PHP Lesson

INTRODUCTION TO PHPPHP Tutorial - Learn PHP If you want to learn the basics of PHP, then you've come to the right place. The goal of this tutorial is to teach you the basics of PHP so that you can: Customize PHP scripts that you download, so that they better fit your needs. Begin to understand the working model of PHP, so you may begin to design your own PHP projects. Give you a solid base in PHP, so as to make you more valuable in the eyes of future employers. PHP stands for PHP Hypertext Preprocessor. PHP - What is it? Taken directly from PHP's home, PHP.net, \"
PHP is an HTML-embedded scripting language. Much of its syntax is borrowed from C, Java and Perl with a couple of unique PHP-specific features thrown in. The goal of the language is to allow web developers to write dynamically generated pages quickly.\"
 This is generally a good definition of PHP. However, it does contain a lot of terms you may not be used to. Another way to think of PHP is a powerful, behind the scenes scripting language that your visitors won't see! When someone visits your PHP webpage, your web server processes the PHP code. It then sees which parts it needs to show to visitors (content and pictures) and hides the other stuff (file operations, math calculations, etc.) then translates your PHP into HTML. After the translation into HTML, it sends the webpage to your visitor's web browser. PHP - What's it do? It is also helpful to think of PHP in terms of what it can do for you. PHP will allow you to: Reduce the time to create large websites. Create a customized user experience for visitors based on information that you have gathered from them. Open up thousands of possibilities for online tools. Allow creation of shopping carts for e-commerce websites. What You Should Know Before starting this tutorial it is important that you have a basic understanding and experience in the following: HTML - Know the syntax and especially HTML Forms. Basic programming knowledge - This isn't required, but if you have any traditional programming experience it will make learning PHP a great deal easier. PHP - Necessary Setup To begin working with PHP you must first have access to either of the following: A web hosting account that supports the use of PHP web pages and grants you access to MySQL databases. If you do not have a host, but you want to test on local machine.

Have Apache web server, PHP and MySQL installed on your own computer. Read this lesson thoroughly for more information on installing PHP. Although MySQL is not absolutely necessary to use PHP, MySQL and PHP are wonderful complements to one another and some topics covered in this tutorial will require that you have MySQL access. Apache web server You will need the web server to run your PHP code. We are recommending Apache to use with PHP. It provides you many feature for your PHP development environment. For more information go to http://www.apache.org/ Installing PHP For those who are experienced enough to do this yourself, simply head over to PHP.net - Downloads and download the most recent version of PHP. However, if you are like most of us, you will most likely want to follow a guide to installing PHP onto your computer. These guides are kindly provided by PHP.net based on the operating system that you are using. PHP - Windows - Windows Installation Guide

PHP - Mac - Mac Installation Guide

PHP - Linux - Linux Installation Guide Installing MySQL As we mentioned before, MySQL is not a requirement to use PHP, however they often go hand in hand. Visit MySQL's MySQL Installation Guide for help on installing MySQL. Complete Package for run PHP We suggest you to install the complete package by visits: http://www.appservnetwork.com/?appserv It contains all what you need to PHP development: Apache

phpMyAdminNote: default MySQL user is root. -5715083820288607574295

PHP FundamentalPHP - Syntax Before we talk about PHP's syntax, let us first define what syntax is referring to. Syntax - The rules that must be followed to write properly structured code. PHP's syntax and semantics are similar to most other programming languages (C, Java, Perl) with the addition that all PHP code is contained with a tag, of sorts. All PHP code must be contained within the following... PHP Code: <?php ?> or the shorthand PHP tag that requires shorthand support to be enabled on your server... <? ?> If you are writing PHP scripts and plan on distributing them, we suggest that you use the standard form (which includes the <?php) rather than the shorthand form. This will ensure that your scripts will work, even when running on other servers with different settings. How to Save Your PHP Pages If you have PHP inserted into your HTML and want the web browser to interpret it correctly, then you must save the file with a .php extension, instead of the standard .html extension. So be sure to check that you are saving your files correctly. Instead of index.html, it should be index.php if there is PHP code in the file. Example Simple HTML & PHP Page Below is an example of one of the easiest PHP and HTML page that you can create and still follow web standards. PHP and HTML Code: <html><head><title>My First PHP Page</title> </head> <body> <?php echo \"
Hello World!\"
; ?> </body> </html> Display: Hello World! If you save this file (e.g. helloworld.php) and place it on PHP enabled server and load it up in your web browser, then you should see \"
Hello World!\"
displayed. If not, please check that you followed our example correctly. We used the PHP function echo to write \"
Hello World!\"
and we will be talking in greater depth about this PHP function and many others later on in this tutorial. The Semicolon (;) As you may or may not have noticed in the above example, there was a semicolon after the line of PHP code. The semicolon signifies the end of a PHP statement and should never be forgotten. For example, if we repeated our \"
Hello World!\"
code several times, then we would need to place a semicolon at the end of each statement. PHP and HTML Code: <html> <head> <title>My First PHP Page</title> </head> <body> <?php echo \"
Hello World! \"
; echo \"
Hello World! \"
; echo \"
Hello World! \"
; echo \"
Hello World! \"
; echo \"
Hello World! \"
; ?> </body> </html> Display: Hello World! Hello World! Hello World! Hello World! Hello World! White Space As with HTML, whitespace is ignored between PHP statements. This means it is OK to have one line of PHP code, then 20 lines of blank space before the next line of PHP code. You can also press tab to indent your code and the PHP interpreter will ignore those spaces as well. PHP and HTML Code: <html> <head> <title>My First PHP Page</title> </head> <body> <?php echo \"
Hello World!\"
; echo \"
Hello World!\"
; ?> </body> </html> Display: Hello World!Hello World! PHP - Variables If you have never had any programming, Algebra, or scripting experience, then the concept of variables might be a new concept to you. A detailed explanation of variables is beyond the scope of this tutorial, but we've included a refresher crash course to guide you. A variable is a means of storing a value, such as text string \"
Hello World!\"
or the integer value 4. A variable can then be reused throughout your code, instead of having to type out the actual value over and over again. In PHP you define a variable with the following form: $variable_name = Value; If you forget that dollar sign at the beginning, it will not work. This is a common mistake for new PHP programmers! Note: Also, variable names are case-sensitive, so use the exact same capitalization when using a variable. The variables $a_number and $A_number are different variables in PHP's eyes. A Quick Variable Example Say that we wanted to store the values that we talked about in the above paragraph.How would we go about doing this? We would first want to make a variable name and thenset that equal to the value we want. See our example below for the correct way to do this. PHP Code: <?php $hello = \"
Hello World!\"
; $a_number = 4; $anotherNumber = 8; ?> Note for programmers: PHP does not require variables to be declared before being initialized. PHP Variable Naming Conventions There are a few rules that you need to follow when choosing a name for your PHP variables. PHP variables must start with a letter or underscore "_".

PHP variables may only be comprised of alpha-numeric characters and underscores. a-z, A-Z, 0-9, or _ .

Variables with more than one word should be separated with underscores. $my_variable

Variables with more than one word can also be distinguished with capitalization. $myVariable PHP Constants A constant is an identifier (name) for a simple value. As the name suggests, that value cannot change during the execution of the script (except for magic constants, which aren't actually constants). A constant is case-sensitive by default. By convention, constant identifiers are always uppercase. The name of a constant follows the same rules as any label in PHP. A valid constant name starts with a letter or underscore, followed by any number of letters, numbers, or underscores. These are the differences between constants and variables: Constants do not have a dollar sign ($) before them;

Constants may only be defined using the define() function, not by simple assignment;

Constants may be defined and accessed anywhere without regard to variable scoping rules;

Constants may not be redefined or undefined once they have been set; and

Constants may only evaluate to scalar values (not changeable).PHP Code: <?php define(\"
CONSTANT\"
, \"
Hello world.\"
); echo CONSTANT; // outputs \"
Hello world.\"
 echo Constant; // outputs \"
Constant\"
and issues a notice. ?> Display: Hello world.Constant PHP - Echo As you saw in the previous lesson, the PHP function echo is a means of outputting text to the web browser. Throughout your PHP career you will be using the echo function more than any other. Outputting a String To output a string, like we have done in previous lessons, use the PHP echo function. You can place either a string variable or you can use quotes, like we do below, to create a string that the echo function will output. PHP Code: <?php $myString = \"
Hello!\"
; echo $myString; echo \"
<h5>I love using PHP!</h5>\"
; ?> Display: Hello! I love using PHP! In the above example we output \"
Hello!\"
without a hitch. The text we are outputting is being sent to the user in the form of a web page, so it is important that we use proper HTML syntax! In our second echo statement we use echo to write a valid Header 5 HTML statement. To do this we simply put the <h5> at the beginning of the string and closed it at the end of the string. Just because you're using PHP to make web pages does not mean you can forget about HTML syntax! Careful When Echoing Quotes! It is pretty cool that you can output HTML with PHP. However, you must be careful when using HTML code or any other string that includes quotes! The echo function uses quotes to define the beginning and end of the string, so you must use one of the following tactics if your string contains quotations: Don't use quotes inside your string

