PHP archive

Because you can never know too much, and it’s about time I wrote a follow-up to my PHP Script Checklist article. 1. Never include sensitive data in a .inc When I started my current job, one of the first things I did was move all of the database connection details (yes, that includes passwords) from… read more →

In Part Three of the Beginner’s Guide to PHP we learnt about the if construct (“statement”), and using it to check the value of some input. In this guide we’ll learn about two more constructs: foreach() and array() foreach Construct foreach — a type of loop, but we’ll cover that more in the future —… read more →

One of the most effective spam blocking techniques I used in my custom CMS was a scoring system. The idea is that the more spammy someone is, the higher the score they are given. After a certain cut-off point whereby a person or spam-bot has a score than our pre-set threshold, their comment or correspondence… read more →

I’ve had to restart this about 4 times now, because each time I decide to finish off, I get half way and somehow lose the file. I don’t know about l33t PHP Ninja; recently I’ve been l33t file loser. Anyway, quick recap: in Part Two of the PHP Beginners Guide I briefly covered the basic… read more →

Let’s have a quick re-cap of what we covered in Beginner’s Guide to PHP – Part One: there are different data types (string, integer, floating point number and boolean) and variables are created by simply assigning data to them. Simple enough? Well, now we’re going to take a look at mathematical operators and what we… read more →

…you create a PHP script to parse your telephone bills because you can’t be bothered to install suitable software to deal with .csv files. (If anyone wants that code btw, let me know and I’ll hook you up. It’s designed to parse BT phone bills in .csv format with colour coding depending on the incoming… read more →

Due to the relative simplicity of PHP, more and more young webmasters are getting their hooks into scripting. This can be a good thing — it increases the range of functionality and fun that we can add to our websites without the need to learn how to code ourselves — the problem is, a lot… read more →

First things first, we might as well get out of the what PHP is not: PHP is not a replacement for HTML. PHP is not a synonym for MySQL. Although they work well together, they’re not the same thing. PHP is not all about layout-based includes. PHP is not magically going to make your website… read more →

I’ve released part one of what I hope will be a series of PHP security articles — a PHP Script Checklist for those developing or looking to develop their own scripts. If you have any thoughts on PHP security problems that you’d like to be covered in part 2, or you’re an ‘expert’ and want… read more →