the original docs. 6. Also, to your mime.types file add the line type=magnus-internal/php exts=php3,phtml where appropriate (the section at the bottom where all the other magnus-internal types are). That is it. ------------------------------------------------------------ How can I get the details (tables, indicies, structure) of my Postgres database from PHP? http://e-gineer.com/e-gineer/phpkb/view.phtml/qid/566 ------------------------------------------------------------ Bryan Ingram I'm not sure if there are any other ways, but one thing you can do is use the PHP "system" command to run psql or pg_dump as if you were at the command line. At that point you can redirect the output however/wherever you like. ------------------------------------------------------------ How can I include an image only if the file exists? http://e-gineer.com/e-gineer/phpkb/view.phtml/qid/567 ------------------------------------------------------------ Jason Brooke Try this code using the file_exists function: $photo = file_exists("/path/to/$playerid.jpg") ? "<IMG SRC=\"/images/players/$playerid.jpg\">" : "No Photo Yet<br>\n"; http://www.php.net/manual.file_exists.php3 ------------------------------------------------------------ Can I use PHP to do real streaming? How can I generate .ram files using PHP? http://e-gineer.com/e-gineer/phpkb/view.phtml/qid/568 ------------------------------------------------------------ Michael Stearne, Manuel Lemos PHP can't do streaming, but the QuickTime 4.0 Server (Darwin Streaming Server) does stream using RTSP. It is free and can be compiled on Intel machines. Go To http://publicsource.apple.com To generate .ram files all you have to do is set the content-type header to audio/x-pn-realaudio and then output the media URL like this: <? Header("Content-Type: audio/x-pn-realaudio"); echo "pnm://realserver.adgrafix.com/users/ena/2001.rmd"; ?> The media URL maybe anything appropriate that your server may provide. The regular Apache installation already assigns the MIME type audio/x-pn-realaudio to files with the extenstion .ram . So you don't need PHP to output fixed metadata files. Maybe you may want PHP to generate metadata output depending on some parameters, like serving different clips according to parameters defined in a form. ------------------------------------------------------------ How can I get all file names stored in a directory tree? How can I recursively get the name and size of all files in a directory and it's subdirectories? http://e-gineer.com/e-gineer/phpkb/view.phtml/qid/570 ------------------------------------------------------------ Robert Aden I guess something like this would work. This functions returns the files and size of them in the form file1=size&file2=size2 so it needs some modification to just list them. function sizeDirectory($directory) { $dirhandle = opendir($directory); while ( $entity = readdir($dirhandle)) { if ($entity[0] == '.') { // Do nutting unless dotfiles should count } elseif ( is_dir($directory . '/' . $entity)) { $ret .= sizeDirectory($directory . '/' . $entity); } else { $ret .= '&' . urlencode($entity) . '=' . (filesize($directory . '/' . $entity)); } } return $ret; } ** OTHER RANDOMLY SELECTED PHPKB ENTRIES ** ------------------------------------------------------------ How can I get the number of rows returned by SELECT in Oracle? http://e-gineer.com/e-gineer/phpkb/view.phtml/qid/177 ------------------------------------------------------------ ora_numrows (and oci_numrows) are a bit misleading. There's no way in oracle to tell how many rows are in a result set unless you: a> read them all or b> do a select (*) [myquery] BEFORE issuing the real select. That's the way it is in oracle (as well as in other "major" RDBMs systems). ora_numrows will give you the number of affected rows for an update statement, and NOT the number of rows that are in a result set! http://www.php.net/manual/ref.oracle.php3 ------------------------------------------------------------ Why does sort() return things not sorted? Why are my numbers from a database sorted in alphabetical order not numerical? http://e-gineer.com/e-gineer/phpkb/view.phtml/qid/504 ------------------------------------------------------------ PHP treats the values from a database as strings by default. That means that if you get numbers out, they will be treated as strings that just happen to contain digits and they will be sorted in alphabetical order. You can try changing them to numbers in a loop over your array using: $a[$i] = intval($a[$i]); http://www.php.net/manual/function.intval.php3 You could also use PHP's settype directive to force the "type" for all processing on a page for that varname Of course, for complex projects you can place all the settype directives into a autoprepend file -- because I'll forever be forgetting about the retyping that's needed on numerics from the database queries. Here's the DOCs on that http://www.php.net/manual/function.settype.php3 ------------------------------------------------------------ What is the easiest way to write out an array to a file? Is there any inverse of file(), that is, write out an array to a file? http://e-gineer.com/e-gineer/phpkb/view.phtml/qid/189 ------------------------------------------------------------ There is no inbuilt PHP function to write an array to a file. It is easy to do though... The long method: function Array2File($ary, $filename) { if (is_array($ary)) { $fp = @fopen($filename, "w"); if ($fp > 0) { while (list($key, $value) = each($ary)) { fputs($fp, "$value\n"); } fclose($fp); } } } Funky, short technique: // assume $file is filled with something $fd = @fopen("output","w") or die ("I/O error"); fwrite($fd,implode($file,"\n")); fclose($fd); ------------------------------------------------------------ Can PHP be run using fast cgi? http://e-gineer.com/e-gineer/phpkb/view.phtml/qid/374 ------------------------------------------------------------ No PHP cannot be run under fastcgi. ------------------------------------------------------------ Where can I get a PHP Binary distribution for Windows? http://e-gineer.com/e-gineer/phpkb/view.phtml/qid/7 ------------------------------------------------------------ A useful link for all those on the Windows platform who want to use PHP http://www.student.uni-koeln.de/cygwin Has a binary distribution complied with MySQL (I think) and Apache plus some other bits and pieces plus a good How To on compilation on Windows with the GNU CC on Windows. They have been told that when they fix a small problem with the server not working correctly on Win95, it will become part of the standard Apache distribution.