Escape your quotes that are within the string with a backslash. To escape a quotejust place a backslash directly before the quotation mark, i.e. \"

Use single quotes (apostrophes) for quotes inside your string. See our example below for the right and wrong use of the echo function: PHP Code: <?php // This won't work because of the quotes around specialH5! echo \"
<h5 class=\"
specialH5\"
>I love using PHP!</h5>\"
; // OK because we escaped the quotes! echo \"
<h5 class=\\"
specialH5\\"
>I love using PHP!</h5>\"
; // OK because we used an apostrophe ' echo \"
<h5 class='specialH5'>I love using PHP!</h5>\"
; ?> If you want to output a string that includes quotations, either use an apostrophe ( ' ) or escape the quotations by placing a backslash in front of it ( \\"
). The backslash will tell PHP that you want the quotation to be used within the string and NOT to be used to end echo's string. Echoing Variables Echoing variables is very easy. The PHP developers put in some extra work to make the common task of echoing all variables nearly foolproof! No quotations are required, even if the variable does not hold a string. Below is the correct format for echoing a variable. PHP Code: <?php $my_string = \"
Hello Bob. My name is: \"
; $my_number = 4; $my_letter = a; echo $my_string; echo $my_number; echo $my_letter; ?> Display: Hello Bob. My name is: 4a Echoing Variables and Text Strings You can also combine text strings and variables. By doing such a conjunction you save yourself from having to do a large number of echo statements. Variables and text strings are joined together with a period ( . ). The example below shows how to do such a combination. PHP Code: <?php $my_string = \"
Hello Bob. My name is: \"
; $newline = \"
 \"
; echo $my_string.\"
Bobettta\"
.$newline; echo \"
Hi, I'm Bob. Who are you? \"
.$my_string.$newline; echo \"
Hi, I'm Bob. Who are you? \"
.$my_string.\"
Bobetta\"
; ?> Display: Hello Bob. My name is: Bobetta Hi, I'm Bob. Who are you? Hello Bob. My name is: Hi, I'm Bob. Who are you? Hello Bob. My name is: Bobetta This combination can be done multiple times, as the example shows. This method of joining two or more strings together is called concatenation and we will talk more about this and other forms of string manipulation in our string lesson. PHP - Strings In the last lesson, PHP Echo, we used strings a bit, but didn't talk about them in depth. Throughout your PHP career you will be using strings a great deal, so it is important to have a basic understanding of PHP strings. PHP - String Creation Before you can use a string you have to create it! A string can be used directly in a function or it can be stored in a variable. Below we create the exact same string twice: first storing it into a variable and in the second case we place the string directly into a function. PHP Code: $my_string = \"
Build your PHP website!\"
; echo \"
Build your PHP website!\"
; echo $my_string; In the above example the first string will be stored into the variable $my_string,while the second string will be used in the echo function and not be stored. Remember to save your strings into variables if you plan on using them more than once! Below is the output from our example code. They look identical just as we thought. Display: Build your PHP website! Build your PHP website! PHP - String Creation Single Quotes Thus far we have created strings using double-quotes, but it is just as correct to create a string using single-quotes, otherwise known as apostrophes. PHP Code: $my_string = 'Build your PHP website!'; echo 'Build your PHP website!'; echo $my_string; If you want to use a single-quote within the string you have to escape the single-quote with a backslash \ . Like this: \' ! PHP Code: echo 'Khmer855 - It\'s Small!'; PHP - String Creation Double-Quotes We have used double-quotes and will continue to use them as the primary method for forming strings. Double-quotes allow for many special escaped characters to be used that you cannot do with a single-quote string. Once again, a backslash is used to escape a character. PHP Code: $newline = \"
A newline is \n\"
; $return = \"
A carriage return is \r\"
; $tab = \"
A tab is \t\"
; $dollar = \"
A dollar sign is \$\"
; $doublequote = \"
A double-quote is \\"
\"
; Note: If you try to escape a character that doesn't need to be, such as an apostrophe, then the backslash will show up when you output the string. These escaped characters are not very useful for outputting to a web page because HTML ignores extra white space. A tab, newline, and carriage return are all examples of extra (ignorable) white space. However, when writing to a file that may be read by human eyes these escaped characters are a valuable tool! PHP - String Creation Heredoc The two methods above are the traditional way to create strings in most programming languages. PHP introduces a more robust string creation tool called heredoc that lets the programmer create multi- line strings without using quotations. However, creating a string using heredoc is more difficult and can lead to problems if you do not properly code your string! Here's how to do it: PHP Code: $my_string = <<<TEST Khmer855.com Webmaster Tutorials Build for all! TEST; echo $my_string; There are a few very important things to remember when using heredoc. Use <<< and some identifier that you choose to begin the heredoc. In this example we chose TEST as our identifier.

Repeat the identifier followed by a semicolon to end the heredoc string creation. In this example that was TEST;

The closing sequence TEST; must occur on a line by itself and cannot be indented! Another thing to note is that when you output this multi-line string to a web page, it will not span multiple lines because we did not have any tags contained inside our string! Here is the output made from the code above. Display: Khmer855.com Webmaster Tutorials Build for all! Once again, take great care in following the heredoc creation guidelines to avoid any headaches. PHP - Operators In all programming languages, operators are used to manipulate or perform operations on variables and values. You have already seen the string concatenation operator \"
.\"
in the Echo Lesson and the assignment operator \"
=\"
in pretty much every PHP example so far. There are many operators used in PHP, so we have separated them into the following categories to make it easier to learn them all. Assignment Operators

