PHP - Question - General Thoughts

Bear with me, as I'm still quite new at PHP.

I'm trying to figure out the best way to build a search function for a database that will eventually be quite large.

The path of the search I'm building is to go from a straight-forward javascript and html search page, to a paginated search result. Then the user can narrow down those query results based on a new search of their results.

In trying to get the pagination to work across several pages(unsuccessfuly, I might add), I've been learning about sessions and temporary tables. But, because the database will be very large, I'm wondering if they are the wrong way. Sessions have a time limit, and temporary tables delete once the connection is closed.

Is it possible/feasible to build a permanent table that puts in the search variables, with a unique id and use this to manage the searches, pagination and all that? Then, at some point in the process, I can put code to delete the corresponding row (or even make it a saveable search). Maybe somebody sees where I'm going with this and  can describe it better than me? I'm just thinking off the cuff at the moment. Maybe there's some terminology that will help me find a tutorial. Any bit helps.
thanks!

Hi All:
I have general question on php...

 if I have an "includes" folder, and on IE somebody goes directly to it, like:
http://www.site.com/includes
on IE, they can see the folder-tree- directory. So, files like config.php, or mysql.php could be visible.
My question is, is this safe?? couldnt people then just drag-copy the file over into their system? or somehow open it, view its contents?
I dragged-copied a .php file into my desktop, but nothing shows up when I open in in notepad. As opposed to opening another file that was also .php but which only had javascript code in it, and the javascipt did show up.
So, I take it, it should be ok?? as it seems like it works as if the .php page actually had been loaded on a web-browser... doesnt show the php code...

well, appreciate comments, feedback on this...
what woudl be the best way to protect files like this? htaccess-protect? or is this not something to be overly concerned about??
From what I can tell looks like a lot of site are setup this way... so must be ok... ha?

Thanks!

I'm in the process of making a PHP/MYSQL game and I'm trying to figure out the best way to set the database up specifically to deal with items.

All day I have been wrestling with how to do this. How do I link items to players?  How do I keep track of who has what items?

I know this question isn't at all specific sorry for that, it's hard to explain exactly what I mean thought text.

Thanks

Today, Amazon announced the "Fire Phone", what are your thoughts? http://www.businessi...re-phone-2014-6

This topic has been moved to Application Design.

http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php?topic=346338.0

Hello, I went through the forum, its geat but I think missing one feature,   There should be a forum about having general conversations and if someone wanted to talk about taking suggestions to help him/her across the world of programming, that would be very great.   Thanks.

Hi to all the members of this great community,

This is my first post here and I am new in PHP and in general web programming, my background is in C and C++ programming languages that's why I want to make some comments with regards to PHP and getting your feedbacks.

In C++ one exercise considered that someone knows the basics of the language is to implement a general dynamic queue that is the client programmer can put an arbitrary number of objects into a queue and using templates you can instantiate different queues holding different kind of objects.

I have grasped the most important parts of the language and I am pondering if you can effectively implement something like the above using PHP.

I have googled this, and I have seen so far just a very simple implementation in PHP.
He has defined his queue using an array having a fixed size and he just moved an index up and down through the array while inserting and poping elements from the queue.

if you want to implement a dynamic queue the only way it comes to my mind just off the top of my head is to
use the the construct [] to add dynamically element at the end of the queue and when you want to pop up an element you just have to
unset(your current queue which is an array)
create another array (smaller by one element than the previous one)
copy the elements at the appropriate positions

I just wanted, people with a C++ programming experience to give me some feedback about this topic and to give me some basic idea how could we implement a general queue in PHP.
For example could we implement a queue w/o using an array?

I would appreciate any comment.

Greetings from Greece

This topic has been moved to PHP Regex.

http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php?topic=326040.0

i've been able to load up a csv file and display it as a html table but what i'm having trouble with is sorting it out with headings a to z but what i am trying to do is have 4 columns like this.

Surgestions about how to do what im after i was hoping i could span the say A across all columns and centering them in the future also but thats not really the problem mainly the getting the array of the csv file and code right iguess. any help would be appreciated


Code: [Select]
<table>
  <tr>
    <th>A</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Apple1</td>
    <td>Apple2</td>
    <td>Apple3</td>
    <td>Apple4</td>
    <td>Apple5</td>
    <td>Apple6</td>

  </tr>
  <tr>
    <th>B</th>
  </tr>
    <td>Banana1</td>
    <td>Banana2</td>
    <td>Banana3</td>
    <td>Banana4</td>
    <td>Banana5</td>
    <td>Banana6</td>

  <tr>
    <th>C</th>
  </tr>
    <td>Cold1</td>
    <td>Cold2</td>
    <td>Cold3</td>
    <td>Cold4</td>
    <td>Cold5</td>
    <td>Cold6</td>
</table>

This is the code for inputting of the csv file i also have some other code i was wanting to use for the sorting of the array data from the csv file i'll past below....



