PHP Knowledge Base Update -- September 19th, 1999

------------------------------------------------------------ Should I run my firewall on my web server? http://www.e-gineer.com/e-gineer/phpkb/view.phtml/qid/637 ------------------------------------------------------------ Kristian Holdich Having a single box act as a firewall for a network and webserver is a *bad* idea. The way we protect our webserver here is to keep it behind the firewall with only port 80 open & keep webserver up to date / check for bugs in the code. This way only port 80 is presented to the world. However if it is a stand alone box - not providing a firewall for the rest of the network & publically accessible then yes a firewall on the webserver is a *good* idea, properly set up you can allow ftp, ssh and whatever traffic *only* to certain named hosts, detect spoofs & block Syn attacks. Disable non essesntial services (r*), install tripwire and keep all the software upto date makes the box significantly more secure. For a pure firewall, i'd suggest running something more obscure than Linux (script kiddies paradise) - OpenBSD would be a very good choice & 2 nic interfaces is a must. ------------------------------------------------------------ What books are available about PHP? http://www.e-gineer.com/e-gineer/phpkb/view.phtml/qid/638 ------------------------------------------------------------ Egon Schmid You can check all currently published and forthcoming books about PHP here: http://www.php.net/books.php3 ------------------------------------------------------------ How can I set up a slashdot style site using PHP? http://www.e-gineer.com/e-gineer/phpkb/view.phtml/qid/639 ------------------------------------------------------------ Kristian Köhntopp There is the PHPslash project, with a mailing list at: phpslash@lists.netuse.de To subscribe, send the text "subscribe" to: phpslash-request@lists.netuse.de The current CVS is at cvs -d ":pserver:cvsread@poe.shonline.de:/work/cvs/CVS" login Password: cvsread cvs -d ":pserver:cvsread@poe.shonline.de:/work/cvs/CVS" phpslash The project is based on the original port of the Slashdot source to PHP done by Jay Bloodworth, but has long since gone beyond that. At the moment, the project is quite active and not in a state to be deployed, but this will change in the beginning of October, when a 0.5 release is planned. ------------------------------------------------------------ How can I use a Microsoft Access database with PHP? http://www.e-gineer.com/e-gineer/phpkb/view.phtml/qid/640 ------------------------------------------------------------ Dannie M Stanley You can use an ODBC connection to your Access database. Information about the ODBC functions can be found at: http://www.php.net/manual/ref.odbc.php3 However ODBC in my experience is somewhat clunky and is not really very useful in large applications. ** OTHER RANDOMLY SELECTED PHPKB ENTRIES ** ------------------------------------------------------------ Are the fonts in PHP anti-aliased? http://www.e-gineer.com/e-gineer/phpkb/view.phtml/qid/67 ------------------------------------------------------------ The FreeType TTF font functions do anti-alias, but not nearly as well as something like Photoshop would do it. The ImageString functions that are part of GD do not anti-alias. I think 3.0.9 has functions to use Type 1 fonts, and I'm assuming they will anti-alias as well. ------------------------------------------------------------ How can I build a search engine for my site using PHP? http://www.e-gineer.com/e-gineer/phpkb/view.phtml/qid/552 ------------------------------------------------------------ Why not have a look at htDig instead. http://www.htdig.org Then there's this article http://www.devshed.com/Server_Side/PHP/Search_Engine/ which professes to be a quick and dirty php/mysql search scheme, might be a good place to start. ------------------------------------------------------------ How can I connect to MS-SQL from a Linux box? How can I connect to ODBC datasources on a Win NT machine from a Linux box? http://www.e-gineer.com/e-gineer/phpkb/view.phtml/qid/579 ------------------------------------------------------------ I'm currently connecting to an ms-sql7 machine from a linux box. I'm using the openlink multitier odbc drivers, which work well. Their webpage is @ http://www.openlinksw.com/. You can then compile php3 with openlink support, and create an odbc.ini file in the openlink directory which references your database server. Works well & seems to be solid under load. There's a good howto on this exact topic at: http://www.silen.net/openlink-php-odbc.txt Another alternative is an odbc-odbc bridge by easysoft (http://beta.easysoft.com). It's pretty straightforward, and actually faster in my tests than the openlink solution. However, the NT gateway daemon leaks memory under load, so I really can't recommend it for production. ------------------------------------------------------------ Can I string together object references, eg: $foo->bar()->try() ? http://www.e-gineer.com/e-gineer/phpkb/view.phtml/qid/68 ------------------------------------------------------------ No. Will be fixed in PHP4, but in PHP3, nope. If you do it in two steps it will probably work. ie: $temp = $foo->bar(); $temp->try(); ------------------------------------------------------------ How can I read from a file and strip all HTML tags? What is fgetss() used for? http://www.e-gineer.com/e-gineer/phpkb/view.phtml/qid/379 ------------------------------------------------------------ Taken from: http://www.php.net/manual/function.fgetss.php3 Identical to fgets(), except that fgetss attempts to strip any HTML and PHP tags from the text it reads.