Combination Arithmetic & Assignment Operators Assignment Operators Assignment operators are used to set a variable equal to a value or seta variable to another variable's value. Such an assignment of value is done with the \"
=\"
, or equal character. Example: $my_var = 4; $another_var = $my_var Now both $my_var and $another_var contain the value 4. Assignments canalso be used in conjunction with arithmetic operators. Arithmetic Operators Operator English Example OperatorEnglishExample+Addition2 + 4-Subtraction6 - 2*Multiplication5 * 3/Division15 / 3%Modulus43 % 10 PHP Code: $addition = 2 + 4; $subtraction = 6 - 2; $multiplication = 5 * 3; $division = 15 / 3; $modulus = 5 % 2; echo \"
Perform addition: 2 + 4 = \"
.$addition.\"
 \"
; echo \"
Perform subtraction: 6 - 2 = \"
.$subtraction.\"
 \"
; echo \"
Perform multiplication: 5 * 3 = \"
.$multiplication.\"
 \"
; echo \"
Perform division: 15 / 3 = \"
.$division.\"
 \"
; echo \"
Perform modulus: 5 % 2 = \"
. $modulus . \"
. Modulus is the remainder after the division operation has been performed. In this case it was 5 / 2, which has a remainder of 1.\"
; Display: Perform addition: 2 + 4 = 6 Perform subtraction: 6 - 2 = 4 Perform multiplication: 5 * 3 = 15 Perform division: 15 / 3 = 5 Perform modulus: 5 % 2 = 1. Modulus is the remainder after the division operation has been performed. In this case it was 5 / 2, which has a remainder of 1. Comparison Operators Comparisons are used to check the relationship between variables and/or values. If you would like to see a simple example of a comparison operator in action, check out our If Statement Lesson. Comparison operators are used inside conditional statements and evaluate to either true or false. Here are the most important comparison operators of PHP. Assume: $x = 4 and $y = 5; OperatorEnglishExampleResult==Equal To$x == $yFALSE===Identical$x === $yFALSE!=Not Equal To$x != $yTRUE!==Not Identical$x !== $yTRUE<Less Than$x < $yTRUE>Greater Than$x > $yFALSE<=Less Than or Equal To$x <= $yTRUE>=Greater Than or Equal To$x >= $yFALSE String Operators As we have already seen in the Echo Lesson, the period \"
.\"
is used to add two strings together, or more technically, the period is the concatenation operator for strings. PHP Code: $a_string = \"
Hello\"
; $another_string = \"
Billy\"
; $new_string = $a_string . $another_string; echo $new_string . \"
!\"
; Display: Hello Billy! Combination Arithmetic & Assignment Operators In programming it is a very common task to have to increment a variable by some fixed amount. The most common example of this is a counter. Say you want to increment a counter by 1, you would have: $counter = $counter + 1; However, there is shorthand for doing this. $counter += 1; This combination assignment/arithmetic operator would accomplish the same task. The downside to this combination operator is that it reduces code readability to those programmers who are not used to such an operator. Here are some examples of other common shorthand operators. In general, \"
+=\"
and \"
-=\"
are the most widely used combination operators. OperatorEnglishExampleEquivalent Operation+=Plus Equals$x += 2;$x = $x + 2;-=Minus Equals $x -= 4;$x = $x - 4;*=Multiply Equals$x *= 3;$x = $x * 3;/=Divide Equals$x /= 2;$x = $x / 2;%=Modulo Equals$x %= 5;$x = $x % 5;.=Concatenate Equals$my_str.=\"
hello\"
;$my_str = $my_str . \"
hello\"
; Pre/Post-Increment & Pre/Post-Decrement This may seem a bit absurd, but there is even shorter shorthand for the common task of adding 1 or subtracting 1 from a variable. To add one to a variable or \"
increment\"
use the \"
++\"
operator: $x++; Which is equivalent to $x += 1; or $x = $x + 1; To subtract 1 from a variable, or \"
decrement\"
use the \"
--\"
operator: $x--; Which is equivalent to $x -= 1; or $x = $x - 1; In addition to this \"
shorthand\"
technique, you can specify whether you want to increment before the line of code is being executed or after the line has executed. Our PHP code below will display the difference. PHP Code: $x = 4; echo \"
The value of x with post-plusplus = \"
. $x++; echo \"
 The value of x after the post-plusplus is \"
. $x; $x = 4; echo \"
 The value of x with pre-plusplus = \"
. ++$x; echo \"
 The value of x after the pre-plusplus is \"
. $x; Display: The value of x with post-plusplus = 4 The value of x after the post-plusplus is = 5 The value of x with pre-plusplus = 5 The value of x after the pre-plusplus is = 5 As you can see the value of $x++ is not reflected in the echoed text because the variable is not incremented until after the line of code is executed. However, with the pre-increment \"
++$x\"
the variable does reflect the addition immediately. Reference (&) in PHP References in PHP are a means to access the same variable content by different names. The reference operator (&, an ampersand) can use in conjunction with assignment. PHP Code: $a = 8; $b = $a; $a = 12; // $b still be 8 PHP Code: $a = 8; $b = &$a; $a = 12; // both $a and $b are now 12 PHP Code: $a = 8; $b = &$a; $a = 12; // both $a and $b are now 12 echo $b; // result = 12 $a = 15; echo $b; // result = 15 PHP Code: $a = 8; $b = &$a; $a = 12; // both $a and $b are now 12 unset($a); $a =10; // $b still be 12; echo $b; //result 12 Unsetting does not change the value of $b (12) but does break the link between $a and the value 12 store in memory. Using Comments in PHP Comments in PHP are similar to comments that are used in HTML. The PHP comment syntax always begins with a special character sequence and all text that appears between the start of the comment and the end will be ignored by the browser. In HTML a comment's main purpose is to serve as a note to you, the web developer or to others who may view your website's source code. However, PHP's comments are different in that they will not be displayed to your visitors. The only way to view PHP comments is to open the PHP file for editing. This makes PHP comments only useful to PHP programmers. In case you forgot what an HTML comment looked like, see our example below. HTML Code:  PHP Comment Syntax: Single Line Comment While there is only one type of comment in HTML, PHP has two types. The first type we will discuss is the single line comment. The single line comment tells the interpreter to ignore everything that occurs on that line to the right of the comment. To do a single line comment type \"
//\"
or “#” and all text to the right will be ignored by PHP interpreter. PHP Code: <?php echo \"
Hello World!\"
; // This will print out Hello World! echo \"
 Psst...You can't see my PHP comments!\"
; // echo \"
nothing\"
; // echo \"
My name is Humperdinkle!\"
; # echo \"
; ?> Display: Hello World! Psst...You can't see my PHP comments! Notice that a couple of our echo statements were not evaluated because we commented them out with the single line comment. This type of line commenting is often used for quick notes about complex and confusing code or to temporarily remove a line of PHP code. PHP Comment Syntax: Multiple Line Comment Similar to the HTML comment, the multi-line PHP comment can be used to comment out large blocks of code or writing multiple line comments. The multiple line PHP comment begins with \"
/* “ and ends with \"
*/ \"
. PHP Code: <?php /* This Echo statement will print out my message to the the place in which I reside on. In other words, the World. */ echo \"
Hello World!\"
; /* echo \"
; echo \"
No way! My name is Uber PHP Programmer!\"
; */ ?> Display: Hello World! Include Function Without understanding much about the details of PHP, you can save yourself a great deal of time with the use of the PHP include function. Include function takes a file name and simply inserts that file's contents into the script that calls used the include function. Why is this a cool thing? Well, first of all, this means that you can type up a common header or menu file that you want all your web pages to include. When you add a new page to your site, instead of having to update the links on several web pages, you can simply change the Menu file. An Include Example Say we wanted to create a common menu file that all our pages will use. A common practice for naming files that are to be included is to use the \"
.php\"
extension. Since we want to create a common menu let's save it as \"
menu.php\"
. menu.php Code: <html> <body> <a href=\"
http://www.example.com/index.php\"
>Home</a> - <a href=\"
http://www.example.com/about.php\"
>About Us</a> - <a href=\"
http://www.example.com/links.php\"
>Links</a> - <a href=\"
http://www.example.com/contact.php\"
>Contact Us</a> /> Save the above file as \"
menu.php\"
. Now create a new file, \"
index.php\"
in the same directory as \"
menu.php\"
. Here we will take advantage of the include function to add our common menu. include.php Code: <?php include(\"
menu.php\"
); ?> This is my home page that uses a common menu to save me time when I add new pages to my website! </body> </html> Display: 1905055880 And we would do the same thing for \"
about.php\"
, \"
links.php\"
, and \"
contact.php\"
. Just think how terrible it would be if you had 15 or more pages with a common menu and you decided to add another web page to that site. You would have to go in an manually edit every single file to add this new page, but with include files you simply have to change \"
menu.php\"
and all your problems are solved. Avoid such troublesome occasions with a simple include file. What do Visitors See? If we were to use the include function to include a common menu on each of our web pages, what would the visitor see if they viewed the source of \"
index.php\"
? Well, because include function is pretty much the same as copying and pasting, the visitors would see: View Source of index.php to a Visitor: <html> <body> <a href=\"
index.php\"
>Home</a> - <a href=\"
about.php\"
>About Us</a> - <a href=\"
links.php\"
>Links</a> - <a href=\"
contact.php\"
>Contact Us</a> This is my home page that uses a common menu to save me time when I add new pages to my website! </body> </html> The visitor would actually see all the HTML code as one long line of HTML code, because we have not inserted any new line characters. We did some formatting above to make it easier to read. We will be discussing new line characters later. PHP Require Function Just like the previous lesson, require function is used to include a file into your PHP code. However there is one huge difference between the two functions, though it might not seem that big of a deal. Require vs Include When you include a file with the include function and PHP cannot find it you will see an error message like the following: PHP Code: <?php include(\"
noFileExistsHere.php\"
); echo \"
Hello World!\"
; ?> Display: Warning: include(noFileExistsHere.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in D:\AppServ\www\phplesson\include_no_file.php on line 2Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening 'noFileExistsHere.php' for inclusion (include_path='.;C:\php5\pear') in D:\AppServ\www\phplesson\include_no_file.php on line 2Hello World! Notice that our echo statement is still executed. this is because a Warning does not prevent our PHP script from running. On the other hand, if we did the same example but used the require statement we would get something like the following example. PHP Code: <?php require(\"
noFileExistsHere.php\"
); echo \"
Hello World!\"
; ?> Display: Warning: require(noFileExistsHere.php) [function.require]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in D:\AppServ\www\phplesson\require_no_file.php on line 2Fatal error: require() [function.require]: Failed opening required 'noFileExistsHere.php' (include_path='.;C:\php5\pear') in D:\AppServ\www\phplesson\require_no_file.php on line 2 The echo statement was not executed because our script execution died after require Function returned a fatal error! We recommend that you use require instead of include because your scripts should not be executing if necessary files are missing or misnamed. PHP Control StructureThe If Statement if statement is necessary for most programming, thus it is important in PHP. PHP Code: $my_name = \"
someguy\"
; if ( $my_name == \"
someguy\"
) { echo \"
Your name is someguy! \"
; } echo \"
Welcome to my homepage!\"
; Display: Your name is someguy! Welcome to my homepage! Did you get that we were comparing the variable $my_name with \"
someguy\"
to see if they were equal? In PHP you use the double equal sign (==) to compare values. Additionally, notice that because the if statement turned out to be true, the code segment was executed, printing out \"
Your name is someguy!\"
. Let's go a bit more in-depth into this example to iron out the details. We first set the variable $my_name equal to "someguy".