Quote

<?php
$file = "widgets.csv";
$delimiter = ",";
$enclosure = '"';
$column = array("", "", "", "");


@$fp = fopen($file, "r") or die("Could not open file for reading");
while (!feof($fp))
   {
    $tmpstr = fgets($fp, 100);
    $line[] = preg_replace("/r/", "", $tmpstr);
   }
for ($i=0; $i < count($line); $i++)
   {
    $line[$i] = explode($delimiter, $line[$i]);
   }
?>
<html>
<head>
    <title>Albert's Delimited Text to HTML Table Converter</title>
   <link href="css/style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

</head>
<body>
<table border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0">
    <tr>
<?php
        for ($i=0; $i<count($column); $i++)
            echo "<th>".$column[$i]."</th>";
?>
    </tr>
<?php
for ($i=0; $i < count($line); $i++)
{
    echo "<tr>";
    for ($j=0; $j < count($line[$i]); $j++)
    {
        echo "<td>".$line[$i][$j]."</td>";
    }
    echo "</tr>";
}
fclose($fp);
?>
</table>
</body>
</html>




Heres the code for the sorting of the table data from the array


Quote

<?php
echo "QUERY_STRING is ".$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']."<p>";
$rev=1;
$sortby=0;
if(isset($_GET['sortby']))$sortby = $_GET['sortby'];
if(isset($_GET['rev']))$rev = $_GET['rev'];


//Open and read CSV file example has four columns
$i=-1;
$ff=fopen('widgets2.csv','r') or die("Can't open file");
while(!feof($ff)){
$i++;
$Data[$i]=fgetcsv($ff,1024);
}

//Make columns sortable for each sortable column
foreach ($Data as $key => $row) {
   $One[$key]  = $row[0]; // could be $row['Colname']
   $Two[$key] = $row[1]; //numeric example
   $Three[$key] = $row[2];
   $Four[$key] = $row[3];} //numeric example
   
 
 //Case Statements for Sorting
   switch ($sortby){
   case "0":
   if($rev=="1")array_multisort($One, SORT_NUMERIC, $Data); //SORT_NUMERIC optional
   else array_multisort($One, SORT_NUMERIC, SORT_DESC,$Data);
   $rev=$rev*-1;
   break;
   
   case "1":
   if($rev=="1")array_multisort($Two,  $Data);
   else array_multisort($Two, SORT_DESC, $Data);
   $rev=$rev*-1;
   break;
   
   case "2":
   if($rev=="1")array_multisort($Three, SORT_NUMERIC, $Data);
   else array_multisort($Three, SORT_NUMERIC, SORT_DESC,$Data);
   $rev=$rev*-1;
   break;
   
   case "3":
   if($rev=="1")array_multisort($Four,   $Data);
   else array_multisort($Four,  SORT_DESC, $Data);
   $rev=$rev*-1;
   break;}

echo ("<table border=2>");    //$rev is reverse variable   
echo ("<th><a href=\"SortTable.php?sortby=0&rev=$rev\" title=\"Click to Sort/Reverse sort\">One</a></th>");
echo ("<th><a href=\"SortTable.php?sortby=1&rev=$rev\" title=\"Click to Sort/Reverse sort\">Two</a></th>");
echo ("<th><a href=\"SortTable.php?sortby=2&rev=$rev\" title=\"Click to Sort/Reverse sort\">Three</a></th>");
echo ("<th><a href=\"SortTable.php?sortby=3&rev=$rev\" title=\"Click to Sort/Reverse sort\">Four</a></th>");

$i=0;
foreach($Data as $NewDat){
if($NewDat[0]!=""){ //error trap
$str="<tr>";
foreach($NewDat as $field)$str.="<td>$field</td>";
$str.="</td>\n";
echo $str;}}
fclose($ff);
echo "</table>";

My current function for checking over user inputs is below, email and phone numbers work just fine.

I'm more worried about the insufficiency of text and textarea, this isn't being used live anywhere atm while i remake it and i'm out of ideas on how to scan general data.

Fields passing through text, textarea might be full names, addresses, subjects basically general things. I've been stumbling on ideas of what would be best practice to do this.

