PHPHUNGER.COM - A Complete Web Developer Blog

How to Redirect Visitors to a Maintenance Page During Website Maintenance Using .htaccess

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah Muhammed) — Mon, 20 May 2013 05:25:00 +0000

Sometimes we come across the websites with messages like "Website is under maintenance", "Website is temporarily shutdown", "We are upgrading our server please come back soon" etc etc. Have you ever come across such kind of things during your web surfing period? I guess everyone would have come across those situations. But have you ever imagined how to achieve this whenever your website needs such kind of work. Now let's do it.

Redirecting visitors to a maintenance page or other temporary page is a must have tool for every webmaster or web developer. We can redirect the visitors to a maintenance page with a simple file called as ".htaccess" file and some code in it. Now let's see the how to redirect the visitors with .htaccess code.

Redirecting all visitors with .htaccess

Options +FollowSymlinks

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance.html$ [NC]

RewriteRule .* /maintenance.html [R=302,L]

To redirect your visitors to a maintenance page, place the above code into a .htaccess file located in your site root directory. This will make that all pages and resources contained within your domain will be redirected for visitors.

Now that the .htaccess is in place, you'll need to create and upload your maintenance page, named 'maintenance.html' to the root directory of your site. This file can be just about anything, and does not need to be written in HTML. You can use, say, PHP to make it all dynamic, but remember to change the two instances of the file name in the .htaccess code to match the actual name of your file.

Wow! Amazing .htaccess trick. Its working perfectly. But i have got small problem that me and my client are not able to see the site. For example, assume that you are working for a client and that client wants to see what kind of modifications are going on in the site. Then to achieve this using .htaccess add the below line of code to the file.

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^123\.456\.789\.000

Now the total code looks like below.

Options +FollowSymlinks

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^123\.456\.789\.000

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance.html$ [NC]

RewriteRule .* /maintenance.html [R=302,L]

Note: You can add multiple IP addresses to the .htaccess file to give access to the site for the respective IP addresses. Just add the multiple RewriteCond's to the existing .htaccess file. See below code.

Options +FollowSymlinks

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^123\.456\.789\.000

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^123\.456\.789\.000

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^123\.456\.789\.000

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance.html$ [NC]

RewriteRule .* /maintenance.html [R=302,L]

The above code sends all users to maintenance.html EXCEPT those with the specified IP, the IP's we mentioned in the code will be able to see the website while the remaining will see the maintenance page during website maintenance.

Thanks for reading this article, please feel free to comment and subscribe for more updates by putting your email in the subscribe box.

AJAX Auto Complete Feature Like Google, Facebook With PHP, MySQL

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah Muhammed) — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 05:40:00 +0000

When i am working on one of my project, i need to work on AJAX. So i started googling about AJAX how to's. So i started learning AJAX slowly and steadily. After completion of learning AJAX i started working on AJAX Auto complete suggest feature. So i tried hard to work on that finally i got the solution from one of the online resource. I hope you are also one of the guy who is looking for such kind of solution. So i thought i should share this to my online users. One thing every one should get this in their mind that what actually an AJAX Auto complete is? Perhaps i too didn't have any idea but after working on that i came to know.

So let's see what an AJAX Auto complete suggest is? As a web developer almost all us in our daily life, use Google at its best. When we start googling like "how to" or "AJAX tutorial" etc then the Google will show some results beneath its search text box. See below picture for better understanding. So this feature is called as AJAX Auto complete Suggest Feature. Now a days all of the websites have this feature.

Now Let's see how to design such an application.

Step 1: Design the Database.

See the below picture for better understanding of database design. In this tutorial, i have just created one table for demonstration purpose. The process is same for the bigger database also. In this tutorial i assumed the database name as "phphunger_ajax_autocomplete" and table name as "games". Change the names as your wish.

Create the table as "games"

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `games` (
`id` int(10) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`name` varchar(200) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM  DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

Dump some data into the table "games"

INSERT INTO `games` (`id`, `name`) VALUES
(1, 'Angry Birds'),
(2, 'Angry Birds Space'),
(3, 'Angry Birds Space Battle'),
(4, 'Babe Rescue'),
(5, 'Ball Defence'),
(6, 'Ball Defence  2');

Once the database design phase is over the next step is to design the front end for the user from where he starts searching the content.

Step 2: Design the HTML Form

Here add one Textbox on the HTML Form which communicates with AJAX and fetches data from the back-end to the front-end. See below picture how the form looks like. Name the file as "index.html"

Step 3: Write AJAX Code

Write some javascript code which includes the AJAX Request, Response logic. See below code. Name the file as "suggest.js"

suggest.js

function getXmlHttpRequestObject() {
 if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {
  return new XMLHttpRequest();
 } else if(window.ActiveXObject) {
  return new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
 } else {
  alert("Your Browser Sucks!");
 }
}

//Our XmlHttpRequest object to get the auto suggest
var searchReq = getXmlHttpRequestObject();

//Called from keyup on the search textbox.
//Starts the AJAX request.
function searchSuggest() {
 if (searchReq.readyState == 4 || searchReq.readyState == 0) {
  var str = escape(document.getElementById('dbTxt').value);
  searchReq.open("GET", 'searchSuggest.php?search=' + str, true);
  searchReq.onreadystatechange = handleSearchSuggest;
  searchReq.send(null);
 }
}

//Called when the AJAX response is returned.
function handleSearchSuggest() {
 if (searchReq.readyState == 4) {
         var ss = document.getElementById('layer1');
  var str1 = document.getElementById('dbTxt');
  var curLeft=0;
  if (str1.offsetParent){
      while (str1.offsetParent){
   curLeft += str1.offsetLeft;
   str1 = str1.offsetParent;
      }
  }
  var str2 = document.getElementById('dbTxt');
  var curTop=20;
  if (str2.offsetParent){
      while (str2.offsetParent){
   curTop += str2.offsetTop;
   str2 = str2.offsetParent;
      }
  }
  var str =searchReq.responseText.split("\n");
  if(str.length==1)
      document.getElementById('layer1').style.visibility = "hidden";
  else
      ss.setAttribute('style','position:absolute;top:'+curTop+';left:'+curLeft+';width:250;z-index:1;padding:5px;border: 1px solid #000000; overflow:auto; height:105; background-color:#F5F5FF;');
  ss.innerHTML = '';
  for(i=0; i < str.length - 1; i++) {
   //Build our element string.  This is cleaner using the DOM, but
   //IE doesn't support dynamically added attributes.
   var suggest = '<div onmouseover="javascript:suggestOver(this);" ';
			suggest += 'onmouseout="javascript:suggestOut(this);" ';
			suggest += 'onclick="javascript:setSearch(this.innerHTML);" ';
			suggest += 'class="small">' + str[i] + '</div>';
			ss.innerHTML += suggest;

  }
 }
}

//Mouse over function
function suggestOver(div_value) {
 div_value.className = 'suggest_link_over';
}
//Mouse out function
function suggestOut(div_value) {
 div_value.className = 'suggest_link';
}
//Click function
function setSearch(value) {
 document.getElementById('dbTxt').value = value;
 document.getElementById('layer1').innerHTML = '';
 document.getElementById('layer1').style.visibility = "hidden";
}

Step 4: Connect to Database and Fetch Results.

This is the file for database connection and fetching results from table. Name it as searchSuggest.php That's what an AJAX Autocomplete feature. Use this code snippet if your requirement matches. Do play with this code. Happy coding.

Best Tools For Testing PHP Code Online

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah Muhammed) — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 06:28:00 +0000

PHP is such an awesome scripting language for building dynamic web application because it has a huge user base as well as developer base. As it is an open source language so its freely available in the internet without any hassle. And the developer community is contributing towards PHP to increase the user base. Because of constantly adding new features to PHP regularly, the new and fresh tools are coming up in the internet.

While i am browsing for the online resources to test PHP code, i came to know these tools. So i shared these tools to you people. If want to try it once please go ahead. Its not a mandatory that you should use these tools. These tools are just for informational purpose.

Let's see some new tools which are providing online services for running your PHP Code. With these tools the developer can test his/her code online without going for the localhost.

Codepad:

codepad is an online compiler/interpreter, and a simple collaboration tool. The codepad will support many languages like C, C++, D, Haskell, Lua, OCaml, PHP, Perl, Plain Text, Python, Ruby, Scheme, Tcl. You can try out with your favorite language.

The URL is Codepad.org

Writecodeonine:

This is also one of the online code editor where the developer can paste the code in the code area and run the code online.

The URL is Writecodeonline

OnlinePHPFunctions:

This online tool gives you more options like with which version of PHP you want to work. The developer can select with which version he/she wants to run their PHP code. This is most useful for testing PHP functions online. Try out once.

The URL is Online PHP Functions

codepad.viper-7:

This tool also gives you options like with which version you wants to test the PHP code.

The URL is Codepad Viper-7

PHP Fiddle:

The PHP Fiddle is one of the amazing online code testing tool for testing almost all kind of web technologies like PHP, HTML, CSS, Javascript, MySQL support. This is one of the great tool. I simply love it.

The URL is PHP Fiddle

Exorithm:

Last but not the least, its also one of the tool to test the PHP code online.

The URL is Exorithm

OK guys, Try out all these at least once just for informational purpose. Use our PHP Developer Journey-Tutorials for testing PHP Code online. All the best.

Displaying Games On the Web. How?

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah Muhammed) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 16:50:00 +0000

Hello all, today its time for me to tell you something about online games. Have you ever imagined that, in our daily life not all of us, at least some of us use to play online games with an intention to give some relief to our stressed mind. The answer will be of course, yes. But have you ever imagined that how the games you play over the web comes to you.

Let's see how the games comes on the website. Now a days where ever you go people are addicted to playing games on the web. According to comScore.com, the percentage of online game players has crossed over 200 Million. Can you believe it? Now let's see in how many ways we can show the game content to the end user.

Generally as of now the game content has come up in 3 variety of forms. They are as follows:

Adobe Flash SWF Format
Adobe Shockwave Format
Unity3D Format

Adobe Flash SWF Format (.swf):

This file comes up with a .swf file extension. The online gaming revolution on the web has started with this version. The inventors of this .swf file format are Adobe. The code for displaying flash content on the web page is as follows:

<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,28,0" width="100%" height="100%">
    <param name="movie" value="swf/gamename.swf" />
    <param name="quality" value="high" />
    <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" />
<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="swf/gamename.swf" width="100%" height="100%"></object>
</object>

Adobe Shockwave Format (.dcr):

This file comes up with a .dcr file extension. With this DCR files the 3D features has been incorporated in the online gaming revolution on the web. The inventors of this .dcr file format are also Adobe. The code for displaying shockwave director content on the web page is as follows:

<object width="100%" height="100%" classid="clsid:166B1BCA-3F9C-11CF-8075-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/director/sw.cab#version=7,0,2,0">
    <param name="src" value="shockwave/gamename.dcr" />
    <embed src="shockwave/gamename.dcr" width="100%" height="100%" type="application/x-director" />
</object>

Unity3D Format (.unity3d):

This file comes up with a .unity3d file extension. With this Unity3D files the 3D features has been incorporated in the online gaming revolution on the web. The gamer can feel the PC gaming experience with Unity 3D games. The inventors of this .dcr file format are also Adobe. The code for displaying Unity 3D content on the web page is as follows:

<object id='UnityObject' classid='clsid:444785F1-DE89-4295-863A-D46C3A781394' width='100%' height='100%' codebase='http://webplayer.unity3d.com/download_webplayer/UnityWebPlayer.cab#version=2,0,0,0'>
    <param name='src' value='unity/gamename.unity3d' />
    <embed src='unity/gamename.unity3d' width='100%' height='100%' type='application/vnd.unity' pluginspage='http://www.unity3d.com/unity-web-player-2.x' />
</object>

Understanding Operators in PHP - Part 5

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah Muhammed) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 09:46:00 +0000

Hi all, as we are trying to understand the operators concepts. This is the last article in the Operators series. In our PHP Developer Journey tutorials, let's continue with our Understanding Operators part 5. If you are unaware of the initial parts then please go through the below links.

