First you will want to CD (Change Directory) to the one that you want to work within. In windows 7 this is pretty easy, just hold down the SHIFT key and RIGHT click on the folder you want to work in. You will then see a “Open Command Window Here” option, or you can always just go to Run > cmd, then go to the specific directory.

The REN (Rename) command is pretty simple, it’s just:

REN oldname newname
REN old_image.jpg new_image.jpg

You can also use * as a wildcard and ? for a space, as well as putting quotes around text.

Change Uppercase Extension to Lowercase

This is probably the most common one that I use. All of our websites we create all reference the lower case extension, our Linux box views uppercase and lowercase as different files, so if an uppercase one gets uploaded, it won’t show. So the simple command is just:

REN *.JPG *.jpg

Remove Certain Text

One client sent me some files like: 0134-009_s1 copy.jpg, 0134-009_s2 copy.jpg, 0134-009_s3 copy.jpg, 0134-009_s4 copy.jpg, 0134-009_L1 copy.jpg, 0134-009_L2 copy.jpg, 0134-009_L3 copy.jpg, 0134-009_L4 copy.jpg. I had to remove the ” copy” part of the file, and there were about 800 of these images with the same naming convention. Luckily they all had either 1-4 before the space and “copy” so I was able to use that to my benefit. 4 commends later, they were all renamed:

REN "*1?copy.jpg" *1.jpg
REN "*2?copy.jpg" *3.jpg
REN "*3?copy.jpg" *3.jpg
REN "*4?copy.jpg" *4.jpg

This saves a bunch of time when you have a lot of files to rename. It sure beats manually renaming 800 files one by one. What other REN commands have you used?

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Yes, I understand this is still a down economy and times are tough for a lot of businesses. Yes, I understand it’s the end of the year and you might have used your website budget already. But, what I don’t understand is why business people don’t want to advertise MORE when times are tough. Let’s put this into perspective…

Your company sells widgets, and there are 4 other companies in your local area that also sells widgets similar to yours that you conciser your competition. The widget market has been down for the past few years with a few good spikes up here and there. Currently the 5 widget companies are just working off of referral and current customer business. Some of them might be doing small amounts of advertising themselves but not nearly enough and the results are questionable at best.

Now, let’s say that one of these widget companies (Company A) does do some significant advertising for the upcoming holiday season. Company A makes some changes to their website to make it more appealing for potential customers and have systems set up to convert visitors to customers. Company A looks at what keywords and phrases in the search engines that they want to go for (SEO). Company A looks at keywords and phrases that would be harder to get into within the next few months, and buy ads for those (PPC). Company A creates a social media campaign on Facebook, Twitter, and other sites to get the word out about their new products and special offers.

If you were in the market for a widget, which company would you go to? You’ve seen Company A online and visited their fresh looking and very informative website. You even have a 10% off coupon that they gave you from their Facebook page. Do you even know that there is a widget company Company B, C, D, and E? No, probably not. Even if you did know Company B, and went to their website, what would you see? Would you see that their blog hasn’t been updated since 2009 or that they still have an animated GIF as their main image? Who would you feel more comfortable with fulfilling your order?

My point is simply this – If everyone else is in the backseat “playing it safe”, why wouldn’t you want to jump ahead with little to no competition and reap the rewards? Your investment to do this work will be quickly forgotten once you see that you are now getting new customers, new orders, and getting better name recognition in the market place.

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What I had in CodeIgniter:

• CodeIgniter 2.0.3
• HMVC
• One main controller called “admin” to handle a few functions/pages
• Everything else in application/modules

In routes.php I had:

<?php
$route['admin/logout'] = 'admin/logout';
$route['admin/forgot'] = 'admin/forgot';
$route['admin/dashboard'] = 'admin/dashboard';
$route['admin/([a-zA-Z_-]+)/(:any)'] = '$1/admin/$2';
$route['admin/([a-zA-Z_-]+)'] = '$1/admin/index';
$route['admin'] = 'admin';