We next used a PHP if statement to check if the value contained in thevariable $my_name was equal to "someguy"

The comparison between $my_name and "someguy" was done with a double equalsign "==", not a single equals"="! A single equals is for assigning a valueto a variable, while a double equals is for checking if things are equal.

Translated into english the PHP statement ( $my_name == "someguy" ) is ( $my_name is equal to "someguy" ).

$my_name is indeed equal to "someguy" so the echo statement is executed. A False If Statement Let us now see what happens when a PHP if statement is not true, in other words, false. Say that we changed the above example to: PHP Code: $my_name = \"
anotherguy\"
; if ( $my_name == \"
someguy\"
) { echo \"
Your name is someguy! \"
; } echo \"
Welcome to my homepage!\"
; Display: Welcome to my homepage! Here the variable contained the value \"
anotherguy\"
, which is not equal to \"
someguy\"
. The if statement evaluated to false, so the code segment of the if statement was not executed. When used properly, the if statement is a powerful tool to have in your programming arsenal! If/Else Conditional Statement Has someone ever told you, \"
if you work hard, then you will succeed\"
? Andwhat happens if you do not work hard? Well, you fail! This is an example of an if/else conditional statement. If you work hard then you will succeed.

Else, if you do not work hard, then you will fail. Using these conditional statements can add new layers of \"
cool\"
to your website. Here's the basic form of an if/else statement in PHP. PHP Code: $number_three = 3; if ( $number_three == 3 ) { echo \"
The if statement evaluated to true\"
; } else { echo \"
The if statement evaluated to false\"
; } Display: The if statement evaluated to true On the other hand, if the if statement was false, then the code contained in the else segment would have been executed. Note that the code within the if and else cannot both be executed, as the if statement cannot evaluate to both true and false at one time! Here is what would happen if we changed to $number_three to anything besides the number 3. PHP Code: $number_three = 421; if ( $number_three == 3 ) { echo \"
The if statement evaluated to true\"
; } else { echo \"
The if statement evaluated to false\"
; } Display: The if statement evaluated to false The variable was set to 421, which is not equal to 3 and the if statement was false. As you can see, the code segment contained within the else was used in this case. PHP - Using Elseif with If...Else PHP Code: $employee = \"
Bob\"
; if($employee == \"
Ms. Tanner\"
){ echo \"
Hello Ma'am\"
; } elseif($employee == \"
Bob\"
){ echo \"
Good Morning Sir!\"
; }else { echo \"
Morning\"
; } Display: Good Morning Sir! PHP first checked to see if $employee was equal to \"
Ms. Tanner\"
, which evaluated to false. Next, PHP checked the first elseif statement. $employee did in fact equal \"
Bob\"
so the phrase \"
Good Morning Sir!\"
was printed out. If we wanted to check for more employee names we could insert more elseif statements! PHP Switch Statement : Speedy Checking In the previous lessons we covered the various elements that make up an If Statement in PHP. However, there are times when an if statement is not the most efficient way to check for certain conditions. For example we might have a variable that stores travel destinations and you want to pack according to this destination variable. In this example you might have 20 different locations that you would have to check with a nasty long block of If/ElseIf/ElseIf/ElseIf/... statements. This doesn't sound like much fun to code; let's see if we can do something different. With the use of the switch statement you can check for all these conditions at once, and the great thing is that it is actually more efficient programming to do this. A true win-win situation! The way the Switch statement works is it takes a single variable as input and then checks it against all the different cases you set up for that switch statement. Instead of having to check that variable one at a time, as it goes through a bunch of If Statements, the Switch statement only has to check one time. In our example the single variable will be $destinationand the cases will be: Las Vegas, Amsterdam, Egypt, Tokyo, and the Caribbean Islands. PHP Code: $destination = \"
Tokyo\"
; echo \"
Traveling to $destination \"
; switch ($destination){ case \"
Las Vegas\"
: echo \"
Bring an extra $500\"
; break; case \"
Amsterdam\"
: echo \"
Bring an open mind\"
Egypt\"
: echo \"
Bring 15 bottles of SPF 50 Sunscreen\"
Tokyo\"
: echo \"
Bring lots of money\"
Caribbean Islands\"
: echo \"
Bring a swimsuit\"
; break; default: echo \"
Bring lots of underwear!\"
; break; } Display: Traveling to Tokyo Bring lots of money The value of $destination was Tokyo, so when PHP performed the switch operating on $destination in immediately did a search for a case with the value of \"
Tokyo\"
. It found it and proceeded to execute the code that existed within that segment. You might have noticed how each case contains a break; at the end of its code area. This break prevents the other cases from being executed. If the above example did not have any break statements then all the cases that follow Tokyo would have been executed as well. Use this knowledge to enhance the power of your switch statements! The form of the switch statement is rather unique, so spend some time reviewing it before moving on. Note: Beginning programmers should always include the break; to avoid any unnecessary confusion. PHP - FunctionsA function is just a name we give to a block of code that can be executed whenever we need it. This might not seem like that big of an idea, but believe me, when you understand and use functions you will be able to save a ton of time and write code that is much more readable! For example, you might have a company motto that you have to display at least once on every webpage. If you don't, then you get fired! Well, being the savvy PHP programmer you are, you think to yourself, \"
This sounds like a situation where I might need functions.\"
 Creating Your First PHP Function When you create a function, you first need to give it a name, like myCompanyMotto.It's with this function name that you will be able to call upon your function, so make it easy to type and understand. The actual syntax for creating a function is pretty self-explanatory, but you can be the judge of that. First, you must tell PHP that you want to create a function. You do this by typing the keyword function followed by your function name and some other stuff (which we'll talk about later). Here is how you would make a function called myCompanyMotto. Note: We still have to fill in the code for myCompanyMotto. PHP Code: <?php function myCompanyMotto(){ } ?> Note: Your function name can start with a letter or underscore \"
_\"
, but not a number! With a properly formatted function in place, we can now fill in the code that we want ourfunction to execute. Do you see the curly braces in the above example \"
{ }\"
? These braces define where our function's code goes. The opening curly brace \"
{\"
tells php that the function's code is starting and a closing curly brace \"
}\"
tells PHP that our function is done! We want our function to print out the company motto each time it's called, so that sounds like it's a job for the echo function! PHP Code: <?php function myCompanyMotto(){ echo \"
We deliver quantity, not quality! \"
; } ?> That's it! You have written your first PHP function from scratch! Notice that the code that appears within a function is just the same as any other PHP code. Using Your PHP Function Now that you have completed coding your PHP function, it's time to put it through a test run. Below is a simple PHP script. Let's do two things: add the function code to it and use the function twice. PHP Code with Function: <?php function myCompanyMotto(){ echo \"
We deliver quantity, not quality! \"
; } echo \"
Welcome to example.com \"
; myCompanyMotto(); echo \"
Well, thanks for stopping by! \"
; echo \"
and remember... \"
; myCompanyMotto(); ?> Display: Welcome to example.com We deliver quantity, not quality! Well, thanks for stopping by! and remember... We deliver quantity, not quality! Although this was a simple example, it's important to understand that there is a lot going on and there are a lot of areas to make errors. When you are creating a function, follow these simple guidelines: Always start your function with the keyword function

Remember that your function's code must be between the "{" and the "}"