Assignment operators, Arithmetic operators, Array operators - Part 1

String operators, Logical Operators - Part 2

Bitwise Operators - Part 3

Comparison Operators - Part 4

Error Control Operators:

PHP language is very handy when dealing with errors. Sometimes its necessary for the developer not to display the error messages to the end user which actually occurs when something goes wrong with the code. This can be accomplished in PHP with the help of an operator called "Error Suppression" Operator (@).

How to use Error Control Operator (@):

We can prevent the errors by not showing to the end user by putting in front of the operation. Like wise, for example, Divide-By-Zero is an infinity number, if you output then it will print some error. With the @ operator, however, we can prevent the error from being printed out, but not from occurring it. Let's see a simple example.

Demo Without using Error Control Operator in the expression:

$a = 1 / 0;

echo $a;

echo "hi";

From the above code, the following output will come if you execute at your localhost. See the below picture.

Demo With using Error Control Operator in the expression:

@$a = 1 / 0;

echo $a;

echo "hi";

Piece Of Advice for Error Control Operators:

This operator can be very dangerous because it prevents PHP from notifying you that something has gone wrong. You should, therefore, use it only whenever you want to prevent errors from propagating to a default handler because you have a specialized code segment that you want to take care of the problem. Generally speaking, it’s a bad idea to use this approach simply as a way to “silence” the PHP interpreter, as there are better ways to do so (for example, through error logging) without compromising its error reporting capabilities.

Note that not all types of errors can be caught and suppressed using the @ operator. Because PHP first parses your script into an intermediate language that makes execution faster and then executes it, it won’t be capable of knowing that you have requested error suppression until the parsing phase is over and the execution phase begins. As a result, syntax errors that take place during the parsing phase will always result in an error being outputted, unless you have changed your php.ini settings in a way that prevents all errors from being outputted independently from your use of the @ operator.

Execution Operators:

PHP supports one execution operator: backticks (``). Note that these are not single-quotes! PHP will attempt to execute the contents of the backticks as a shell command; the output will be returned (i.e., it won't simply be dumped to output; it can be assigned to a variable). Use of the backtick operator is identical to shell_exec().

As i haven't worked with this operator in my PHP's life span. So i just grabbed this content from php.net manual.

$output = `ls -al`;

echo "$output
";

Type casting:

As we know PHP is a loosely typed language and assigns types to variables depending what is assigned to it. Even though PHP handles data types automatically most of the time, you can still force it to convert a particular datum to a specific type by using a typecasting operator. There are two ways to cast a variable in PHP as a specific type: using the settype() function, or using (int) (bool) (float) etc.

Using the settype() function you can do this: These are

settype($foo, "array");

settype($foo, "bool");

settype($foo, "boolean");

settype($foo, "float");

settype($foo, "int");

settype($foo, "integer");

settype($foo, "null");

settype($foo, "object");

settype($foo, "string");

Using (int) etc you can do this instead:

(int) to cast a value to its integer equivalent
(float) to cast a value to its floating-point equivalent
(string) to cast a value to its string equivalent
(array) to force the conversion of the operand to an array if it is not one already
(object) to force the conversion of the operand to an object if it is not one already

$foo = (array)$foo;

$foo = (boolean)$foo;

$foo = (double)$foo;

$foo = (float)$foo;

$foo = (int)$foo;

$foo = (integer)$foo;

$foo = (object)$foo;

$foo = (real)$foo;

$foo = (string)$foo;

Note: php.net manual says "PHP does not require (or support) explicit type definition in variable declaration; a variable's type is determined by the context in which the variable is used."

Operator Precedence:

Operator precedence refers to the order in which operators execute within an expression. For example, one of the basic rules of arithmetic is that multiplications and divisions are executed before additions and subtractions. With a large number of types of operations available, things get a bit more complicated, but are by no means complex.

Operator Precedence and associvity

For Example,

$foo = 5 * 10 - 1; // output: 49

Should $foo be 49 or 45? If you cannot see why there are two possibilities, it might help to break them up using brackets, like this:

$foo = (5 * 10) - 1; output: 49
$foo = 5 * (10 - 1); output: 45

Case 1:

$foo = (5 * 10) - 1

In case 1, five is multiplied by ten then one is subtracted from the result.

Case 2:

$foo = 5 * (10 - 1);

In case 2 ten has one subtracted from it, making nine, then that result is multiplied by five. If there is any ambiguity in your expressions, PHP will resolve them according to its internal set of rules about operator precedence, that is, which operators are calculated first.

Ok that's all about operators. Keep coming for more stuff..

Understanding Operators in PHP - Part 4

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah Muhammed) — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 06:57:00 +0000

In our PHP Developer Journey tutorials, let's continue with our Understanding Operators part 4. If you are unaware of the initial parts then please go through the below links.

Assignment operators, Arithmetic operators, Array operators - Part 1

String operators, Logical Operators - Part 2

Bitwise Operators - Part 3

Comparison Operators:

Comparison operators, as the name itself says that, they will allow you to compare two values. Simply the comparison operators are used to determine the relationship between two variables.

Let's see the different types of comparison operators:

1. == (Equal): The == operator determines if two values are equal or not.

Demo of Equal (==) Operator:

$x = 46; // integer variable

$y = "46"; // string variable

var_dump($x == $y); // output: TRUE

Explanation: From the above code, we have one integer variable and another is string variable, So the PHP interpreter will first convert the string variable to integer variable then perform comparison. Because the integer will have the higher priority than string. So the conversion takes place before the comparison. Since the two variables hold the same values but are of different type.

2. != (Not Equal): The != operator determines if two values are different.

Demo of Not Equal (!=) Operator:

$x = 46; // integer variable

$y = "46"; // string variable

var_dump($x != $y); // output: FALSE

Explanation: From the above code, we have one integer variable and another is string variable, Since the two variables hold the same values but are of different type. Even though they are of different type the PHP interpreter returns FALSE.

3. < (Less than): The < operator determines whether the left operand’s value is less than the right operand’s.

Demo of Less than (<) Operator:

$x = 46; //integer

$y = 100; //integer

var_dump($x<$y); //output: TRUE

Explanation: From the above code, we have two integer variables, Since the two variables hold the different values but are of same type. Based on the comparison operator the PHP interpreter returns TRUE. Since 46 is less than 100.

4. > (Greater than): The > operator determines whether the left operand’s value is greater than the right operand’s.

Demo of Greater than (>) Operator:

$x = 46; //integer

$y = 100; //integer

var_dump($x>$y); //output: FALSE

5. <= (Less than or Equal): The <= operator determines whether the left operand’s value is less than or equal to the right operand’s.

Demo of Less than or Equal (<=) Operator:

$x = 46; //integer

$y = 100; //integer

var_dump($x<=$y); //output: TRUE

6. >= (Greater than or Equal): The >= operator determines whether the left operand’s value is greater than the right operand’s.

Demo of Greater than or Equal (>=) Operator:

$x = 46; //integer

$y = 100; //integer

var_dump($x>=$y); //output: FALSE

7. === (Identical): The === operator determines whether the value and the type of the two operands is the same.

Demo of Identical (===) Operator:

$x = 46;

$y = "46";

var_dump($x===$y);

Explanation: From the above code, we have one integer variable and another is string variable, Since the two variables hold the same values but are of different type. The above php code returns FALSE as strict equal operator will compare both value and type of $x and $y.

8. !== (Not Identical): The !== operator determines whether either the value or the type of the two operands is different.

Demo of Not Identical (!==) Operator:

$x = 46;

$y = "46";

var_dump($x!==$y);

Explanation: From the above code, we have one integer variable and another is string variable, Since the two variables hold the same values but are of different type. The above php code returns true though their values are equal but type of $x and $y are not equal (first one is integer type and second one is character type).

Note: All the comparison operators returns the Boolean value as a result.

While performing comparisons with the variables, the PHP interpreter first convert them if they are not of the same type. If the variables have the same type then no conversions will take place These conversions will take place automatically by the PHP interpreter. Keep a note that, these conversions will be done based on the priority of the "Data Type". Means whatever the data type has the highest priority it will be taken first and so on. The Data Type here either integer, floating point, string, character like that.

Thanks for reading. Keep visiting for more stuff.

Simple PHP Search Engine Script Tutorial

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah Muhammed) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 05:05:00 +0000

Generally dynamic websites hosts tons of data with them. Searching for a particular thing is very tedious task if websites don't have proper searching functionality. For such requirement this search tool is perfect if you want a quick and easy way to search your dynamic websites.

Having a search feature on a dynamic website is very handy for helping users find exactly what they are looking for. Almost all users now prefer different search engines to find what they are looking for. Search engines range from something very simple to very complicated as Google, MSN, Bing, Yahoo etc.

In this tutorial, our scope is limited to searching a simple database table and extract those results from database. I hope it gives a little idea to build bigger search engine for developing more complex search engine like Google.

Simple PHP Search Engine Script Tutorial

This tutorial assumes whatever the data you want to search will be stored in the MySQL Database table. In this tutorial, we will use a simple query to search the data from the MySQL database table. No complex algorithms will be used. Using of such complex algorithms is beyond our tutorial's limit.

Before we start off this tutorial, we need a database. The code below will create a testing database to use as you work through the tutorial.

Step 1:

Creating a database called "search-engine" and table called "mobiles". See below picture and code snippet.

PHP Search Engine Database

Step 2:

Now create a search form (index.php) for the users where they start searching for their desired content. See the below code snippet.

Step 3:

The real search script where the real search functionality happens. Name it as (search.php) or whatever it may be. See the below code snippet.

The above is the combined screen shot how you will see the results after searching for something. Hope you have enjoyed it. Keep coming for more tutorials.

Understanding Operators in PHP - Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah Muhammed) — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 11:37:00 +0000

Hi all, let's continue with our operators. The next in the series is Bitwise operators:Note: Please go through part 1 and part 2 of php operators here.

Bitwise operators:

Bitwise operators works on the binary representation of integers. Means first the integer operand will be converted to its binary form and then performs its operation based on the operator.

Note: The binary form means zero's(0) and one's(1).

The bitwise operators are as follows: & (AND), | (OR), ^ (XOR), ~ (NOT), << (Shift Left), >> (Shift Right)

Bitwise AND (&) :

If both the bits are set, means both the binary values are 1 then the output will be 1 else 0. Here the bit set means 1 and bit not set means 0. Let's see a small demo on bitwise AND (&).

Demo:

Let's take two numbers 46 and 93 respectively. Now perform binary conversion for these two numbers.

Step 1:

Converting decimal numbers 46 and 93 into their binary form.

The binary representation of 46 - 00101110

The binary representation of 93 - 01011101

I guess you are little bit confused with the binary form. How the decimal numbers got translated to binary form. You are not alone, even i too confused with these binary form. After recollecting my engineering subjects i got clear solution. See the below tables about how to convert decimal number to binary conversion?

A decimal number 46 can be represent in binary form like bellow -

1 Byte ( 8 bits )
Decimal Place	128	64	32	16	8	4	2	1
	0	0	1	0	1	1	1	0
	2⁷	2⁶	2⁵	2⁴	2³	2²	2¹	2⁰
	0	0	32	0	8	4	2	0	=	46

A decimal number 93 can be represent in binary form like bellow -

1 Byte ( 8 bits )
Decimal Place	128	64	32	16	8	4	2	1
	0	1	0	1	1	1	0	1
	2⁷	2⁶	2⁵	2⁴	2³	2²	2¹	2⁰
	0	64	0	16	8	4	0	1	=	93

Step 2:

Now perform Bitwise AND Operation on them. The output will be 00001100.