So if you go to domain.com/admin/users you would be in application/modules/users/controller/admin.php and anything like domain.com/admin/users/edit/1/ would work and find it’s place. On the front end there would be something like domain.com/users/view/1 which would go to application/modules/users/controller/users.php

Now moving over to Yii…
1. Create “admin” controller in Gii with dashboard, logout, and forgot actions
2. Create “user” module in Gii
3. Create the following urlManager rules in /protected/config/main.php:

<?php
$config = array(
    'components' => array(
        'urlManager' => array(
            'urlFormat' => 'path',
            'showScriptName' => false,
            'rules' => array(
                //admin rules
                'admin/<action:(dashboard|forgot|logout)>' => 'admin/<action>',
                'admin/<module:\w+>/<action:\w+>/<id:\d+>' => '<module>/admin/<action>',
                'admin/<module:\w+>/<action:\w+>' => '<module>/admin/<action>',
                'admin/<module:\w+>' => '<module>/admin',
            ),
        ),
);

4. Instead of just returning the config array, assign it to $config, and at the bottom of main.php enter:

return $config;

Your basic webapp should work as it did before at this point.

5. In /protected/modules/user/controllers/DefaultController.php have something like:

<?php
class DefaultController extends Controller {

    public function actionIndex() {
        $this->render('index');
    }

    public function actionCreate() {
        die('this is default create');
    }

    public function actionEdit($id) {
        die('this is default edit = '.$id);
    }

}

6. Copy that file and rename it “AdminController.php”, then just change the “default” text to “admin”:

<?php
class AdminController extends Controller {

    public function actionIndex() {
        $this->render('index');
    }

    public function actionCreate() {
        die('this is admin create');
    }

    public function actionEdit($id) {
        die('this is admin edit = '. $id);
    }

}

7. Copy and rename /protected/modules/user/views/default to /protected/modules/user/views/admin for your admin only views.

8. Create a /protected/modules/user/config directory and add a main.php file with something like:

<?php
$module_name = basename(dirname(dirname(__FILE__)));
$default_controller = 'default';

return array(
    'import' => array(
        'application.modules.' . $module_name . '.models.*',
    ),

    'modules' => array(
        $module_name => array(
            'defaultController' => $default_controller,
        ),
    ),

    'components' => array(
        'urlManager' => array(
            'rules' => array(
                $module_name . '/<action:\w+>/<id:\d+>' => $module_name . '/' . $default_controller . '/<action>',
                $module_name . '/<action:\w+>' => $module_name . '/' . $default_controller . '/<action>',
            ),
        ),
    ),
);

and you can add more rules and config settings if you want…

9. Go back to your /protected/config/main.php file and right before you return $config, add this:

<?php
$modules_dir = dirname(dirname(__FILE__)) . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'modules' . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR;
$handle = opendir($modules_dir);
while (false !== ($file = readdir($handle))) {
    if ($file != "." && $file != ".." && is_dir($modules_dir . $file)) {
        $config = CMap::mergeArray($config, require($modules_dir . $file . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'config' . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'main.php'));
    }
}
closedir($handle);

which will scan your modules directory and automatically add your module config to the main application config array.

Now you can have nice admin URLs that correspond with your modules: domain.com/admin, domain.com/admin/dashboard, domain.com/admin/user/create, domain.com/admin/user/edit/1 , domain.com/user/create, domain.com/user/edit/1 (instead of domain.com/user/default/edit/1 – you do not want “default” in the URL)

Note 1: You want to make sure you load the URL rules at the bootstrap so your whole application knows to redirect your module to the “default” controller without stating it. If you use the UserModule.php init() it will NOT work since you will already have to be in the module to load those rules, by that time it’s too late and you will get an error.

Note 2: You will obviously not want to use domain.com/user/create or domain.com/user/edit/1 on the front end of your site. I just put those as examples to show that everything is working.

Note 3: By adding the import statement for each module model you can now access all of your models throughout your whole application and other modules like:

$model = User::model()->findByPK(1);

I hope this helps some people who are looking to move over to Yii from CodeIgniter.