When you are using your function, be sure you spell the function name correctly

Don't give up! PHP Functions - Parameters Another useful thing about functions is that you can send them information that the function can then use. Our first function myCompanyMotto isn't all that useful because all it does, and ever will do, is print out a single, unchanging string. However, if we were to use parameters, then we would be able to add some extra functionality! A parameter appears with the parentheses \"
( )\"
and looks just like a normal PHP variable. Let's create a new function that creates a custom greeting based off of a person's name. Our parameter will be the person's name and our function will concatenate this name onto a greeting string. Here's what the code would look like. PHP Code with Function: <?php function myGreeting($firstName){ echo \"
Hello there \"
. $firstName . \"
! \"
; } ?> When we use our myGreeting function we have to send it a string containing someone's name, otherwise it will break. When you add parameters, you also add more responsibility to you, the programmer! Let's call our new function a few times with some common first names. PHP Code: <?php function myGreeting($firstName){ echo \"
Hello there \"
. $firstName . \"
! \"
; } myGreeting(\"
Jack\"
); myGreeting(\"
Ahmed\"
Julie\"
Charles\"
); ?> Display: Hello there Jack! Hello there Ahmed! Hello there Julie! Hello there Charles! It is also possible to have multiple parameters in a function. To separate multiple parameters; PHP uses a comma \"
,\"
. Let's modify our function to also include last names. PHP Code: <?php function myGreeting($firstName, $lastName){ echo \"
Hello there \"
. $firstName .\"
\"
. $lastName .\"
! \"
; } myGreeting(\"
Jack\"
, \"
Black\"
Ahmed\"
, \"
Zewail\"
Julie\"
, \"
Roberts\"
Charles\"
, \"
Schwab\"
); ?> Display: Hello there Jack Black! Hello there Ahmed Zewail! Hello there Julie Roberts! Hello there Charles Schwab! PHP Functions - Returning Values Besides being able to pass functions information, you can also have them return a value. However, a function can only return one thing, although that thing can be any integer, float, array, string, etc. that you choose! How does it return a value though? Well, when the function is used and finishes executing, it sort of changes from being a function name into being a value. To capture this value you can set a variable equal to the function. Something like: $myVar = somefunction(); Let's demonstrate this returning of a value by using a simple function that returns the sum of two integers. PHP Code: <?php function mySum($numX, $numY){ $total = $numX + $numY; return $total; } $myNumber = 0; echo \"
Before the function, myNumber = \"
. $myNumber .\"
 \"
; $myNumber = mySum(3, 4); // Store the result of mySum in $myNumber echo \"
After the function, myNumber = \"
. $myNumber .\"
 \"
; ?> Display: Before the function, myNumber = 0 After the function, myNumber = 7 When we first print out the value of $myNumber it is still set to the original value of 0.However, when we set $myNumber equal to the function mySum, $myNumberis set equal to mySum's result. In this case, the result was 3 + 4 = 7, which was successfullystored into $myNumber and displayed in the second echo statement! PHP Date - Dates and Times While PHP's date() function may seem to have an overwhelming amount of options available, isn't it always better to have more choices than not enough? With PHP's date function you format timestamps, so they are more human readable. This lesson will teach you how to display the current time, formatting PHP's timestamp, and show you all the various date arguments for reference purposes. PHP Date - The Timestamp The date function always formats a timestamp, whether you supply one or not. What's a timestamp? Good question! Timestamp: A timestamp is the number of seconds from January 1, 1970 at 00:00. Otherwise known as the Unix Timestamp, this measurement is a widely used standard that PHP has chosen to utilize. PHP Date - What Time Is It? The date function uses letters of the alphabet to represent various parts of atypical date and time format. The letters we will be using in our first example are: d: The day of the month. The type of output you can expect is 01 through 31.

m: The current month, as a number. You can expect 01 through 12.

y: The current year in two digits ##. You can expect 00 through 99 We'll tell you the rest of the options later, but for now let's use those above letters to format a simple date! The letters that PHP uses to represent parts of date and time will automatically be converted by PHP. However, other characters like a slash \"
/\"
can be inserted between the letters to add additional formatting. We have opted to use the slash in our example. PHP Code: <?php echo date(\"
m/d/y\"
); ?> Note: If time is Jan 1, 2010 you would see something like: Display: 01/01/10 Be sure to test this out on your own PHP enabled server, it's really great to see the instant results available with PHP date! PHP Date - Supplying a Timestamp As our first example shows, the first argument of the date function tells PHP how you would like your date and time displayed. The second argument allows for a timestamp and is optional. This example uses the mktime function to create a timestamp for tomorrow. To go one day in the future we simply add one to the day argument of mktime. For your future reference, we have the arguments of mktime. Note: These arguments are all optional. If you do not supply any arguments the current time will be used to create the timestamp. mktime(hour, minute, second, month, day, year, daylight savings time) PHP Code: <?php $tomorrow = mktime(0, 0, 0, date(\"
m\"
), date(\"
d\"
)+1, date(\"
y\"
)); echo \"
Tomorrow is \"
.date(\"
m/d/y\"
, $tomorrow); ?> Notice that we used one letter at a time with the function date to get the month, day and year. For example the date(\"
m\"
) will return the month's number 01-12. Note: If time is Jan 1, 2010 you would see something like: Display: Tomorrow is 01/02/10 PHP Date - Reference Now that you know the basics of using PHP's date function, you can easily plug in any of the following letters to format your timestamp to meet your needs. Important Full Date and Time: r: Displays the full date, time and timezone offset. It is equivalent to manually entering date("D, d M Y H:i:s O") Time: a: am or pm depending on the time

A: AM or PM depending on the time

g: Hour without leading zeroes. Values are 1 through 12.

G: Hour in 24-hour format without leading zeroes. Values are 0 through 23.

h: Hour with leading zeroes. Values 01 through 12.

H: Hour in 24-hour format with leading zeroes. Values 00 through 23.

i: Minute with leading zeroes. Values 00 through 59.

s: Seconds with leading zeroes. Values 00 through 59. Day: d: Day of the month with leading zeroes. Values are 01 through 31.

j: Day of the month without leading zeroes. Values 1 through 31

D: Day of the week abbreviations. Sun through Sat

l: Day of the week. Values Sunday through Saturday

w: Day of the week without leading zeroes. Values 0 through 6.

z: Day of the year without leading zeroes. Values 0 through 365. Month: m: Month number with leading zeroes. Values 01 through 12

n: Month number without leading zeroes. Values 1 through 12

M: Abbreviation for the month. Values Jan through Dec

F: Normal month representation. Values January through December.

t: The number of days in the month. Values 28 through 31. Year: L: 1 if it's a leap year and 0 if it isn't.

y: A two digit year format. Values 00 through 99. Other Formatting: U: The number of seconds since the Unix Epoch (January 1, 1970)

O: This represents the Timezone offset, which is the difference from Greenwich Meridian Time (GMT). 100 = 1 hour, -600 = -6 hours We suggest that you take a few minutes to create several timestamps using PHP's mktime function and just tryout all these different letters to get your feet wet with PHP's date function. PHP - ArraysAn array is a data structure that stores one or more values in a single value. For experienced programmers it is important to note that PHP's arrays are actually maps (each key is mapped to a value). PHP - A Numerically Indexed Array If this is your first time seeing an array, then you may not quite understand the concept of an array. Imagine that you own a business and you want to store the names of all your employees in a PHP variable. How would you go about this? It wouldn't make much sense to have to store each name in its own variable. Instead, it would be nice to store all the employee names inside of a single variable. This can be done, and we show you how below. PHP Code: $employee_array[0] = \"
Bob\"
; $employee_array[1] = \"
Sally\"
Charlie\"
Clare\"
; In the above example we made use of the key / value structure of an array. The keys were the numbers we specified in the array and the values were the names of the employees. Each key of an array represents a value that we can manipulate and reference. The general form for setting the key of an array equal to a value is $array[key] = value; If we wanted to reference the values that we stored into our array, the following PHP code would get the job done. PHP Code: echo \"
Two of my employees are \"
 . $employee_array[0] . \"
& \"
. $employee_array[1]; echo \"
 Two more employees of mine are \"
 . $employee_array[2] . \"
& \"
. $employee_array[3]; Display: Two of my employees are Bob & Sally Two more employees of mine are Charlie & Clare PHP arrays are quite useful when used in conjunction with loops, which we will talk about in a later lesson. Above we showed an example of an array that made use of integers for the keys (a numerically indexed array). However, you can also specify a string as the key, which is referred to as an associative array. PHP - Associative Arrays In an associative array a key is associated with a value. If you wanted to store the salaries of your employees in an array, a numerically indexed array would not be the best choice. Instead, we could use the employees names as the keys in our associative array, and the value would be their respective salary. PHP Code: $salaries[\"
Bob\"
] = 2000; $salaries[\"
Sally\"
] = 4000; $salaries[\"
Charlie\"
] = 600; $salaries[\"
Clare\"
] = 0; echo \"
Bob is being paid - $\"
. $salaries[\"
Bob\"
] . \"
 \"
; echo \"
Sally is being paid - $\"
. $salaries[\"
Sally\"
] . \"
 \"
; echo \"
Charlie is being paid - $\"
. $salaries[\"
Charlie\"
] . \"
 \"
; echo \"
Clare is being paid - $\"
. $salaries[\"
Clare\"
]; Display: Bob is being paid - $2000 Sally is being paid - $4000 Charlie is being paid - $600 Clare is being paid - $0 Once again, the usefulness of arrays will become more apparent once you have knowledge off or and while loops. PHP - While Loop Repetitive tasks are always a burden to us. Deleting spam email, sealing 50 envelopes, and going to work are all examples of tasks that are repeated. The nice thing about programming is that you can avoid such repetitive tasks with a little bit of extra thinking. Most often these repetitive tasks are conquered in the loop. The idea of a loop is to do something over and over again until the task has been completed. Before we show a real example of when you might need one, let's go over the structure of the PHP while loop. Simple While Loop Example The function of the while loop is to do a task over and over as long as the specified conditional statement is true. This logical check is the same as the one that appears in a PHP if statement to determine if it is true or false. Here is the basic structure of a PHP while loop: PHP Code: while ( conditional statement is true){ //do this code; } This isn't valid PHP code, but it displays how the while loop is structured. Here is the break down of how a while loop functions when your script is executing: The conditional statement is checked. If it is true, then (2) occurs. If it is false, then (4) occurs.