After performing AND operation on both the binary numbers, the bit set occurs at 5th digit and 6th digit in both the binary forms. So the 5th digit is at 2³ and 6th digit is at 2² position. Now you may get confusion that how to perform the Bitwise Operation on those numbers. Simply perform the AND operation then you will get the result. See below that how to perform bitwise operation on those two numbers.

Base 2	2⁷	2⁶	2⁵	2⁴	2³	2²	2¹	2⁰
Binary 46	0	1	0	1	1	1	0	1
Binary 93	0	0	1	0	1	1	1	0
Result	0	0	0	0	1	1	0	0

Now from the above manipulation, the bit set occurs 5th and 6th position.

Step 3:

Now perform addition operation on these two 2³ and 6th digit is at 2². You will get 2³ + 2² = 12. Now you may be confused that how this answer 12 came. Don't get confused. Simply multiply the binary number quotient with base 2 and then perform addition on those numbers then you will get the answer.

(2⁷ x 0)

(2⁶ x 0)

(2⁵ x 0)

(2⁴ x 0)

(2³ x 1)

(2² x 1)

(2¹ x 0)

(2⁰ x 0)

= 12

Huh...These many steps...its really very frustrating..Don't panic..you don't have to worry about these many steps. Let's see the same in our php code. Its really very simple.

$x=46;

$y=93;

echo $x & $y; // output: 12

Bitwise OR (|) :

If any one of the bit is set, means any one of the binary value is 1 then the output will be 1 else 0. Here the bit set means 1 and bit not set means 0. Let's see a small demo on bitwise OR (|).

Demo:

Let's take two numbers 46 and 93 respectively. Now perform binary conversion for these two numbers.

Step 1:

Converting decimal numbers 46 and 93 into their binary form.

The binary representation of 46 - 00101110

The binary representation of 93 - 01011101

I guess you are little bit confused with the binary form. How the decimal numbers got translated to binary form. You are not alone, even i too confused with these binary form. After recollecting my engineering subjects i got clear solution. See the below tables about how to convert decimal number to binary conversion?

A decimal number 46 can be represent in binary form like bellow -

1 Byte ( 8 bits )
Decimal Place	128	64	32	16	8	4	2	1
	0	0	1	0	1	1	1	0
	2⁷	2⁶	2⁵	2⁴	2³	2²	2¹	2⁰
	0	0	32	0	8	4	2	0	=	46

A decimal number 93 can be represent in binary form like bellow -

1 Byte ( 8 bits )
Decimal Place	128	64	32	16	8	4	2	1
	0	1	0	1	1	1	0	1
	2⁷	2⁶	2⁵	2⁴	2³	2²	2¹	2⁰
	0	64	0	16	8	4	0	1	=	93

Step 2:

Now perform Bitwise OR Operation on them. The output will be 01111111.

After performing OR operation on both the binary numbers, the bit set occurs at 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th digits respectively in both the binary forms. So these digits are at 2⁶,2⁵,2⁴,2³,2²,2¹,and at 2⁰ positions. Now you may get confusion that how to perform the Bitwise Operation on those numbers. Simply perform the OR operation then you will get the result. See below that how to perform bitwise operation on those two numbers.

Base 2	2⁷	2⁶	2⁵	2⁴	2³	2²	2¹	2⁰
Binary 46	0	1	0	1	1	1	0	1
Binary 93	0	0	1	0	1	1	1	0
Result	0	1	1	1	1	1	1	1

Now from the above manipulation, the bit set occurs at 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th positions respectively.

Step 3:

Now perform addition operation on these 2⁶,2⁵,2⁴,2³,2²,2¹,and at 2⁰ positions. You will get = 127. Now you may be confused that how this answer 127 came. Don't get confused. Simply multiply the binary number quotient with base 2 and then perform addition on those numbers then you will get the answer.

(2⁷ x 0)

(2⁶ x 1)

(2⁵ x 1)

(2⁴ x 1)

(2³ x 1)

(2² x 1)

(2¹ x 1)

(2⁰ x 1)

= 127

Huh...These many steps...its really very frustrating..Don't panic..you don't have to worry about these many steps. Let's see the same in our php code. Its really very simple.

$x=46;

$y=93;

echo $x | $y; // output: 127

Bitwise XOR (^) :

If any one of the bit is set, means any of the binary value is 1 then the output will be 1. If both the bits are either 1 or 0 then output will be 0. Here the bit set means 1 and bit not set means 0. Let's see a small demo on bitwise XOR (^).

Demo:

Let's take two numbers 46 and 93 respectively. Now perform binary conversion for these two numbers.

Step 1:

Converting decimal numbers 46 and 93 into their binary form.

The binary representation of 46 - 00101110

The binary representation of 93 - 01011101

A decimal number 46 can be represent in binary form like bellow -

1 Byte ( 8 bits )
Decimal Place	128	64	32	16	8	4	2	1
	0	0	1	0	1	1	1	0
	2⁷	2⁶	2⁵	2⁴	2³	2²	2¹	2⁰
	0	0	32	0	8	4	2	0	=	46

A decimal number 93 can be represent in binary form like bellow -

1 Byte ( 8 bits )
Decimal Place	128	64	32	16	8	4	2	1
	0	1	0	1	1	1	0	1
	2⁷	2⁶	2⁵	2⁴	2³	2²	2¹	2⁰
	0	64	0	16	8	4	0	1	=	93

Step 2:

Now perform Bitwise XOR Operation on them. The output will be 01110011. After performing XOR operation on both the binary numbers, the bit set occurs at 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th and 8th digits respectively. So the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th and 8th is at 2⁶, 2⁵, 2⁴, 2¹ and 2⁰ positions. See below that how to perform XOR bitwise operation on those two numbers.

Base 2	2⁷	2⁶	2⁵	2⁴	2³	2²	2¹	2⁰
Binary 46	0	1	0	1	1	1	0	1
Binary 93	0	0	1	0	1	1	1	0
Result	0	1	1	1	0	0	1	1

Now from the above manipulation, the bit set occurs at 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th and 8th digits respectively.

Step 3:

Now perform addition operation on these 2⁶, 2⁵, 2⁴, 2¹ and 2⁰. You will get 2⁶ + 2⁵ + 2⁴ + 2¹ + 2⁰ = 115. Now you may be confused that how this answer 115 came. Don't get confused. Simply multiply the binary number quotient with base 2 and then perform addition on those numbers then you will get the answer.

(2⁷ x 0)

(2⁶ x 1)

(2⁵ x 1)

(2⁴ x 1)

(2³ x 0)

(2² x 0)

(2¹ x 1)

(2⁰ x 1)

= 115

Huh...These many steps...its really very frustrating..Don't panic..you don't have to worry about these many steps. Let's see the same in our php code. Its really very simple.

$x=46;

$y=93;

echo $x ^ $y; // output: 115

Bitwise NOT(~) :

The Bitwise NOT operator perform on two values and returns true when set bit of one expression is not set in another expression.

Demo:

Let's take two numbers 46 and 93 respectively. Now perform binary conversion for these two numbers.

Step 1:

Converting decimal numbers 46 and 93 into their binary form.

The binary representation of 46 - 00101110

The binary representation of 93 - 01011101

A decimal number 46 can be represent in binary form like bellow -

1 Byte ( 8 bits )
Decimal Place	128	64	32	16	8	4	2	1
	0	0	1	0	1	1	1	0
	2⁷	2⁶	2⁵	2⁴	2³	2²	2¹	2⁰
	0	0	32	0	8	4	2	0	=	46

A decimal number 93 can be represent in binary form like bellow -

1 Byte ( 8 bits )
Decimal Place	128	64	32	16	8	4	2	1
	0	1	0	1	1	1	0	1
	2⁷	2⁶	2⁵	2⁴	2³	2²	2¹	2⁰
	0	64	0	16	8	4	0	1	=	93

Step 2:

Now perform Bitwise NOT Operation on them. The output will be 00100010. Now from the above manipulation, the bit set occurs at 3rd, and 7th digits respectively.

Step 3:

Now perform addition operation on these, You will get 2⁵ + 2¹ = 34.

Now you may be confused that how this answer 34 came. Don't get confused. Simply multiply the binary number quotient with base 2 and then perform addition on those numbers then you will get the answer.

Base 2	2⁷	2⁶	2⁵	2⁴	2³	2²	2¹	2⁰
Binary 46	0	1	0	1	1	1	0	1
Binary 93	0	0	1	0	1	1	1	0
Result	0	0	1	0	0	0	1	0

(2⁷ x 0)

(2⁶ x 0)

(2⁵ x 1)

(2⁴ x 0)

(2³ x 0)

(2² x 0)

(2¹ x 1)

(2⁰ x 0)

= 34

Huh...These many steps...its really very frustrating..Don't panic..you don't have to worry about these many steps. Let's see the same in our php code. Its really very simple.

$x=46;

$y=93;

echo $x &^ $y; // output: 34

Left and Right Shift:

If a and b are two numbers, BIT SHIFTING shifts a bits b number of steps. each step refers to multiply by two if it is BIT SHIFT LEFT. If it is BIT SHIFT RIGHT, then each step refers to division by two.Demo: $x=8;

$y=3;
echo $x >> $y; // output: 1
echo $x << $y; // output: 64

Understanding Operators in PHP - Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah Muhammed) — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 09:45:00 +0000

Hi all, after long time i am back with my phphunger's PHP Developer Journey tutorials. As i was busy with my some new assignments so couldn't able to post the articles. Now i am back and i will continue writing the articles.

As i was discussing about the Operators in PHP let's continue the PHP operators. If you want to start off with PHP Operators then please follow this Understanding Operators in PHP - Part 1.

String Operators:

PHP provides you 2 kinds of string operators. These 2 string operators are for concatenating 2 or more string operands or string arguments.

The symbol for concatenation operation is the dot symbol(.). Now let's see the 2 string operators.

The first string operator is a simple dot ('.') symbol which returns the concatenation of its right and left arguments.

Example:

$a = "sami";
$b = "ullah";
$c = $a.$b;
echo $c; //now $c contains "samiullah"

The second is the concatenating assignment operator ('.='), which appends the argument on the right side to the argument on the left side.
Example:

$a = "sami";
$a .= "ullah"; // now $a contains "samiullah"

Logical Operators:

Logical operators first convert their operands to boolean values and then perform the respective comparison.

There are four logical operators in PHP, of which three are binary.

The four standard logical operators and(&&), or(||), not(!) and xor(xor) are supported by PHP.

Among the four logical operators there is only unary operator and that is Logical NOT(!).

Note: All logical operators only work with Boolean values. Therefore, PHP will first convert any other value to a Boolean and then perform the operation.

Example: (Logical AND (&&))

$username = 'admin';

$password = 'admin123';

if($username == 'admin' && $password == 'admin123'){

echo 'Login Success...';

}else{

echo 'Login Failed...';

}

Logical AND Demo Explanation:

In the above program i have created 2 variables called $username and $password with some values assigned to them. Here the if condition checks whether both the values are true or not. If both the values are true means the if condition is true then the success message will be printed.

Remember the truth table for the AND Operation. If both the values are TRUE then the output will be TRUE else FALSE. See the below Truth Table for better understanding.

AND Truth Table

Example: (Logical OR (||))

$name = 'sami';

$age = 28;

if($name == 'sami' && ($age == 28 || $age == 30)){

 echo 'Login Success...';

}else{

 echo 'Login Failed...';

}

Logical OR Demo Explanation:

In the above program i have created 2 variables called $name and $age with some values assigned to them. Here the if condition checks whether any one of the value is true or not. If any one of the value is true means the if condition is true then the success message will be printed.

