Category Archives: Php Snippets

Php code snippets and examples

Php – Fix “Input is not proper UTF-8, indicate encoding” error when loading xml

By Silver Moon | March 26, 2013

When loading xml files in php through simplexml_load_string or domDocument class, sometimes an error like this might popup Warning: DOMDocument::loadXML(): Input is not proper UTF-8, indicate encoding ! OR Warning: simplexml_load_string(): Entity: line 93: parser error : Input is not proper UTF-8, indicate encoding ! The error occurs when the xml has some invalid characters… Read More »

Php – How to fetch gzipped content over HTTP with file_get_contents

By Silver Moon | January 13, 2023

The file_get_contents function is often used to quickly fetch a http url or resource. Usage is very simple and appears like this $content = file_get_contents('http://www.google.com/'); However the file_get_contents does not get the contents compressed. It requests the server to send everything in plain text format. Most websites are capable of serving compressed content, if they… Read More »

Validate domain name using filter_var function in php

By Silver Moon | March 21, 2013

The filter_var function of php is capable of validating many things like emails, urls, ip addresses etc. It does not have a direct option to validate a domain name however. So I coded up this little snippet that the filter_var function with a little tweak so that it can validate domain names as well. function… Read More »

How to download a file using Curl in PHP – Code Snippet

By Silver Moon | January 13, 2023

Download a File using Curl Here is a quick curl snippet for php, that can download a remote file and save it. <?php set_time_limit(0); // File to save the contents to $fp = fopen ('files2.tar', 'w+'); $url = "http://localhost/files.tar"; // Here is the file we are downloading, replace spaces with %20 $ch = curl_init(str_replace(" ","%20",$url));… Read More »

How to compress images in Php using GD Library

By Silver Moon | May 2, 2023

Php applications might need to do some image processing if they are allowing users to upload pictures of somekind. This can include cropping, watermarking, compressing etc. To compress an image the quality needs to be adjusted. Here is a code example of how to do it: function compress_image($src, $dest , $quality) { $info = getimagesize($src);… Read More »

How to extract tar.gz archives in Php

By Silver Moon | May 1, 2023

In a previous article we learned how to . Now lets do the reverse, that is extract tar.gz archives and get the files out. The code to extract a tar.gz archive is very simple and uses PharData class. Here is an example // decompress from gz $p = new PharData('files.tar.gz'); $p->decompress(); // creates files.tar //… Read More »

How to Create tar archives in Php with PharData

By Silver Moon | May 1, 2023

Tar is a common archive format used on linux. Alone it is just an archiving format, that is it can only pack multiple files together but not compress them. When combined with gzip or bzip2 files are compressed as well. Then it becomes a .tar.gz which is actually a gzip compressed tar file. Php has… Read More »

Generate a dropdown list of timezones in php

By Silver Moon | February 14, 2018

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 »

Php array of iso 639-1 language codes and names

By Silver Moon | September 2, 2023

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 »

Fill text templates using arrays in php

By Silver Moon | June 9, 2013

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 »

Php – Extract name and value of all input tags with DomDocument

By Silver Moon | May 16, 2023

The DomDocument class in php can be used to parse html/xml content and build objects that can be queried using standard functions to extract values. The following functions are quite useful: getElementsByTagName – Get all elements under a node that match a tagname getNamedItem – Get element with a particular “name=” attribute. Useful to find… Read More »

Php : Get links on a page with DomDocument

By Silver Moon | September 1, 2023

Scraper scripts often need to extract all links on a given page. This can be done in a number of ways like regex, domdocument etc. Here is simple code snippet to do this using domdocument. /* Function to get all links on a certain url using the DomDocument */ function get_links($link) { //return array $ret… Read More »

Php function to add st, nd, rd, th to the end of numbers

By Silver Moon | August 4, 2012

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 »

Execute shell commands in PHP

By Silver Moon | March 27, 2012

Like any other language php applications often need to execute system commands like they are run from the terminal/console/commandline. Php has multiple functions to do this task. Lets take a look at each of these 1. system “system() is just like the C version of the function in that it executes the given command and… Read More »

PHP best way to check if file is an image

By Silver Moon | October 23, 2011

The getimagesize function of php provides lot of information about an image file , including its type. The type can be used to check if the file is a valid image file or not. To check if a file is an image or not, use the function function is_image($path) { $a = getimagesize($path); $image_type =… Read More »

PHP create nested directories for a given path

By Silver Moon | October 22, 2011

If a file is to be saved in at path /var/www/a/b/c/d/abc.zip where the directory c and d dont exist then the directories have to created. Here is a function that uses recursion to check for directories in a path and create them if they do not exist : /** Make a nested path , creating… Read More »

PHP redirect – go back to previous page

By Silver Moon | September 1, 2023

To go back to the previous page the superglobal variable $_SERVER can be used. $_SERVER[‘HTTP_REFERER’] has the link to the previous page. So to redirect simply : // Method to go to previous page function goback() { header("Location: {$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']}"); exit; } goback();

PHP Format numbers to Indian Numerical System

By Silver Moon | July 1, 2009

The numerical system used in India differs from the Western system in terms of the placement of the thousands separator. Example : Number -> 1000000 Indian System -> 10,00,000 (Ten Lakh) Western System -> 1,000,000 (1 Million) While echoing numbers in PHP it is possible to format numbers with such separators using functions like number_format…. Read More »

Php – parse text and convert urls into hyperlinks

By Silver Moon | May 10, 2020

The following function will parse a given text and convert all the urls into links. It does this using regular expressions. It converts email addresses to mailto links as well. Code function parse_links($str) { $str = str_replace('www.', 'http://www.', $str); $str = preg_replace('|http://([a-zA-Z0-9-./]+)|', '<a href="http://$1">$1</a>', $str); $str = preg_replace('/(([a-z0-9+_-]+)(.[a-z0-9+_-]+)*@([a-z0-9-]+.)+[a-z]{2,6})/', '<a href="mailto:$1">$1</a>', $str); return $str; }