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For the past few months I’ve been keeping my eye on the Yii framework. I’ve read a lot of great reviews of it and a lot of developers of all levels really like it a lot. I started looking into it more over the past week or so and started playing around with it. Between going through the video tutorials and their intro guide, it’s very easy to see that this framework is VERY powerful. I immediately saw a huge (positive) difference between Yii and CodeIgniter, which I have been using for the past 5 years or so.

CodeIgniter has been great to me, but I think it’s time to move on. It was very easy to learn and the community has been fairly helpful over the time that I’ve been with the framework. I feel that it hasn’t been moving forward fast enough compared to other frameworks and the “large scale” features are lacking. I’ll still be maintaining my current CI sites and scripts, but I’ve pretty much decided to move over to Yii.

I have a good deal of work ahead of my in order to port all of my CI code over to Yii, but it will be worth it once I’m done. Over the past week I’ve hit some bumps in the road trying to get Yii to function similarly to what I have in CI, but it’s coming along. I should have a lot of great posts soon about what I’m working on. In the mean time, here are some great pro’s of the Yii framework:

• Full MVC design with PHP 5 support
• Database Access Objects (DAO), Query Builder, Active Record, DB Migration
• AJAX-enabled widgets
• Authentication and authorization
• Skinning and theming
• Layered caching scheme
• Automatic code generation
• Great Security
• Super Performance!
• and much, much more.

Please stay tuned for more Yii blog posts. If you want to know anything specific about converting your CodeIgniter site to Yii, please leave a comment and let me know about it.

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Let’s start with the basic functions:

<?php
function pass_rand($min = null, $max = null)
{
    static $seeded;

    if(!isset($seeded))
    {
        mt_srand((double)microtime()*1000000);
        $seeded = true;
    }

    if(isset($min) && isset($max))
    {
        if($min >= $max)
        {
            return $min;
        }
        else
        {
            return mt_rand($min, $max);
        }
    }
    else
    {
        return mt_rand();
    }
}

function validate_password($plain, $encrypted)
{
    $stack = explode(':', $encrypted);

    if(sizeof($stack) != 2) return false;

    if(md5($stack[1].$plain) == $stack[0])
    {
        return true;
    }

    return false;
}

function encrypt_password($plain)
{
    $password = '';

    for($i=0; $i<10; $i++)
    {
        $password .= pass_rand();
    }

    $salt = substr(md5($password), 0, 2);

    $password = md5($salt.$plain).':'.$salt;

    return $password;
}

After your user registers you will need to encrypt and save their password to your database. You can easily do this by sending their password to the encrypt_password() function:

<?php

$new_password = encrypt_password($_POST['password']);

//"password123" becomes something like "3be870c699b09266b3b86c98aeb31022:43"

When your user tries to log into your application you will need to do some initial validation to get their record from the database, but the result will look something similar to:

<?php

$sql = "SELECT `id`, `password` FROM `users` WHERE `email` = ".mysql_escape_string($_POST['email']);
$result = mysql_query($sql);
$row = mysql_fetch_row($result);
if(validate_password($_POST['password'], $row['password']))
{
    //continue with login process
}
else
{
    die('Login Failed');
}

And that’s pretty much it. Easy right?

Note: You will want to do a lot more security checking than this especially with the database interaction. This is only for demonstration ;) I recommend you use a solid framework like CodeIgniter which has a lot already built into it.

Related posts:

1. Encrypt/Decrypt Secure Data with PHP

Let’s start with the basic functions:

<?php
function encrypt_text($value)
{
   if(!$value) return false;

   $crypttext = mcrypt_encrypt(MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_256, 'SECURE_STRING_1', $value, MCRYPT_MODE_ECB, 'SECURE_STRING_2');
   return trim(base64_encode($crypttext));
}

function decrypt_text($value)
{
   if(!$value) return false;

   $crypttext = base64_decode($value);
   $decrypttext = mcrypt_decrypt(MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_256, 'SECURE_STRING_1', $crypttext, MCRYPT_MODE_ECB, 'SECURE_STRING_2');
   return trim($decrypttext);
}