Remember the truth table for the OR Operation. If any one of the value is true then the output will be TRUE else FALSE. See the below Truth Table for better understanding.

OR Truth Table

Example: (Logical NOT (!))

$con = mysql_connect('localhost','root','');

if(!$con){

 die('Could not connect to DB'.mysql_error());

}else{

 echo 'MySQL DB Connection Success';

}

Logical NOT (!) Demo Explanation:

In the above program i have created a variable called $con with some value assigned to it. Don't be scared about the value which i assigned to the variable $con. This thing will be discussed in future lessons. So till then stick to it.

Here the if condition checks if the $con variable is not set properly then shows some error message else shows success message. Remember the truth table for the NOT Operation. If value is TRUE then the output will be FALSE and if value is FALSE then the output will be TRUE. See the below Truth Table for better understanding.

NOT Truth Table

Hope you have some what good idea of some of the php operators. Let's practice and make yours hands dirty. More operators lessons will continue in the next article. Till then happy coding...

How to know the Company is Registered or not in India?

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah Muhammed) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 05:48:00 +0000

Here are the 3 Steps to Choose the Experience of any Consultancy or Company. Let's follow.

Step 1: How to Find Company PAN and TAN Numbers to Provide Form16

Step 1: Open www.incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in

Step 2: Go to Left hand side, Services->Click On Know Your TAN

Step 3: Select the Category of Deductor as Company

Step 4: Select the State as Karnataka( or Maharashtra...Depending on State)

Step 5: Put the tick mark for Name

Step 6: Enter the Company Name( Minimum 4 Characters)(Example: XYZ Tech)

Step 7: Enter the Captcha Code

Step 8: Click on Submit,you get the company details

Step 9: A Valid Company should have PAN

A Valid Company should have TAN
Comapny Address Should Match with Current Address
A Valid Company Status should be Active

Step 10: If above Steps Satisfies then only company can generate Genuine Taxable Form 16
If above steps are not satisfies then generating Form 16 is not possible

Step 2: How to Find the Registered Company

Step 1: Open www.mca.gov.in(Close all small Pop Ups)

Step 2: Click on MCA21(It will Take you to www.mca.gov.in/mca21/)

Step 3: Left hand side you can see quick links.
click on Check Company or LLP Name

Step 4: Enter Your Company Name at *Company or LLP Name Edit Box
(Example: XYZ Infotech)and Click on Search Button

Step 5: If it is Registered Company you will get all details including company registered date
If it is not Registered Company you will get pop up message with "No match found"

Step 3: How to Find Age of the Company or Domain

Step 1: Open www.who.is

Step 2: Enter the Company URL(Example:www.xyztech.com) in the search Bar

Step 3: Click on Who.is Search button and check out for Registred on Date

Understanding Operators in PHP - Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah Muhammed) — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 08:17:00 +0000

Can you imagine a programming or scripting language without operators? Just imagine. No way. You can't code without the operators in any programming or scripting langauge and PHP is not an exception. If variables and values are the heart of a programming language then operators are the soul of programming language.

By knowingly or unknowingly we have already used an operator called Assignment operator(=) in our previous article. You can also check here. So What's the use of Variables, Constants and Datatypes if you can't manipulate them with variety of ways. So the variety of ways is through Operators. PHP supports different types of Operators. Let's see the different operators. Before this lets first see what's an operator?

What is an Operator?

An operator is a symbol like +,-,*,/ etc that takes one or more values and gives another value.

For example:

$a = 1; //= is an operator

$b = 2;

echo $a + $b; // + is an operator

echo $a - $b; // - is an operator

echo $a * $b; // * is an operator

Different types of Operators in PHP

According to php.net, there are different kinds of operators available. See the different kinds of operators available in PHP.

Assignment Operators
Arithmetic Operators
Array Operators
String Operators
Bitwise Operators
Logical Operators
Comparison Operators
Error Control Operators
Execution Operators
Incrementing/Decrementing Operators
Type Operators
Operator Precedence

Assignment Operators:

The basic assignment operator is to assign a value to a variable. As we did perviously in our understanding variables article.

Let's see how to assign a value to a variable.

$a1 = 10;
$a2 = "Hello world";
$a3 = true;

From the above statements you can understand easily that $a1 is a variable holds a value 10, $a2 is a variable holds a value "Hello world", $a3 is a variable holds a value true. Like wise you can assign different values to different variables.

Note : In mathematical jargon, the meaning of "=" is diferent and in programming jargon, the meaning of "=" is different. In PHP programming jargon, "=" is a known as "is assigned to" . To represent "equal to" in PHP programming use instead "=="(two equals signs).

What is the meaning of "variables are assigned by value" or "variables are assigned by reference"? I'm little bit confused.!!

By default, variables are assigned by value. Means, every variable has to be assigned some value. Confused, let's see the example.

$a = $b;

From the above statement, $b is assigned to $a. Means, if you change $b after the assignment has taken place, then $a remains the same. This is not what actually we want. If we change $b then $a should also be changed. So need to invent something for this scenario.

So to overcome this situation, PHP comes with a concept called "reference variables".

$a = &$b;

Reference is denoted with ampersand symbol(&). Now any change to $b will also be reflected in $a.

Example:

$a = 1;
$b = 2;
$a = $b;
echo $a; // output: 2
$b = 3;
echo $a; // output: 2
$a = &$b;
echo $a; // output: 3

Arithmetic Operators:

Remember those school days in which you were supposed to do simple mathematical calculations using arithmetic operators. The same operators now we are going to use. So lets understand different arithematic operators: Namely Addition(+), Subtraction(-), Multiplication(*), Division(/) and Modulus(%). Apart from addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, the modulus operator is bit different from others. Since it returns the remainder of the two operands. Confused, lets see a small example on arithmetic operators.

Example:

$a1 = 10; // variable a1 holds value 10
$a2 = 5; // variable a2 holds value 5
/* Addition Operation with (+) */
echo $a1 + $a2; // output will be 15

/* Subtraction Operation with (-) */
echo $a1 - $a2; // output will be 5

/* Multiplication Operation with (*) */
echo $a1 * $a2; // output will be 50

/* Division Operation with (/) */
echo $a1 / $a2; // output will be 2

/* Modulus Operation with (%) */
echo $a1 % $a2; // output will be 0

Apart from these operators, PHP borrows four special operators from C language. These operators are:

1. Prefix incrementing operator (++$variable_name) : The prefix incrementing operator first increments the value of the variable and then returns its new value.
2. Postfix incrementing operator ($variable_name++): The postfix incrementing operator first returns the values of the varible and then increments its value.
3. Prefix decremeting operator (--$variable_name) : The prefix decrementing operator first decrements the value of the variable and then returns its new value.
4. Postfix decrementing operator ($variable_name--) : The postfix decrement operator first returns the value of the variable and then decrements its value.

Array Operators:

The + operator performs Union operation when working with the arrays. The Union is same as the mathematics union operation. The union operation returns matched key values from both the ends. Like while performing union operation it checks the matched key values only. If matched keys found at both ends then it returns the right handed side values denies the left handed values plus the extra values which are not found in the right handed side array.

Example:

/* Array Operators */
$a = array('1'=>'a','2'=>'b');

$b = array('1'=>'c,'2'=>'d','3'=>'e');

$c = array('1'=>'f','2'=>'g','3'=>'h','4'=>'i');

$d = $a + $b + $c;
echo "Union of \$a and \$b and \$c:";

var_dump($d);

Lets see different array operators:

Union(+) : Union of $var1 and $var2.

Equality(==) : TRUE if $var1 and $var2 have the same key/value pairs.
Example:

Identity(===) : TRUE if $var1 and $var2 have the same key/value pairs in the same order and of the same types.

Inequality(!=) : TRUE if $var1 is not equal to $var2.

Inequality(<>) : TRUE if $var1 is not equal to $var2.

Non-identity(!==) : TRUE if $var1 is not identical to $var2.

Example: (With Equality operator ==)

$one = array("apple","banana");

$two = array(1 => "banana", "0" => "apple");

var_dump($one == $two);

The equality operator compares two variables and returns TRUE if both variables have the same key/value pairs otherwise returns FALSE. From the above code, both variables have same key/value pairs so returns a Boolean value TRUE.

Example: (With Identity operator ===)

$one = array("apple","banana");

$two = array(1 => "banana", "0" => "apple");

var_dump($one === $two);

The identity operator compares two variables and returns TRUE if both variables have the same key/value pairs in the same order and of the same types otherwise returns FALSE. From the above code, both variables have same key/value pairs but not in order so returns a Boolean value FALSE.

Example: (With Inequality operator !=)

$one = array("apple","banana");

$two = array(1 => "banana", "0" => "apple");

var_dump($one != $two);

The inequality operator compares two variables and returns TRUE if one variable is not equal to another variable otherwise returns FALSE. From the above code, variable $one is equal to variable $two so returns a Boolean value FALSE.

Example: (With Inequality operator <>)

$one = array("apple","banana");

$two = array(1 => "banana", "0" => "apple");

var_dump($one <> $two);

$one = array("apple","banana");

$two = array(1 => "banana", "0" => "apple");

var_dump($one !== $two);

The non-identity operator compares two variables and returns TRUE if one variable is not identical to another variable otherwise returns FALSE. From the above code, variable $one is not identical to variable $two so returns a Boolean value TRUE.

Now its your turn to make your hands dirty by practicing these different operators. As the topic is some what lengthy so i will cove more operators in the next article. Till then keep practicing.

Understanding PHP Variables

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah Muhammed) — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 08:42:00 +0000

I hope you got some idea of how the php code will be strucured and how to show the content with php. If you still have doubts or not yet read then first please read it. You can find here php's structure and syntax.

Now let's move on to the next concept called "Variables". Can you imagine a language without variables? Just imagine. No way!! If a programming language doesn't provide data manipulation then that langauge will be in a great darkness. No one can use the language. So as programmer you have to choose different data types with respect to your application requirement.

What is a Variable?

A variable is a representation of a particular value, such as name of a person or price of something etc.
Its your sole responsibilty as a programmer that when dealing with data, its important for you to deal what kind of data you are dealing with. For example, for a Hospital management system if you ask a patient how many times you have been visited the hospital and in reply if he says 1.5 times then its purely illogical. Means from this statement we can say a patient can't visit 1.5 times. It may be 1 time or 2 times etc. Like wise if you ask the patient about his name and in reply if he says 12345 then its also illogical.

Like many other languages support different data types, PHP is not an exception it also supports different data types. Let's see.

How to create a Variable?

• To create a variable first of all look for a good name. Means if your application needs to store some name then name the variable as username. Means give some meaningful name which can be easy for you to remember.
• Put the dollar($) sign in front of the username. Like this $username.
• If you want to store some value or assign something to it then do like this. $username = "phphunger". You can use the assignment operator called = to assign some value to a variable.
That's it you have created the variable. Hurrah...

Rules for creating the variables

Rule 1: All variables must begin with a $ symbol and followed by a good name.
Eg: $username, $price, $gender

Rule 2: A variable can not start with a numeric character.
Eg: $1, $2username, $321price

Rule 3: A varible can contain numbers and underscore character(_).
Eg: $username123, $oneby2, $value_1

Rule 4: A variable can start with underscore character (_).
Eg: $_abc

Rule 5: A variable is case-sensitive.
Eg: $username and $USERNAME are two different variables.

What are the different types of variables?

PHP supports mainly 2 types of varibles. Under this there are so many types available. Let's see.
1. Scalar
2. Array

The scalar type variables holds only one value at a time and arrays holds list of values or another array.