The code within the while loop is executed.

The process starts again at (1). Effectively "looping" back.

If the conditional statement is false, then the code within is not executed and there is no more looping. The code following the while loop is then executed like normal. A Real While Loop Example Imagine that you are running an art supply store. You would like to print out the price chart for number of brushes and total cost. You sell brushes at a flat rate, but would like to display how much different quantities would cost. This will save your customers from having to do the mental math themselves. You know that a while loop would be perfect for this repetitive and boring task. Here is how to go about doing it. PHP Code: $brush_price = 5; $counter = 10; echo \"
<table border=\\"
1\\"
align=\\"
center\\"
>\"
; echo \"
<tr><th>Quantity</th>\"
; echo \"
<th>Price</th></tr>\"
; while ( $counter <= 50 ) { echo \"
<tr><td>\"
; echo $counter; echo \"
</td><td>\"
; echo $brush_price * $counter; echo \"
</td></tr>\"
; $counter = $counter + 10; } echo \"
</table>\"
; Pretty neat, huh? The loop created a new table row and its respective entries for each quantity, until our counter variable grew past the size of 50. When it grew past 50 our conditional statement failed and the loop stopped being used. Let's review what is going on. We first made a $brush_price and $counter variable and set them equal to our desired values.

The table was set up with the beginning table tag and the table headers.

The while loop conditional statement was checked, and $counter (10) was indeed smaller or equal to 50.

The code inside the while loop was executed, creating a new table row for the price of 10 brushes.

We then added 10 to $counter to bring the value to 20.

The loop started over again at step 3, until $counter grew larger than 50.

After the loop had completed, we ended the table. You may have noticed that we placed slashes in front the quotations in the first echo statement. You have to place slashes before quotations if you do not want the quotation to act as the end of the echo statement. This is called escaping a character and it is discussed in our PHP Strings lesson. With proper use of loops you can complete large tasks with great ease. PHP - For Loop The for loop is simply a while loop with a bit more code added to it. The common tasks that are covered by a for loop are: Set a counter variable to some initial value.

Check to see if the conditional statement is true.

Execute the code within the loop.

Increment a counter at the end of each iteration through the loop. The for loop allows you to define these steps in one easy line of code. It may seem to have a strange form, so pay close attention to the syntax used! PHP Code: for ( initialize a counter; conditional statement; increment a counter){ do this code; } Notice how all the steps of the loop are taken care of in the for loop statement. Each step is separated by a semicolon: initialize counter, conditional statement, and the counter increment. A semicolon is needed because these are separate expressions. However, notice that a semicolon is not needed after the \"
increment counter\"
expression. PHP Code: $brush_price = 5; echo \"
<table border=\\"
1\\"
align=\\"
center\\"
>\"
; echo \"
<tr><th>Quantity</th>\"
; echo \"
<th>Price</th></tr>\"
; for ( $counter = 10; $counter <= 50; $counter += 10) { echo \"
<tr><td>\"
; echo $counter; echo \"
</td><td>\"
; echo $brush_price * $counter; echo \"
</td></tr>\"
; } echo \"
</table>\"
; It is important to note that both the for loop and while loop implementation of the price chart table are both OK at getting the job done. However, the for loop is somewhat more compact and would be preferable in this situation. In later lessons we will see where the while loop should be used instead of the for loop. PHP For Each Loop Imagine that you have an associative array that you want to iterate through. PHP provides an easy way to use every element of an array with the foreach statement. In plain English this statement will do the following: For each item in the specified array execute this code. While a For Loop and While Loop will continue until some condition fails, the For Each loop will continue until it has gone through every item in the array. PHP For Each: Example We have an associative array that stores the names of people in our company as the keys with the values being their age. We want to know how old everyone is at work so we use a foreach loop to printout everyone's name and age. PHP Code: $employeeAges; $employeeAges[\"
Lisa\"
] = \"
28\"
; $employeeAges[\"
Jack\"
] = \"
16\"
Ryan\"
] = \"
35\"
Rachel\"
] = \"
46\"
Grace\"
] = \"
34\"
; foreach( $employeeAges as $key => $value){ echo \"
Name: $key, Age: $value \"
; } Display: Name: Lisa, Age: 28 Name: Jack, Age: 16 Name: Ryan, Age: 35 Name: Rachel, Age: 46 Name: Grace, Age: 34 The syntax of foreach statement is a little strange, so let's talk about it some. foreach Syntax: $something as $key => $value This crazy statement roughly translates into: For each element of $employeeAges associative array I want to refer to the key as $key and the value as $value. The operator \"
=>\"
represents the relationship between a key and value. You can imagine that the key points => to the value. In our example we named the key $key and the value $value. However, it might be easier to think of it as $name and $age. Below our example does this and notice how the output is identical because we only changed the variable names that refer to the keys and values. PHP Code: $employeeAges; $employeeAges[\"
Lisa\"
] = \"
28\"
Jack\"
] = \"
16\"
Ryan\"
] = \"
35\"
Rachel\"
] = \"
46\"
Grace\"
] = \"
34\"
; foreach( $employeeAges as $name => $age){ <indent>echo \"
Name: $name, Age: $age \"
;</indent> } Display: Name: Lisa, Age: 28 Name: Jack, Age: 16 Name: Ryan, Age: 35 Name: Rachel, Age: 46 Name: Grace, Age: 34 PHP - Do While Loop A \"
do while\"
loop is a slightly modified version of the while loop. If you recall from one of the previous lessons on While Loops the conditional statement is checked comes back true then the code within the while loop is executed. If the conditional statement is false then the code within the loop is not executed. On the other hand, a do-while loop always executes its block of code at least once. This is because the conditional statement is not checked until after the contained code has been executed. PHP - While Loop and Do While Loop Contrast A simple example that illustrates the difference between these two loop types is a conditional statement that is always false. First the while loop: PHP Code: $cookies = 0; while($cookies > 1){ echo \"
Mmmmm...I love cookies! *munch munch munch*\"
; } Display: As you can see, this while loop's conditional statement failed (0 is not greater than 1), which means the code within the while loop was not executed. Now, can you guess what will happen with a do-while loop? PHP Code: $cookies = 0; do { echo \"
Mmmmm...I love cookies! *munch munch munch*\"
; } while ($cookies > 1); Display: Mmmmm...I love cookies! *munch munch munch* The code segment \"
Mmmm...I love cookies!\"