Any ideas?


# $tbc = data to be cleaned
# $type = email, phone, text, textarea
function escape_data($tbc, $type='text') {
switch($type) {
case 'email':
if(preg_match('/(\w+\.)*\w+@(\w+\.)*\w+(\w+\-\w+)*\.\w+/', $tbc)){
$op = $tbc;
} else {
$op = false;
}
break;
case 'phone':
if (!empty($tbc)) { 
preg_match_all('/[0-9\(\)+.\- ]/s', $tbc, $cleaned); 
foreach($cleaned[0] as $k=>$v) { 
$ready .= $v; 
}
if ((strlen($ready) > 10) && (strlen($ready) <=25)) {
$op = $ready;
} else {
$op = false;
}
 } else {
$op = false;
 }
break;
case 'text':
case 'textarea':
if (!empty($tbc)) { 
$op = strip_tags($tbc);
} else {
$op = false;
}
break;
default:
$op = false;
}
return $op;
}

Hi

I am currently mostly learning procedural PHP but had a question about security.

 

Are hackers able to see connections to databases in procedural programming?

Would connections to databases need to be called from classes and methods instead? Or does it not matter that much?

I have set up a site for a local orchestra. I have a simple mysql db from which 'News' items are pulled using php.

I have set up the following pages:
1. view_news.php
2. insert_news_item.php
3. delete_news_item.php
4. edit_news_item.php

All pages are working fine.

Now, rather than continually having to do news updates for the orchestra myself, I want to give a person on the orchestra committee access to the above pages so that he/she can do news updates for the orchestra, as required.

What is the best way of proceeding from here? I thought about creating a password protected directory and putting pages 2, 3 and 4 above into that directory and then giving the committee member the protected directory password. Is that the way to go?

What is the conventional way of doing this sort of thing?

Two things to note: I'm new to php and the job is non-paying. I've set up the site as the willing parent of kids in the orchestra.

Any advice will be much appreciated.

I'm trying to learn how to code the proper way.

There's a few things im worried about,but overall im worried about clogging up the server.  so what should i keep in mind while coding, to avoid this?

I'm thinking, keep insert and update to a minimum?  as in, when possible, use session to keep track of data until i absolutly have to add that data to a database? is that a correct thought?

what about once the data is in the database, how much trouble is it to ask for the selected data inside a database?  should i be worried about overdoing request of data from databases?   

on the other hand, should i be worried about having too many sessions travelling around with a user.  why?

Im just asking to get a better feel for how to do things the proper way, i would hate to have a website built, only to find out that what i built is only a bat, that would bash the hell out of a server i wanted to put it on.

I have made a classified website. it works and I am proud of it. But as far as securing it goes, I have done almost nothing and I am sure, if in case the site becomes popular, it would be compromised with ease.

So I have started reading a book ' essential php security' and am reading several articles on php security online , but am still unable to wrap my head around the whole security issue.

Can someone help me ? there are a lot of unfamiliar topics, filtering, escaping , validating, session hijacking etc etc and it all goes over my head.

Its a classified website , considering this on what should I concentrate on as far as security goes ? 
btw what I have managed to do is use mysql_real_escape_string on every var going into a mysql $query.

Thanks

I have several "sites" located in my html directory, and each has a "general" access point and an "administrator" access point:

/var/www/html/site1/index.php
/var/www/html/site1/administrator/index.php
/var/www/html/site2/index.php
/var/www/html/site2/administrator/index.php
/var/www/html/site3/index.php
/var/www/html/site3/administrator/index.php

All sites are similar except that data will be specific to site1, site2, or site3, etc.   Users who log onto /var/www/html/siteX/index.php are totally unrelated to those who logon to /var/www/html/siteX/administrator/index.php, will have different logon credentials, are stored in different DB tables, and each should have their own session.  If a user logs off of either the general or administrator site, it should not effect the other site even if they were previously logged on to both on the same PC (and of course not effect other sites). When a user logs off, I would like to destroy their previous cookie and associated session.  Users for either will only use https.  I am using Apache to rewrite https://www.mysite.com/ to https://mysite.com/.  While I named the administrator site "administrator" above, the administrator user has the ability to change the directory name.   I am thinking I need to use session_set_cookie_params to specify where I wish the session cookie to be stored since /var/www/html/siteX/administrator/index.php is a sub-directory to /var/www/html/siteX/index.php, but am not really sure.  Sorry for the cryptic post, but I am not very well versed in this subject. How would you recommend setting up cookies/sessions for this scenario?  Thank you