Let's see different scalar variable types.

Numeric Values: Integer and Floating values

Integer Values: Whole numbers (numbers without decimals). Examples are 1, 345, and 9922786. You can also use octal and hexadecimal notation: The octal 0123 is decimal 83 and the hexadecimal 0x12 is decimal 18.

Floating point values: Numbers with decimals. Examples are 1.5, 87.3446, and 0.88889992.

String Values: Single quote, Double quote and Heredoc values

Text or numeric information, specified within double quotes (" ") or single quotes (' ').

The <<< heredoc tag is followed by an arbitrary string of text (which we’ll call the marker) on a single line. The interpreter will parse the contents of the file as a string until the marker is found, on its own, at the beginning of a line, followed by a semicolon. Heredoc strings can come in handy when you want to embed large amounts of text in your scripts—although you can sometimes achieve a similar goal by simply switching in and out of PHP mode.

Eg:
<<My text goes here.
More text can go on another line.
You can even use escape sequences: \t
ENDOFTEXT;

Boolean Values: TRUE or FALSE

Array values:

Arrays are an aggregate value—that is, they represent a collection of other values. In PHP, arrays can contain an arbitrary number of elements of heterogeneous type (including other arrays). Each element is assigned a key—another scalar value used to identify the element within the array. The arrays will be covered later in the future articles. Be patient.

Apart from these variables, there are some more types namely local and global variables, Predefined variables, Constant variables. Let's see these.

Local and Global variables: Local variables are available to that particular function in which they are defined where as gloabal variables are available to the entire script.

Predefined or (superglobals) variables: In all PHP scripts, a set of predefined variables are available to you. You might have seen some of these variables in the output of the phpinfo() function. Some of these predefined variables are called superglobals, meaning that they are always present and available to all of your scripts, without any intervention by you, the programmer.

• $_GET contains any variables provided to a script through the GET method.
• $_POST contains any variables provided to a script through the POST method.
• $_COOKIE contains any variables provided to a script through a cookie.
• $_FILES contains any variables provided to a script through file uploads.
• $_ENV contains any variables provided to a script as part of the server environment.
• $_SESSION contains any variables that are registered in a session.

Constant variables: A constant is an identifier for a value that cannot change during the course of a script. Once a constant has a value, it remains through its execution lifetime. Constants can be user defined, or you can use some of the predefined constants that PHP always has available. Unlike simple variables, constants do not have a dollar sign before their name, and they are usually uppercase to show their difference from a scalar variable.

Eg: define("MYCONSTANT", "Some Constant value");

Let's see a small demo on some of these varibales.

Understanding PHP's structure and its syntax

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah Muhammed) — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 05:32:00 +0000

Let's see the structure of PHP. How to write the PHP code and its style. As we already know PHP is a scripting language like ASP, JSP. The syntax will be same like the others. Likewise every starting tag must have the corresponding ending tag. While writing the code if you do any mistake with starting and ending tags then PHP interpreter will slaps you by showing different errors with your silly mistakes. So be careful.

Let's see different styles of opening and closing tags.

Style 1:
This is the default and standards compliant starting and ending tags. This type of tags are highly encouraged for writing PHP scripting because now a days every web server is configured in such a way. So must adopt these default style of tags.

Style 2:
These are called short tags.

Style 3:
These are called ASP style tags.

Style 4:
These are called HTML tags.

Style 5:

These are called special tags. These special set of tags can be used to output the value of an expression directly to the browser.

Note:

Any code you write that will be between both the starting and ending tags then only the PHP interpreter understands it as a PHP code. Otherwise it will treat it as a normal text and prints as it is. So be wise while choosing the starting and ending tags.

Do you know PHP code can be embedded in HTML? Let's see how to do this.

There is one more way of embedding PHP script in HTML document. This is the actual style of writing the PHP script in the real world programming. Its highly encouraged style of writing the PHP script. Let's see the code.
I hope you enjoyed the different styles of writing PHP scripting. Thanks for reading this. Any comments and suggestions are accepted.

PHP Developer Journey: How PHP code or script is Parsed

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah Muhammed) — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 05:01:00 +0000

Now you have a good knowledge about how to run PHP code on XAMPP. But have you ever thought about how this PHP is showing the content on the browser or how PHP is Parsed. Let's see the scenario.

Here we need to understand 2 terminology.

Client Side and
Server Side

Server Side : The code which is executed or parsed on the server is called a Server Side technology. Examples are PHP, JSP, ASP, Python, Ruby etc.

The server always gives back response whenever cient requests. Means the server's job is to give response only.

Client Side : The code which is executed on the browser is called a Client Side technology. Examples are Javascript, VB Script etc.

The client always requests to server for something to execute. Means the client's job is to request only.

Let's see how PHP is Parsed or how PHP works?

The Web browser requests a file with a .php extension.
The Web server gives response as, "Hey! Someone wants a PHP file, which means this is a file that needs to be parsed," and sends the request on to the PHP parser.
The PHP parser finds the requested file and scans it for PHP code.

When the PHP parser finds PHP code, it executes that code and places the resulting output (if any) into the place in the file formerly occupied by the code.
This new output file is sent back to the Web server.
The Web server sends it along to the Web browser.
The Web browser displays the output.

Let's see how any website works on WWW?

The processing of any website irrespective of the language we used in it, the processing will be same whether its a PHP website or ASP website or JSP website. Let's see the different steps.

When you type a website address for instance http://www.phphunger.com/ and hit enter. What actually happens is that the browser sends a request to the server for the index.php page.
The web server sends the index.php page to the web application server where it is parsed.
If there is any requirement of database connectivity in the index.php, it is connected to the database for the desired purpose and the database returns the result.
Over all at web application server the index.php page is actually parsed to an html document which is send back to the web server.
The web server sends back the requested page to the client (browser) where you can view the requested page.

PHP Developer Journey: How to run PHP code or script with XAMPP

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah Muhammed) — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 07:13:00 +0000

Hi all, i hope you liked my previous post regarding working with XAMPP. If you don't know then please read it. Please find here How to use XAMPP for developing PHP Web Applications.

Now let's see how to run PHP code or PHP script using XAMPP. Let's get started.

Step 1:

Start XAMPP Control Panel Application and start Apache and MySQL services. If you don't know how to Start XAMPP and its services please see here.

Step 2:

To run PHP code or PHP script you need a file. So create a file with a name called "myFirstPHPScript.php".
To create a file you should have any editor like Notepad or Notepad++. I suggest you to download Notepad++ for ease of writing the code. You can download from here Notepad++. Once you have downloaded, install it on to your machine and then write the following code in the Notepad++ editor.

File Name : myFirstPHPScript.php
OMG! I have written my first PHP code. It seems so simple. Yes, Its so simple if you keep on following my articles.

Where to save PHP files and folders?

As you have written your PHP code now you will be confused about the file that where should i save the file. The XAMPP gives you a directory for storing all PHP files or folders in the "htdocs" directory which i already discussed in my previous article.

Local Storage Location of PHP files and folders:

Lets see the location of htdocs directory. See the below picture to find the location of "htdocs" directory.

Note:

Every PHP file or PHP Project must be stored in this htdocs directory.
If its a big project then keep all the PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript files in one folder and place them in the htdocs directory.

Remote Storage Location of PHP files and folders:

Let's see the remote storage location of PHP files and folders. Like htdocs in local system, httpdocs in the remote system where you will store all the PHP files and folders. See the below picture.

Note :

For storing files or folders in the remote location you need to use a tool called FileZilla. I have already discussed about this tool in my other article please visit this for better understanding.
Simply transfer the files from local system to remote system by using the respective credentials like hostname, username, password and port number for the respective website. Here our scope is for local system only. How to work with Remote system will be covered in future articles. Just keep this in mind.

As you have written the code, saved the file and what's left. Now how can i run this code. I am eagerly waiting to see the result of my code. Let's see.

How to run the PHP code or PHP Script?

Open any web browser(Chrome, IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera etc.)
Simply type http://localhost/myFirstPHPScript.php in the address bar. See below picture.

Points to remember about the PHP code file:

Every PHP file you write must start with the <?php and ends with ?>. Its a must rule for every PHP file. If you forgot to write like this then PHP Parser simply treats the file as a text file and displays the content as it is.
Every PHP file must be saved with ".php" extension.
The PHP file name may be a combination of letters or lower case and upper case letters or combination of letters with numbers.
A single PHP file may contain as many as starting and closing tags. Like see below code.

Now you know how to run any kind of PHP script or code or project. But how its working. How its showing the content on the web browser. If you want to know all these things then wait till my next article publishes. Till then try to do experiments with the code.

The bottom line for you is "If you want to become a good developer then first start making mistakes with your code then see the results then automatically you will become a good developer."

PHP Developer Journey: How to use XAMPP for developing PHP Web Applications

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah Muhammed) — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 05:45:00 +0000

Hi all, i am back with my PHP Developer's Journey - Tutorial for the next session. I hope you alread read the XAMPP installation on Windows. If you don't know how to install XAMPP then please refer this article.

Now let's get started with our next session about How to run XAMPP and How to work with XAMPP to run PHP Web Applications? Let's move on.

Where XAMPP control panel stays?

See the below picture. Navigate to the Start button then look for "XAMPP For Windows".

By clicking on the XAMPP Control Panel, it will take to the XAMPP Control Panel.

Note: By default, XAMPP Control Panel sits at the Desktop. You can open it from there also.

How XAMPP Control Panel looks like?

See the below picture if you want to see how XAMPP Control Panel looks like.

The XAMPP Control Panel Application shows you different modules like Apache Web Server, MySQL Database Server, FileZilla Server, Mercury Mail Server etc..etc.

Let's See What is the functionality of different modules present in XAMPP Control Panel Application?

Apache :

Apache is the world's largest Open Source Web Server for running PHP applications.
Since PHP is a Server Side Scripting Language, so to work with PHP we should have installed one web server in our computer and that server's name is Apache.
Whenever we want to work with PHP we should have installed a web server. If we don't have a web server then we can't run PHP applications.

MySQL :

MySQL is the world's largest Open Source Database Server.
It's purpose is to store and retrieve the information.

Note : To work with MySQL you must be familiar with SQL (Structure Query Language). Don't get panic basics will be covered in future tutorials.

FileZilla :

FileZilla is the world's largest Open Source FTP (File Transfer Protocol).
It's purpose is to transfer files from localhost (Local System) to remote host (Remote System).

Mercury :

The Mercury is a Mail Server - a program that sends and receives mail on behalf of a group of users on a machine or local area network.
Mail from the outside world is received by Mercury and placed in the addressee's mailbox, where the user can access it at any later point.
Messages sent by local users to the outside world are passed to Mercury, which then takes whatever steps are necessary to deliver them, removing the burden from the user's workstation and allowing him to continue with other work.

Note :

To run all these modules, simply click Start button besides it.

Other options in XAMPP Control Panel Application:

Shell :

It opens a Command Shell (DOS Prompt) at the root of your XAMPP installation with a correctly set environment for working with a Command Line Interface (including a temporary Path).
With the newer Control Panel, the xampp_shell.bat will be created the first time you open the XAMPP Shell.
The file (xampp_Shell.bat) that runs the Command Shell will be in the root of XAMPP, so if you want - you can open it with an editor and see what it does.

Setup :

It opens up a set up screen which you already know about this file when you install XAMPP you would have seen it i guess. It simply shows different options. Please read the different options and do what ever you want to do. See below screen for better understanding.

Port-Check :

This port-check option takes you to the window which shows different services of installed XAMPP modules like Apache, MySQL, FileZilla, Mercury, Tomcat with their assigned port numbers.
Different modules have different port numbers assigned to them.