In addition to using the mcrypt library we are also going to use the base64 encode/decode functions for an extra level of protection. You will want to choose 2 random string values before you run these and update SECURE_STRING_1 and SECURE_STRING_2. You want to make sure these are the same every time you call these functions or else these will not encrypt/decrypt correctly. Once you have updated these values, you can test using something like this:

<?php
$my_credit_card = '5105105105105100';
$secure_credit_card = encrypt_text($my_credit_card);
echo $secure_credit_card; //JIkkfj6yzQqMTZoUufuyI8FL1isqH/QXblQk90IIuqA=

$unsecure_credit_card = decrypt_text($secure_credit_card);
echo $unsecure_credit_card; //5105105105105100 (original card number)

All you have to do is save $secure_credit_card to your database and you are all set.

Taking this to the next level

If you are interested in kicking the security up a notch you can always come up with some random strings on the fly and also save these to your database. You want to be careful to save the correct keys per user so that you can decrypt the information correctly at a later time. Let’s say for example that when your user registers they enter a first name, last name, email address, and password. You can take this information and create the user’s encryption keys by doing something like this:

<?php
$first_name = 'Chris';
$last_name = 'Gmyr';
$email = 'email@domain.com';
$password = 'mypassword123';

$secure_string_1 = md5($first_name.'|'.$email);
echo $secure_string_1; //9c46de8e3b1f557c20c964be2b54d4d9

$secure_string_2 = md5($last_name.'|'.$password);
echo $secure_string_2; //131d88ad82d9c94c65ba3945c38b06e1

Even though the user could change their information in the future, you do not want to change the encryption keys in your database. After some slight modifications to pass the 2 keys to the functions, you have something like:

<?php
function encrypt_text($value, $key1, $key2)
{
   if(!$value || !$key1 || !$key2) return false;

   $crypttext = mcrypt_encrypt(MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_256, $key1, $value, MCRYPT_MODE_ECB, $key2);
   return trim(base64_encode($crypttext));
}

function decrypt_text($value, $key1, $key2)
{
   if(!$value || !$key1 || !$key2) return false;

   $crypttext = base64_decode($value);
   $decrypttext = mcrypt_decrypt(MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_256, $key1, $crypttext, MCRYPT_MODE_ECB, $key2);
   return trim($decrypttext);
}

$my_credit_card = '5105105105105100';
$secure_credit_card = encrypt_text($my_credit_card, $secure_string_1, $secure_string_2);
$unsecure_credit_card = decrypt_text($secure_credit_card, $secure_string_1, $secure_string_2);

Your Turn

How do you secure data in your applications? Do you have any other tips that you would like to share?

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Right now this is just some basic functions, but I will be actively supporting this and adding things as I go along. If you have any requests or changes, please feel free to leave me a request in the “issues” tab for me.

I’ve made an easy to follow controller with a number of examples. If you need any other ones, please let me know.

Installation

1. Drop everything into your application folder
2. Edit the config file
3. Go to the controller and start playing around.

If you run into any problems with running it on your localhost or server, please make sure you check out the original API documentation here.

Feel free to leave any feedback or feature requests. Thanks for checking out my library.

Related posts:

1. CodeIgniter Pagination Library

Installation

1. Drop everything into your application folder (assets folder is just for demo purposes)
2. Use: $config['uri_protocol'] = ‘PATH_INFO’;
3. Go to the test controller and start working with it. You will have to make your own SQL queries/models.

Features

• Handles a directory structure or by using the $_GET array. (Ex: domain.com/users/5/ or domain.com/users/?page=5)
• Directory structure can add a trailing slash or not, which is good for SEO (Ex: domain.com/users/5/ or domain.com/users/5)
• Page 1 links will not show a pagination number. Search engines will look at domain.com/users/ and domain.com/users/1/ as duplicate content, so the pagination is dropped.
• Handles regular links or AJAX update links
• Automatically builds sorting links
• Handles different HTML tags (li, div, etc) for pagination links and additional HTML/CSS options.
• Handles additional search/sorting parameters and will add to the $_GET array
• Page stats output (Ex: Displaying 1 to 25 (of 115 users))

Feel free to leave any feedback or feature requests. Thanks for checking out my library.

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