was executed even though the conditional statement was false. This is because a do-while loop first do's and secondly checks the while condition! Chances are you will not need to use a do while loop in most of your PHP programming, but it is good to know it's there! Using PHP with HTML FormsIt is time to apply the knowledge you have obtained thus far and put it to real use. A very common application of PHP is to have HTML form gather information from a website's visitor and then use PHP to do process that information. In this lesson we will simulate a small business's website that is implementing a very simple order form. Creating the HTML Form If you need a refresher on how to properly make an HTML form, check out the HTML Form Lesson before continuing on. We first create an HTML form that will let our customer choose what they would like to purchase. This file should be saved as \"
order.html\"
 order.html Code: <html><body> <h4> Supply Order Form</h4> <form action=\"
process.php\"
method=\"
post\"
> <select> <option>Paint</option> <option>Brushes</option> <option>Erasers</option> </select> Quantity: <input type=\"
text\"
/> <input type=\"
submit\"
/> </form> </body></html> Display: Now that our \"
order.html\"
is complete, let us continue on and create the \"
process.php\"
file which will process the HTML form information. PHP Form Processor We want to get the \"
item\"
and \"
quantity\"
inputs that we have specified in our HTML form. Using an associative array (this term is explained in the array lesson), we can get this information from the $_POST associative array. The proper way to get this information would be to create two new variables, $itemand $quantity and set them equal to the values that have been \"
posted\"
. The nameof this file is \"
process.php\"
. process.php Code: <html><body> <?php $quantity = $_POST['quantity']; $item = $_POST['item']; echo \"
You ordered \"
. $quantity . \"
\"
. $item . \"
. \"
; echo \"
Thank you for ordering from Art Supplies!\"
; ?> </body></html> As you probably noticed, the name in $_POST['name'] corresponds to the name that we specified in our HTML form. Now try uploading the \"
order.html\"
and \"
process.php\"
files to a PHP enabled server and test them out. If someone selected the item brushes and specified a quantity of 6, then the following would be displayed on \"
process.php\"
: process.php Display: You ordered 6 brushes. Thank you for ordering from Art Supplies! A lot of things were going on in this example. Let us step through it to be sure you understand what was going on. 1. We first created an HTML form \"
order.html\"
that had two input fields specified, \"
item\"
and \"
quantity\"
. 2. We added two attributes to the form tag to point to \"
process.php\"
and set the method to \"
post\"
. 3. We had \"
process.php\"
get the information that was posted by setting new variables equal to the values in the $_POST associative array. 4. We used the PHP echo function to output the customer’s order. PHP - POST & GET Recall from the PHP Forms Lesson where we used an HTML form and sent it to a PHP web page for processing. This lesson will review both transferring methods. POST - Review In our PHP Forms Lesson we used the post method. This is what the pertinent line of HTML code looked like: HTML Code Excerpt: <form action=\"
process.php\"
method=\"
post\"
> <select name=\"
item\"
> ... <input name=\"
quantity\"
type=\"
text\"
/> This HTML code specifies that the form data will be submitted to the \"
process.php\"
webpage using the POST method. The way that PHP does this is to store all the \"
posted\"
values into an associative array called \"
$_POST\"
. Be sure to take notice the names of the form data names, as they represent the keys in the \"
$_POST\"
associative array. Now that you know about associative arrays, the PHP code from \"
process.php\"
should make a little more sense. PHP Code Excerpt: $quantity = $_POST['quantity']; $item = $_POST['item']; The form names are used as the keys in the associative array, so be sure that you never have two input items in your HTML form that have the same name. If you do, then you might see some problems arise. PHP - GET As we mentioned before, the alternative to the post method is get. If we were to change our HTML form to the get method, it would look like this: HTML Code Excerpt: <form action=\"
process.php\"
method=\"
get\"
> <select name=\"
item\"
> ... <input name=\"
quantity\"
type=\"
text\"
/> The get method is different in that it passes the variables along to the \"
process.php\"
web page by appending them onto the end of the URL. The URL, after clicking submit, would have this added on to the end of it: \"
?item=##&quantity=##\"
 The question mark \"
?\"
tells the browser that the following items are variables. Now that we changed the method of sending information on \"
order.html\"
, we must change the \"
process.php\"
code to use the \"
$_GET\"
associative array. PHP Code Excerpt: $quantity = $_GET['quantity']; $item = $_GET['item']; After changing the array name the script will function properly. Using the get method displays the variable information to your visitor, so be sure you are not sending password information or other sensitive items with the get method. You would not want your visitors seeing something they are not supposed to! Security Precautions Whenever you are taking user input and using you need to be sure that the input is safe. If you are going to insert the data into a MySQL database, then you should be sure you have thought about preventing MySQL Injection. If you are going to make a user's input available to the public, then you should think about PHP htmlentities. PHP - Magic Quotes Prior to PHP 6 there was a feature called magic quotes that was created to help protect newbie programmers from writing bad form processing code. Magic quotes would automatically escape risky form data that might be used for SQL Injection with a backslash \. The characters escaped by PHP include: quote ', double quote \"
, backslash \ and NULL characters. However, this newbie protection proved to cause more problems than it solved and is not in PHP 6. If your PHP version is any version before 6 then you should use this lesson to learn more about how magic quotes can affect you. Magic Quotes - Are They Enabled? First things first, you need to check to see if you have magic quotes enabled on you server. The get_magic_quotes_gpc function will return a 0 (off) or a 1 (on). These boolean values will fit nicely into an if statement where 1 is true and 0 is false. PHP Code: if(get_magic_quotes_gpc()) echo \"
Magic quotes are enabled\"
; else echo \"
Magic quotes are disabled\"
; Display: Magic quotes are enabled If you received the message \"
Magic quotes are enabled\"
then you should definitely continue reading this lesson, if not feel free to learn about it in case you are developing for servers that might have quotes on or off. Magic Quotes in Action Now lets make a simple form processor to show how machines with magic quotes enabled will escape those potentially risky characters. This form submits to itself, so you only need to make one file, \"
magic-quotes.php\"
to test it out. magic-quotes.php Code: <?php echo \"
Altered Text: \"
.$_POST['question']; ?> <form method='post'> Question: <input type='text' name='question'/> <input type='submit'> </form> This simple form will display to you what magic quotes is doing. If you were to enter and submit the string: Sandy said, \"
It's a beautiful day outside and I like to use \'s.\"
You would receive the following output. Display: Magic quotes did a number on that string, didn't it? Notice that there is a backslash before all of those risky characters we talked about earlier. After magic quotes: A backslash \ becomes \\