Note :

Default port number for Apache HTTP Service is 80
Default port number for MySQL service is 3306
Default port number for FileZilla FTP service is 21
Default port number for Mercury service is 25
Default port number for Tomcat is 8080

Explore :

Explore option will take you to the actual location of XAMPP installation directory. i.e C:\ directory which i have installed it on C:\ in my previous demo.
This is the directory which contains all the files and folders of XAMPP Control Panel. Means different services like Apache, MySQL, PHP, phpMyAdmin, etc. Please see all but never ever delete any of them. If you do so then you might face problems with installed modules. So be careful.
It consists of the main folder called "htdocs" which is the root directory where every PHP application or PHP file or PHP project will be stored.

SCM:

This will show different windows installed services. As we already know about this services.ini file. See below picture.

There are some other options like "Refresh", "Help" and "Exit" available. Use Exit for closing the XAMPP Control Panel Application.

Starting and Running Apache, MySQL Services :

Points to remember:

Before going to run your PHP application or PHP file or PHP project folder, you should start the Apache Service simply by clicking the Start button in the XAMPP Control Panel Application. See the above picture.
If the PHP file is having a database interaction then MySQL service should be started. Otherwise SQL queries will not be executed. So choose the options wisely. But by default start both Apache and MySQL services.
To run any PHP related application the file must be stored in "htdocs" folder. This is the root of the Apache web server.
Here you might get one doubt regarding MySQL, that How to access MySQL? For that, XAMPP is blessed with a tool for running SQL queries. The tool is "phpMyAdmin".
The phpMyAdmin gives you all the options for running SQL queries. Like how to create a table, how to insert the data in the table, how to delete the data from the table etc. You will come to know about this in MySQL tutorial.
In the rest of your PHP programming world you will always use one word called "localhost". So what is a localhost?
Localhost is the default name for describing the local computer address. Its IP address is 127.0.0.1.

That's all for now. In the next session we will see how to run PHP applications using localhost. What's the role of localhost in running PHP applications etc etc...

PHP Developer Journey: XAMPP installation on Windows 7 in easy steps

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah Muhammed) — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 06:13:00 +0000

Hello all, let's start our PHP developer journey now. I hope you already read my post regarding how to become a PHP Developer? If you are still unaware of it then please go through it. It's here.

To become a good PHP developer you must first make your hands dirty by accessing this tool and installing it on to your machine. The tool's name is XAMPP. Its Free tool which is available here. I suggest you to download an "Installer" version. Once the downloading completes, what you have to do is, just wait for some time. We will have a small introduction on XAMPP.

So, what is XAMPP? What is its usage?

1. XAMPP is the acronym for X-Cross Platform(Windows,Linux,Solaris,Mac) + A-Apache + M-MySQL + P-PHP + P-Perl. See the above picture for clear details.

2. Its open source and free. Developed and maintained by a community called "Apache Friends".

3. With this tool any web developer or designer can develop the webiste without accessing the internet on their local machine.

Installation and Running of XAMPP

Step 1:

As every windows user knows how to install a .exe file. But anyhow its my responsibilty to show you the steps for installing XAMPP on windows machine. Double click on the downloaded version of XAMPP. The file looks like xampp-win32-1.7.3.exe for me. May be the version changed for you when you started downloading. Don't worry. Whatever the version the installation steps are same for all. Now see the below screen how it looks like.

Note:

From the above picture, you can see the XAMPP installation stores by default in the C:/ directory. But its your wish wherever you want to store you can store it, but by default its in C:/ directory. Use the default directory.

Step 2:

Start you XAMPP installation by clicking on the "install" button. The installation goes on. See the below screen.

Step 3:

Once the above screen disappears you will see a Black Screen like Command Prompt screen in which you will be asked to do some configurations. Don't get scared the steps are simple. See the below screen. The black screen will ask you to "Add shortcuts of XAMPP on desktop or not". If you want to add it onto the desktop then type 'y' or else 'n' and press "Enter".

Step 4:

In this step it will prompt you to configure the XAMPP paths correctly. Here you will have 2 options 'y' for XAMPP path configuration correctly and 'x' to exit the setup. So type 'y' for configuring the XAMPP path correctly and press "Enter". See below screen.

Step 5:

In this step, it will prompt you to "make portable XAMPP without drive letters". Actually i don't understand the difference between selecting both the options. So blindly i typed 'n'. I suggest you to enter 'n' only and press "Enter". See below screen.

Step 6:

In this step, it will show you the different option. Simply press "Enter". See below screen.

Step 7:

In this step, by default it will configure the time zone settings and location settings based on your geographic location in the files called 'php.ini' and 'my.ini'. So simply press "Enter". See below screen.

Step 8:

In this step, it will prompt you to "start XAMPP" or do some modifications of existing made configurations if you want. But its not necessary. Simply type 'x' to complete the installation and press "Enter". See below screen.

That's all for now. I hope you understand how to install XAMPP. If you have any queries or find any difficulties in installing XAMPP on to your machine then don't worry i have a comments section you post your comments and queries there. In the next article, we will see how to use XAMPP tool for developing PHP Web Applications and PHP projects. Happy coding.

How to become a good PHP Web Developer?

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah Muhammed) — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 10:48:00 +0000

Hello every one, i hope you already read my post about "The advantages of becoming a PHP Developer", if not then go and read it. You can find here. Now the time has come to become a PHP Developer. Lets see how to become a PHP Developer or a PHP Ninja?

Becoming a PHP Ninja is not a tedious task if you follow the strategy with small plans. Someone said "Rome is not built in a single day". So keep this in mind that Rome is not built in a single day. So PHP is also not built in a single day. It took years to built then the fruitful results came into existence. Likewise you can't learn all the stuff in a single day. It will take some time to master all the things. As we already know a famous quote "Slow and steady wins the race". So start you PHP journey with slow and steady steps. One fine day you will be called as a PHP Ninja. Now lets start our PHP journey.

What Benjamin Franklin said is: "Being ignorant is not so much a shame as being unwilling to learn to do things the right way."

Today in this competitive world everyone is busy with their busy schedules. Everyone is hardly finding the time to go and learn something in the market. Even if they had the zeal to learn they can't find enough time to learn the technology like PHP. PHP is such a technology which makes you a billionaire if you master it properly. But the problem with this is why should i learn when i can hire some skilled PHP guy who makes money for me and make my happy living. This is for those people who thinks like this. If you follow these tips of mine then definitely you will become a PHP Ninja. Before start learning PHP we must need some nuts and bolts. So see the nuts and bolts below. Lets start it.

What are the requirements to become a PHP Web Developer or PHP Ninja?

To become a PHP Developer one must have enough patience. If you lack patience then i suggest you to practice some patience tips.
To be able to solve simple mathematical calculations like which we did in our schooling days.(Algebra, etc). For example, if a=2, b=3 then what is a+b? If you can solve this then its enough.
To be able to read the existing code. CaN yOu rEaD tHiS?
HTML
CSS
JavaScript
PHP
SQL (Go for any RDBMS, but i personally suggest you to opt for MySQL)
Any Web Server preferably Apache
Any Operating System preferably Windows or else Linux
Any text editor for writing the code. Like Notepad++, Dreamweaver, Editplus, Eclipse, etc..
Any web browser like Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari, etc.
Any file sharing or file transfer tool like FTP, CuteFTP, FileZilla, etc.
OMG. I forgot to mention the most important tool which is a must for PHP Developer. Yes, its none other than XAMPP or WAMP or MAMP. You will come to know about these in the upcoming articles. For now keep these things with you.
Of all these things, as a good developer if one forgets ctrl+c(Copy) and ctrl+v(Paste) then he/she will not be treated as good developer. So keep these two shortcuts because in the rest of your programming world you will be addicted to these two things.LOL.

Don't get scared by seeing the above list. Because its only the list which is made by a human being. Have you heard the fact about the history of Calgary Tower. "The Calgary Tower stands at 190.8 meters. The total weight of the tower is 10,884 tons, of which 6,349 tons is below ground (approximately 60%). This shows that some of the greatest buildings have the strongest foundations. Just like a great building stands on a strong foundation, so does success. And the foundation of success is attitude." And if you have a right attitude to learn PHP then ultimately success will be yours.

Finally a small motivation tip for you. "Start by doing what is necessary then what is possible..and suddenly you are doing the impossible..Bravo dude.."

Advantages of becoming a PHP Web Developer

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah Muhammed) — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 05:21:00 +0000

Let me proudly popularize my favorite technology PHP to you. Since PHP's birth i.e, 1994, it got tremendous popularity in internet world. Almost millions of the websites are using PHP as a major technology. In this article i am not going to tell you PHP's history. Since you will find more about the history of PHP in many websites in the internet. So let me tell you the advantages of becoming PHP Developer and PHP.

Do you know how many domains are registered till July 2012?

According to whois.sc and dailychanges.com, there are around 140 million unique domians registered till july 2012. From these 140 million domains, surprisingly 77% of the domains use PHP as the technology and according to netcraft, 64% of domains are installed on Apache web server. Isn't it amazing?

Market share of PHP usage

Market share of web server usage

Let us see some major giants who uses PHP.

The internet giants who uses PHP

The internet giants like Facebook, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Flickr, Photobucket, Digg, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Friendster and many more uses PHP.

If i keep on saying about PHP users there is a list which is non-ending. So let me stop this and continue with my actual topic.

Lets see the advantages of becoming a PHP Developer.

Since PHP is open source. Open source means free. No need to buy any licence or anything else. Its available free in the market. Means anyone can use without any hesitation. Simply anyone can start their own business by becoming a PHP Web Developer.
If you feel bored going to office everyday and work under peer pressure then you should become a PHP Developer.
If you know PHP, you can start your own websites and earn money.
Most people under estimated PHP as a small technology, but see the market share of PHP, its dominating the internet world. Almost all companies are using PHP.
By becoming a PHP Developer anyone can develop any kind of website like from a small static website to big dynamic websites like Facebook, youtube etc.

php developer advantages

The major thing is if you don't like to work under any company then PHP is best option for you. Why because PHP is such a technology which gives you employment from home itself. Means you can start working from your home itself. Of course, to start your own business somehow you should have worked under someone. Its must if you want to become a good PHP Developer.
The most funniest part of PHP is, every PHP program starts with a dollar($) symbol which means it indirectly gives you a sign that how to earn money by becoming a PHP Developer. LOL...just kidding. of course, definitely you can earn money in dollars with PHP.

Lets see the advantages of PHP:

Open Source: PHP is an open source technology, which means its source code, development environment etc. are freely available. Also, PHP community is continually developing new functionalities of this language thus improving its code package, base libraries and various classes.
Simple & Easy: PHP developed websites or applications have much simple code to write or understand. The level of complexity of a php code is much lesser than its competing technologies for developing web applications or dynamic sites.
Platform Independent: Applications developed in PHP are platform independent and can be executed on a variety of platforms and web servers. Websites developed using PHP can be hosted on nearly all the web-servers available in the market. The only constraint which can be considered is the version incompatibility, which is also not a major issue because most of the time servers are back-compatible with the language versions.
Enhanced graphics: PHP can be used to generate images dynamically or at run-time. Using the image functionalities, more number of image formats could be supported in a website or web application.

advantages of php

Cheaper: PHP applications are much cheaper than other technologies for developing dynamic sites or applications due to the proprietary or license issues. PHP is freely available which helps to cut the cost of development to a considerable extent.
More Secured: Provides a more secured website due to its high quality encryption scheme. Applications safety is another advantage in the same category so that the application code cannot be tampered.
Fast: PHP applications provide a fast browsing experience due to the reason that all the processing is performed at the server side. Therefore, despite of the system configuration of the user, a website or an application developed in PHP loads equally.
Cost Effective: PHP Development is a better option for organizations having limited budget. Free to download, PHP development makes sure that it can meet needs of all types of customers.
User Friendly: Designed in a user friendly manner, PHP gives more flexibility than C, C++ and ASP and overall helps in increasing traffic to the site.
Simple Navigation: Adding to the list, PHP has simple navigation that is easily understood and learnt. Users don't have to face any sort of broken or complicated links. This ensures that PHP provides a straightforward solution and efficient page loading.
Compatibility: The most common problem faced with other programming languages is that they are compatible with all servers. But thanks to PHP application which is versatile and allows you to enjoy the support and is completely friendly even with Linux.
Huge Database: PHP development language has the capability of handling a huge database which provides a better management. Almost it works with all databases.
Integration: PHP integrates well with HTML which means that PHP code can be integrated with HTML code.
Why PHP: This programming language serves as a complete and cost effective solution. Appreciated both by designers and developers PHP is the language that matches suits with the need and convenience.
Web hosting: There are so many hosting companies for hosting PHP websites with less cost and easy maintenance.
Operating System support: PHP supports multiple platforms like Windows, Linux, Unix, Solaris, Mac, Free BSD etc.
Community Support: Since so many people are using PHP, if you struck at some place and can't find the solution then don't worry. There are so many developers out there to support you.
Frameworks: As a PHP Developer, you can use so many available frameworks without re-inventing the wheel. No need to develop the code from scratch. Use the existing frameworks or code base.
OOP Support: Biggies like Java, .Net, PHP also supports object orientation.

These are some of the advantages of PHP, if i keep on telling about PHP then the list will grow without any end. So i will stop here and i will let you learn PHP in my future articles. You will come to know the advantages of PHP when you learn it. From these things your mind rises a question regarding How to become a good PHP Developer and how to learn PHP? If you are looking for it then wait till my next article comes into existence.

Geo Targeting : How to show different content for different geographic locations using PHP

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah Muhammed) — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 07:19:00 +0000

Hi all, today i will show you how to redirect visitors to their country based on their geographic location. Confused? OK let me clear you. For example if a visitor is visiting the site from USA then the content for that targeted location will be displayed to that visitor like if a visitor is from Canada the targeted content for Canada will be displayed to them and so on. Wow!! it sounds interesting. Isn't it? Yes of course. This feature is very much important in advertising a content for a specific geographic location. So this is the technology we call it as Geo targeting.

So lets see what is Geo targeting?

Geo targeting is a technology which displays website content for a specified targeted location. For example the visitors who are visiting the website from their location say India the respective content for India will be displayed to the Indian visitors. Likewise, for different countries users, different content will be shown to them. This technology is best for online advertising for small to large enterprises to earn more revenue. The best example for Geo targeting is Google's DFP(Double Click for Publishers).

So where this Geo targeting is going to happen?

Generally Geo Targeting happens at the server side, means whenever a visitor is requesting the website content from their browser it sends the request to the server and the server checks the visitors ip address with the stored ip addresses in the database server. If a specific match is found for a specific country then the content targeted for that country will be shown to the visitor.

So why this Geo Targeting is important for me?

If you want to publish the ad to the targeted location then i suggest you to use this technology.

Now lets get our hands dirty..

The tools to be used for Geo targeting:

1. Any server side programming language. In this case i am going to use PHP.
2. MySQL IP Address Database. This database contains at around 55000 records. So the retrival of results will be some what slower for high traffic website. So do notice this change.

How to get the IP Addresses Database or Where can i find the IP Addresses Database?

You can find here ipaddresslocation.org

Here you can find in the form of a text file between ip ranges. For different countries different ranges will be given. We need to convert it to one table then only we can use this database. To use this database you need to convert it text to csv to sql format. So its a time taking process. But every month they will update their database of IP addresses. Every month we need to update our database also.

You can find here maxmind.com

Maxmind provides free IP address database in the csv format. Almost it provides 95% accurate results of IP addresses. But to use this database you have to covert it to sql format then import it to the database server.

But here i am providing php as well as IP address database for free. You can download the entire project.

How i stored the different IP Addresses in the database?

Generally all the countries will have different IP addresses, in this tutorial i am converting the IP Address into IP Number. Here IP Number is nothing but an IP Address in the 32 bit decimal notation. IP address (IPv4 / IPv6) is divided into 4 sub-blocks. Each sub-block has a different weight number each powered by 256. IP number is being used in the database because it is efficient to search between a range of number in database. I will show you how to convert an ip address into ip number.

Let us assume an ip number 122.175.35.118

122 x 2563 + 175 x 2562 + 35 x 2561 + 118 x 2560 = 2058298230 (IP Number)

Manually if you want to store the ip numbers in the database then follow the above procedure. Other wise go for any of the available ip address databases. Once this process is over upload the database in the database server.

Note : I have a ip address database with 2 columns only namely ip number and country code.

Now lets see the code:

Download full code here....

Inbound and outbound links checker using php

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah Muhammed) — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 07:05:00 +0000

Dear friends, today i am back with one more concept in php which is very useful for every web developer/web master/website administrator. My question to you is "have you ever thought about back links which are more useful for any successful website or a blog?" For any successful online business back links are very much crucial. Lets check how many back links your site or blog is having. Lets see how to find the total number of inbound and outbound links.

Why should we check inbound and outbound links?

We must check inbound and outbound links in our site or blog as a blogger/administrator/web master. Because we cannot remember all the incoming urls from where the visitors are visiting my site or blog and putting comments. So this code will look for every web page from where the out going links are coming. This strategy will be much useful for link building.
For example the site is injected with some malicious code with JavaScript code then you can't immediately figure out from where i am getting this link. In such cases also its useful.

How to use this script?

Anyone can freely use this script without any hesitation. Anyone use this script on their dedicated host or a shared host or in their localhost (local system).

Lets see the code:

Design a small form using HTML Code:

Add some CSS code for better look and feel:

Now the real dragon enters, PHP Code:

That's it. Now its your turn to get your hands dirty. Happy coding...

JavaScript keypress, keydown and keyup events with working example

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah Muhammed) — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 10:21:00 +0000

Hi techies, this time i am back with a real live example of JavaScript which deals with key events. Now let's have a look at this working example.

Since JavaScript allows web developers/designers to create dynamic web pages. Let's apply the dynamic things to web page by using JavaScript events. First let us understand what is an event? Event is an action which can be detected by the JavaScript. So every element on a web page has certain events like mouse has onclick event like wise different elements have different events. Lets understand different key events and their differences.

In JavaScript, pressing a key triggers events which can be captured and handled. Three events are triggered when a key is pressed and released:

keydown
keypress
keyup

The keydown and keypress event occurs when the key is pressed or when the user is pressing a key or holding down the key, followed immediately by the keyup event which is generated when the key is released. Means pressing a key on the keyboard is termed as keydown and keypress event in terms of JavaScript terminology and once the keypress/keydown event occured the immediate next event which is going to occur is keyup event.

Here you may got one doubt regarding keydown and keypress events. Since both the events captures the same result then what's the difference between the keypress and keydown events? Yes, its right. Since both are giving same result then what's the use of two events instead of one. For your question see below note:

Note:

The onkeypress event works for all the keys except ALT, CTRL, SHIFT, ESC in all browsers where as onkeydown event works for all keys. Means onkeydown event captures all the keys.

Still confused with these JavaScript key events, let's look at this below working example to clear your doubt clouds from your mind.

In this example i am taking 3 buttons and a textbox. The 3 buttons are to show the live keypress, keydown and keyup events whereas the textbox is to capture the keys from the keyboard and show it on to these three buttons.

Example:

Note : Place the javascript code in the tag.

From the above example, observe the change while pressing different key combinations. For example, observe a clear change for keypress event by pressing ALT, CTRL, SHIFT, ESC. When you do this you don't see any count increment on the keypress button where as you could see other two buttons count change.

Ok techies, That's all for now.

Learning JOINs in MySQL database with examples

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah Muhammed) — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 10:41:00 +0000

Since these JOINs are very complicated concept in MySQL database. At least, for a beginner these are very hard to understand. At least, for me when i was a beginner i was so much confused in understanding the JOINs concept. Now i don't want the beginner to face the same problem what i have faced during my initial days of development. Lets start with some real time examples. Are you ready?

What is a JOIN?

An SQL JOIN clause is used to query data from two or more tables from a MySQL database or in other words by using JOINs you can join one or more tables.

How many types of JOIN in MySQL?

Wikipedia says: According to ANSI standard there are 4 types of JOIN. 1.INNER 2.OUTER 3.LEFT 4.RIGHT As a special case, there is one more JOIN called SELF-JOIN which means a table can JOIN to itself is a SELF-JOIN. Lets see the two tables which i am going to use in my example. The 2 tables namely people and property from a database called phphunger.

Step 1:

First create 2 tables (people and property) and insert the dump data with the following code.

Step 2:

Applying different JOINs for the created tables.

CASE 1:

Applying Regular JOIN for the 2 tables. (Regular JOIN means INNER JOIN or JOIN). Before applying JOINs to the tables lets first see what's the functionality of JOIN.

Functionality of a JOIN (INNER JOIN or Regular JOIN):

If you perform a JOIN on the 2 tables then you will get all the matched records and the unmatched records will not be displayed.

Lets see the output after applying JOIN

Observation : From the above output you can judge that i have filtered the records based on their id's. So from this filtering i have obtained the matched records from both the tables. Unmatched records are not displayed here.

CASE 2:

Applying LEFT JOIN for both the tables. Before applying LEFT JOIN to the tables lets first see what's the functionality of LEFT JOIN.

Functionality of a LEFT JOIN:

If you perform a LEFT JOIN on the 2 tables then you will get all the matched records as well as you will get an extra record for each unmatched record from the left table of the JOIN. Means from my example each column name "name" gets a mention. Lets see the output.

CASE 3:

Applying RIGHT JOIN for both the tables. Before applying RIGHT JOIN to the tables lets first see what's the functionality of RIGHT JOIN.

Functionality of a RIGHT JOIN:

If you perform a RIGHT JOIN on the 2 tables then you will get all the matched records as well as you will get an extra record for each unmatched record from the right table of the JOIN. It means from my example from a the table called property you will get each column name "website" gets a mention.

Lets see the output.

CASE 4:

Applying RIGHT OUTER JOIN for both the tables. Before applying RIGHT OUTER JOIN to the tables lets first see what's the functionality of RIGHT OUTER JOIN. Functionality of RIGHT OUTER JOIN:

RIGHT OUTER JOIN is same as RIGHT JOIN. Adding OUTER after the clause RIGHT to yield the result. Lets see the example.

CASE 5:

Applying LEFT OUTER JOIN for both the tables. Before applying LEFT OUTER JOIN to the tables lets first see what's the functionality of LEFT OUTER JOIN.

Functionality of LEFT OUTER JOIN:

LEFT OUTER JOIN is same as LEFT JOIN. Adding OUTER after the clause LEFT to yield the result.

Lets see the example.

As already i mentioned above that the concept of JOINs is difficult to understand. If you find any difficulty or If you have questions post a comment. Till then bye bye..

References : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Join_(SQL)

How to display MySQL table structure in HTML form using PHP

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah ...) — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 07:31:00 +0000

Hi hungers oops!! programming hungers, today i am posting an interesting article which mainly focuses on "How to display MySQL table structure in HTML using PHP". This is interesting article??, stop it man.This task can be done by anyone. (anyone in the sense any PHP Developer). Yes definetely anyone can do it. Anyone? Ok..If you can concentrate on my question you will be amazed. After seeing the question anyone can say 'simply fetch the mysql table records and display onto the HTML form'. Isn't it? My answer is "It's not." You have mistaken in understanding the client requirement.

Lets see my requirement: I dont want to display my table records in HTML form, rather i want to display MySQL database's table structure like "What's table name, How many columns are ther in the table, What are the datatypes used in the table like wise." If you are confused see the picture below. A famous chinese proverb "A picture is worth a million words". Lets see the million words picture. I am just kidding. Lets see the picture.

MySQL table structure in HTML

Now i hope you understand what i am going to show you. Here you may get one doubt. If i want to see the table structure then i can go to phpMyAdmin and from there i can see the structure of any table by selecting the appropriate database's table then whats the need of this code. Yes definetely, you can see, but provided you can only see one table structure at one time. You can't see all tables at one time. This is the application which shows you all the tables structures.

In this demo i will show you a single table structure from the database. Why i will show you single table structure is because i have only one table in my database. You can try out for a big database which is having multiple tables using this code. You can see multiple tables under single database using the same code. Now lets see the code.

Step 1:
First create a database called "phphunger" in the phpmyadmin. After this create a table called "websites" and paste the following code in your "phphunger" database.

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `websites` (

`id` smallint(4) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,

`name` varchar(255) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',

`visits` decimal(10,0) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',

`about` text NOT NULL,

`type` varchar(255) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',

PRIMARY KEY (`id`),

KEY `name` (`name`,`id`)

) ENGINE=MyISAM  DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

Step 2:
Design some CSS Code and place this in <head> section of your php form. See below for CSS Code.

<style type="text/css">

{ border-right:1px solid #ccc; border-bottom:1px solid #ccc; }

{ background:#afb0bd; padding:5px; border-left:1px solid #ccc; border-top:1px solid #ccc; }

{ padding:5px; border-left:1px solid #ccc; border-top:1px solid #ccc; }

</style>

Step 3:
Now the real hero of our application came. Yes the business logic. Copy the below code and paste it onto your PHP form. Now you are done with your task. Now see the result. Hurrah i got it...

<?php

/* Connect to the db */

$connection = mysql_connect('localhost','root','');

mysql_select_db('phphunger',$connection);

/* Show tables */

$result = mysql_query('SHOW TABLES',$connection) or die('Cannot show tables');

/* Loop through tables */

while($tableName = mysql_fetch_row($result)) {

$table = $tableName[0];

echo '<h2>',$table,'</h2>';

$result2 = mysql_query('SHOW COLUMNS FROM '.$table) or die('Cannot show columns from '.$table);

if(mysql_num_rows($result2)) {

echo '<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="db-table">';

echo '<tr><th>Field</th><th>Type</th><th>Null</th><th>Key</th><th>Default<th>Extra</th></tr>';

while($row2 = mysql_fetch_row($result2)) {

echo '<tr>';

foreach($row2 as $key=>$value) {

echo '<td>',$value,'</td>';

}

echo '</tr>';

}

echo '</table><br />';

}

}

?>

Output:

Structure of mysql table

Now you are done with the task. Now lets see how it fetches and displays in a HTML tabular format.

1. Fetch all of the tables present in the database called "phphunger" using mysql_query() function.
2. Once all the tables have been fetched, then the next step is to loop through the array of tables we receive.
3. For each table we receive show the same received data in the tabular format in HTML form with the column information. That's it. Over.

Now its your turn to say me hi,hello,bye kind of stuff in this comments section. If you really like this article please say thanks. If you don't like this article then curse me. Oops..hey!!! stop stop..please don't curse me. You can give some positive feedback about how to improvise next time. Till then bye...

How to choose optimal data types for MySQL database design

noreply@blogger.com (Samiullah ...) — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 06:57:00 +0000

The MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS) supports a wide range of data types. The data type that you chose for your table columns is important because it determines how MySQL will store your data. It’s possible that any one of multiple data types could be used to store a piece of data, but which one is the best or optimal data type to use? Lets see first what is a Datatype?

What is a Data Type?

In programming, classification of a particular type of information. It is easy for humans to distinguish between different types of data. We can usually tell by seeing whether a number is a percentage, a time, or an amount of money. We do this through special symbols %, :, and $ that indicate the data's type. Similarly, a computer uses special internal codes to keep track of the different types of data it processes.

Most programming languages require the programmer to declare the data type of every data object, and most database systems require the user to specify the type of each data field. The available data types vary from one programming language to another, and from one database application to another, but the following usually exist in one form or another: Integer, Floating-Point and Character(text).

What’s Optimal?

I would define optimal as taking the least amount of storage space and/or being the fastest in terms of search or data retrieval. The MySQL manual says:

“For optimum storage, you should try to use the most precise type in all cases. For example, if an integer column is used for values in the range from 1 to 99999, MEDIUMINT UNSIGNED is the best type. Of the types that represent all the required values, this type uses the least amount of storage.”

MySQL Data Types

MySQL supports a number of data types in several categories: numeric types, date and time types, and string (character) types. Data types have been created to serve a specific purpose. Some are optimal for storing small amounts of text, others large amounts of text, others dates, others numbers etc… When creating your tables it is best practice to understand what type of data each column will be storing and choose the appropriate data type. This is a large and complex area so I aim to give a brief overview with some useful examples and tips.

Example of Incorrect Data Type Usage

The TEXT data type is designed to store string types and has a maximum length of 65,535 bytes (roughly equivalent to the same number of characters). Therefore it’s intended for storing relatively large strings. The VARCHAR data type stores variable-length strings with a range of 0 to 255 before (MySQL 5.0.3). Therefore this is intended for storing relatively small strings. The storage required for TEXT columns is the length of the data plus 2 bytes, whereas the VARCHAR columns require the length of the data plus one byte. It’s not much of a saving but when you have a table with millions of records every little helps!

When storing a number you could theoretically use TEXT or VARCHAR data types and you’d still be able to add, edit, delete and search your data as you would expect. However, it’s much better to store the number in one of MySQL’s numeric data types. Storing a number using the optimal data type means that it uses less storage space and your table can be searched faster.

Examples and Best Practices
Numbers

Numbers should usually be stored using one of MySQL’s numeric data types. The numeric data types that you’ll probably use most often are TINYINT, SMALLINT, MEDIUMINT, INT and DECIMAL.

The first four numeric data types are used to store integers (whole numbers including negative numbers) with varying minimum and maximum values. For example, TINYINT columns can store integers ranging from -128 to 127 and INT can store integers ranging from -2147483648 to 2147483647. The storage requirement for TINYINT columns is 1 byte and for INT columns it is 4 bytes. (SMALLINT and MEDIUMINT cover the numbers in between these values.) Therefore if you know that a column will hold integers ranging from 1 to 99 you should use the TINYINT data type, as it requires less storage.

Unsign Your Integers!

You can extend the numeric range of these numeric data types by giving them the UNSIGNED attribute. This means that negative values are not permitted and allows TINYINT columns to store integers ranging from 0 to 255 and INT columns to store integers ranging from 0 to 4294967295. This means that you can use a data type with a smaller storage requirement for a larger number of negative values are not needed.

Storing Money in MySQL

Or more accurately, storing monetary values! Whilst you could, ofcourse, store monetary values as strings (e.g. VARCHAR), the optimal data type is DECIMAL. This numeric data type is used to store exact numeric data values (i.e. numbers with a decimal point). The MySQL manual explains that DECIMAL is “used to store values for which it is important to preserve exact precision, for example with monetary data“.

When declaring a DECIMAL column the precision and scale are specified, for example DECIMAL(5,2). MySQL explains that:

“In this example, 5 is the precision and 2 is the scale. The precision represents the number of significant digits that are stored for values, and the scale represents the number of digits that can be stored following the decimal point. If the scale is 0, DECIMAL and NUMERIC values contain no decimal point or fractional part.“

Strings

Strings (characters, text etc…) can also be stored using a number of different data types. The main types that you’ll come across are CHAR, VARCHAR and TEXT. As we saw previously, the TEXT data type is used to store large strings (65,535 bytes) so you’d usually use this to store larger amounts of text.

So what about storing short strings? Should you use CHAR or VARCHAR? Both data types can hold between 0 and 255 bytes (VARCHAR can hold up to 65,535 bytes as of MySQL 5.0.3) so how to you choose? Each data type has its advantages and disadvantages.

CHAR

The length of a CHAR column is fixed to the length that you declare when you create the table, and stored values are right-padded with spaces to the specified length. So if you define a column as CHAR(255) even if you only insert a few characters the storage requirement will be 255 bytes. However, CHAR columns also have a speed advantage. Because they are fixed-length, MySQL can search CHAR columns faster than variable-length columns. However, a caveat is that the whole table must be fixed-length in order to benefit from the increased performance. If you have any other VARCHAR or TEXT columns in the table then the rows become variable-length and there is no speed increase.

VARCHAR

Values in VARCHAR columns are variable-length strings. In contrast to CHAR, VARCHAR values are stored as a one-byte length prefix plus data. So as with the example above, if you define a column as VARCHAR(255) and only insert 5 characters the storage requirement will only be 6 bytes. Therefore if your strings will be of variable length, the VARCHAR data type will require less storage.

CHAR vs. VARCHAR

If your table will only contain fixed-length columns then use CHAR to take advantage of MySQL’s faster searching. However, if any of your columns will be variable length then use VARCHAR for its smaller storage requirement.

Dates

Whilst you could store a date as a text string, MySQL has more optimal ways of storing dates!

Unix Timestamp

One perfectly valid way to store dates would be as a Unix timestamp. A Unix timestamp is a 10-digit representation of the number of seconds since the Unix epoch of 1st January 1970. This could be stored as a CHAR column, requiring 10 bytes storage, but the most optimal data type is the numeric INT(UNSIGNED) type, requiring just 4 bytes storage.

Unix timestamps are particularly useful if you’re using PHP, as the date() function will display them in your chosen format and you can calculate dates by adding or subtracting a number of seconds (86400 is equivalent to 24 hours etc…).

One drawback of using Unix timestamps is that they’re not human readable straight from the database. Would you know what date 1262986313 refers to? Another is that due to the 10-digit length, Unix timestamps may have problems at 3:14:07AM on 19th January 2038 when the value 9999999999 is reached!

DATETIME

Until recently I used Unix timestamps to store dates in MySQL, but I’ve now started using the DATETIME data type. This is designed specifically to store both the date and time as 2010-01-08 15:00:00 (for example).

One disadvantage is that this requires 8 bytes storage – double that of a Unix timestamp. But I believe that the advantages of using DATETIME rather than Unix timestamps outweighs this disadvantage.

Firstly dates stored using DATETIME are human-readable straight out of the database. So if you’re browsing your data with phpMyAdmin you can see what your dates actually mean!

Secondly MySQL has a whole host of built-in functions to work with native DATETIME formats. You can add and subtract dates, calculate the difference between dates, output the date in your preferred format and much more using MySQL alone and without involving additional PHP (for example) scripting.

And finally, if you really want to output your DATETIME column as a Unix timestamp, MySQL has a built-in function to do that, too!

Note that MySQL can also store the year alone, the date alone and a number of related types.

Miscellaneous
ENUM

ENUM columns provide an efficient way to define columns that can contain only a given set of values. So if a column will only ever contain ‘var 1′, ‘var 2′ or ‘var 3′ (for example), you should use the ENUM data type. Due to the way that MySQL stores the data it is much more efficient than storing the data as a string.

An example of when this is useful is setting a switch to specify whether a user account is active or disabled. Instead of storing ‘active’ or ‘disabled’ as VARCHAR values, use ENUM instead.

Conclusion

Although data can often be stored in various data type columns, there’s usually one data type that is optimal for your data. Using that optimal data type will bring benefits in terms of storage and possibly speed, and is best practice for any website developer.

For Further Reading http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/storage-requirements.html