A double-quote " becomes \" Now say that you wanted to remove the escaping that magic quotes puts in, you have two options: disable magic quotes or strip the backslashes magic quotes adds. Removing Backslashes - stripslashes() Before you use PHP's backslash removal function stripslashes it's smart to add some magic quote checking like our \"
Are They Enabled?\"
section above. This way you won't accidentally be removing slashes that are legitimate in the future if your PHP's magic quotes setting changes in the future. magic-quotes.php Code: <?php echo \"
Removed Slashes: \"
; // Remove those slashes if(get_magic_quotes_gpc()) echo stripslashes($_POST['question']); else echo $_POST['question']; ?> <form method='post'> Question: <input type='text' name='question'/> <input type='submit'> </form> Our new output for our string containing risky characters would now be: Display: PHP htmlentities Function Whenever you allow your users to submit text to your website, you need to be careful that you don't leave any security holes open for malicious users to exploit. If you are ever going to allow user submitted text to be visible by the public you should consider using the htmlentities function to prevent them from running html code and scripts that may be harmful to your visitors. PHP - Converting HTML into Entities The htmlentities function takes a string and returns the same string with HTML converted into HTML entities. For example, the string \"
<script>\"
would be converted to \"
<script>\"
. By converting the < and > into entities, it prevents the browser from using it as an HTML element and it prevents the code from running if you were to display some user's input on your website. This may seem a little complicated, but if you think of the way a browser works, in separate stages, it becomes a little easier. Let's look at the way the function htmlentities changes the data at three different levels: in PHP, in raw HTML and in the web browser. The sample string is a bad script that will redirect visitors to the malicious user's own website. PHP Code: // An imaginary article submission from a bad user // it will redirect anyone to example.com if the code is run in a browser $userInput = \"
I am going to hax0r your site, hahaha! <script type='text/javascript'> window.location = 'http://www.example.com/' </script>'\"
; //Lets make it safer before we use it $userInputEntities = htmlentities($userInput); //Now we can display it echo $userInputEntities; The HTML output of the above script would be as follows: Safe Raw HTML Code: I am going to hax0r your site, hahaha! <script type='text/javascript'> window.location = 'http://www.example.com/' </script>' If we had not used htmlentities to convert any HTML code into safe entities, this is what the raw HTML code would be and it would have redirect a visitor to example.com. Dangerous Raw HTML Code: I am going to hax0r your site, hahaha! <script type='text/javascript'> window.location = 'http://www.example.com/' </script>' Those two HTML code examples are what you would see if you were to view source on the web page. However, if you were just viewing the output normally in your browser you would see the following. Safe Display: I am going to hax0r your site, hahaha! <script type='text/javascript'> window.location = 'http://www.example.com/' </script>' Dangerous Display: You'd see whatever spammer site that the malicious user had sent you to. Probably some herbal supplement site or weight loss pills would be displayed. When Would You Use htmlentities? Anytime you allow users to submit content to your website, that other visitors can see, you should consider removing the ability to let them use HTML. Although this will remove a lot of cool things that your users can do, like making heavily customized content, it will prevent your site from a lot of common attacks. With some custom coding you can just remove specific tags from running, but that is beyond the scope of this lesson. Just remember, that when allowing users to submit content to your site you are also giving them access to your website. Be sure you take the proper precautions. PHP - FilesManipulating files is a basic necessity for serious programmers and PHP gives you a great deal of tools for creating, uploading, and editing files. This section of the PHP tutorial is completely dedicated to how PHP can interact with files. After completing this section you should have solid understanding of all types of file manipulation in PHP! PHP - Files: Be Careful When you are manipulating files you must be very careful because you can do a lot of damage if you do something wrong. Common errors include editing the wrong file, filling a hard-drive with garbage data, and accidentally deleting a file's contents. It is our hope that you will be able to avoid these and other slipups after reading this tutorial. However, we know that there are so many places where code can take a wrong turn, so we urge you to take extra care when dealing with files in PHP. PHP - Files: Overview The presentation of the file lessons will begin with how to create, open, and close a file. After establishing those basics, we will then cover other important file tasks, such as: read, write, append, truncate, and uploading files with PHP. PHP - File Create Before you can do anything with a file it has to exist! In this lesson you will learn how to create a file using PHP. PHP - Creating Confusion In PHP, a file is created using a command that is also used to open files. It may seem a little confusing, but we'll try to clarify this conundrum. In PHP the fopen function is used to open files. However, it can also create a file if it does not find the file specified in the function call. So if you use fopen on a file that does not exist, it will create it, given that you open the file for writing or appending (more on this later). PHP - How to Create a File The fopen function needs two important pieces of information to operate correctly. First, we must supply it with the name of the file that we want it to open. Secondly, we must tell the function what we plan on doing with that file (i.e. read from the file, write information, etc). Since we want to create a file, we must supply a file name and tell PHP that we want to write to the file. Note: We have to tell PHP we are writing to the file; otherwise it will not create a new file. PHP Code: $ourFileName = \"
testFile.txt\"
; $ourFileHandle = fopen($ourFileName, 'w') or die(\"
can't open file\"
); fclose($ourFileHandle); The file \"
testFile.txt\"
should be created in the same directory where this PHP code resides. PHP will see that\"
testFile.txt\"
does not exist and will create it after running this code. There's a lot of information in those three lines of code, let's make sure you understand it. 1. $ourFileName = \"
testFile.txt\"
; Here we create the name of our file, \"
testFile.txt\"
and store it into a PHP String variable $ourFileName. 2. $ourFileHandle = fopen($ourFileName, 'w') or die(\"
can't open file\"
); This bit of code actually has two parts. First we use the function fopen and give it two arguments: our file name and we inform PHP that we want to write by passing the character \"
w\"
. Second, the fopen function returns what is called a file handle, which will allow us to manipulate the file. We save the file handle into the $ourFileHandle variable. We will talk more about file handles later on. 3. fclose($ourFileHandle); We close the file that was opened. fclose takes the file handle that is to be closed. We will talk more about this more in the file closing lesson. PHP - Permissions If you are trying to get this program to run and you are having errors, you might want to check that you have granted your PHP file access to write information to the hard drive. Setting permissions is most often done with the use of an FTP program to execute a command called CHMOD. Use CHMOD to allow the PHP file to write to disk, thus allowing it to create a file. PHP - File Open In the previous lesson we used the function fopen to create a new file. In this lesson we will be going into the details of this important function and see what it has to offer. PHP - Different Ways to Open a File For many different technical reasons, PHP requires you to specify your intentions when you open a file. Below are the three basic ways to open a file and the corresponding character that PHP uses. Read: 'r' Open a file for read only use. The file pointer begins at the front of the file. Write: 'w' Open a file for write only use. In addition, the data in the file is erased and you will begin writing data at the beginning of the file. This is also called truncating a file, which we will talk about more in a later lesson. The file pointer begins at the start of the file. Append: 'a' Open a file for write only use. However, the data in the file is preserved and you begin will writing data at the end of the file. The file pointer begins at the end of the file. A file pointer is PHP's way of remembering its location in a file. When you open a file for reading, the file pointer begins at the start of the file. This makes sense because you will usually be reading data from the front of the file. However, when you open a file for appending, the file pointer is at the end of the file, as you most likely will be appending data at the end of the file. When you use reading or writing functions they begin at the location specified by the file pointer. PHP - Explanation of Different Types of fopen These three basic ways to open a file have distinct purposes. If you want to get information out of a file, like search an e-book for the occurrences of \"
cheese\"
, then you would open the file for read only. If you wanted to write a new file, or overwrite an existing file, then you would want to open the file with the \"
w\"
option. This would wipe clean all existing data within the file. If you wanted to add the latest order to your \"
orders.txt\"
file, then you would want to open it to append the data on to the end. This would be the \"
a\"
option. PHP - File Open: Advanced There are additional ways to open a file. Above we stated the standard ways to open a file. However, you can open a file in such a way that reading and writing is allowable! This combination is done by placing a plus sign \"
+\"
after the file mode character. Read/Write: 'r+' Opens a file so that it can be read from and written to. The file pointer is at the beginning of the file. Write/Read: 'w+' This is exactly the same as r+, except that it deletes all information in the file when the file is opened. Append: 'a+' This is exactly the same as r+, except that the file pointer is at the end of the file. PHP - File Open: Cookie Cutter Below is the correct form for opening a file with PHP. Replace the (X) with one of the options above (i.e. r, w, a, etc). PHP Code: $ourFileName = \"
testFile.txt\"
; $fh = fopen($ourFileName, 'X') or die(\"
Can't open file\"
); fclose($fh); PHP - File Open: Summary You can open a file in many different ways. You can delete everything and begin writing on a clean slate, you can add to existing data, and you can simply read information from a file. In later lessons we will go into greater detail on how each of these different ways to open a file is used in the real world and give some helpful examples. PHP - File Close The next logical step after you have opened a file and finished your business with it is to close that file down. You don't want an open file running around on your server taking up resources and causing mischief! PHP - File Close Description In PHP it is not system critical to close all your files after using them because the server will close all files after the PHP code finishes execution. However the programmer is still free to make mistakes (i.e. editing a file that you accidentally forgot to close). You should close all files after you have finished with them because it's a good programming practice and because we told you to! PHP - File Close Function In a previous tutorial, we had a call to the function fclose to close down a file after we were done with it. Here we will repeat that example and discuss the importance of closing a file. PHP Code: $ourFileName = \"
testFile.txt\"
; $ourFileHandle = fopen($ourFileName, 'w') or die(\"
can't open file\"
); fclose($ourFileHandle); The function fclose requires the file handle that we want to close down. In our example we set our variable \"
$fileHandle\"
equal to the file handle returned by the fopen function. After a file has been closed down with fclose it is impossible to read, write or append to that file unless it is once more opened up with the fopen function. PHP - File Write Now that you know how to open and close a file, let’s get on to the most useful part of file manipulation, writing! There is really only one main function that is used to write and it's logically called fwrite. PHP - File Open: Write Before we can write information to our test file we have to use the function fopen to open the file for writing. PHP Code: $myFile = \"
testFile.txt\"
; $fh = fopen($myFile, 'w'); PHP - File Write: fwrite Function We can use php to write to a text file. The fwrite function allows data to be written to any type of file. fwrite's first parameter is the file handle and its second parameter is the string of data that is to be written. Just give the function those two bits of information and you're good to go! Below we are writing a couple of names into our test file testFile.txt and separating them with a carriage return. PHP Code: $myFile = \"
testFile.txt\"
; $fh = fopen($myFile, 'w') or die(\"
can't open file\"
); $stringData = \"
Bobby Bopper\n\"
; fwrite($fh, $stringData); $stringData = \"
Tracy Tanner\n\"
; fwrite($fh, $stringData); fclose($fh); The $fh variable contains the file handle for testFile.txt. The file handle knows the current file pointer, which for writing, starts out at the beginning of the file. We wrote to the file testFile.txt twice. Each time we wrote to the file we sent the string $stringData that first contained Bobby Bopper and second contained Tracy Tanner. After we finished writing we closed the file using the fclose function. If you were to open the testFile.txt file in NOTEPAD it would look like this: Contents of the testFile.txt File: Bobby Bopper Tracy Tanner PHP - File Write: Overwriting Now that testFile.txt contains some data we can demonstrate what happens when you open an existing file for writing. All the data contained in the file is wiped clean and you start with an empty file. In this example we open our existing file testFile.txt and write some new data into it. PHP Code: $myFile = \"
testFile.txt\"
can't open file\"
Floppy Jalopy\n\"
Pointy Pinto\n\"
; fwrite($fh, $stringData); fclose($fh); If you now open the testFile.txt file you will see that Bobby and Tracy have both vanished, as we expected, and only the data we just wrote is present. Contents of the testFile.txt File: Floppy Jalopy Pointy Pinto In the next lesson we will show you how to get information out of a file by using PHP'sread data functions! PHP - File Read In this lesson we will teach you how to read data from a file using various PHP functions. PHP - File Open: Read Before we can read information from a file we have to use the function fopen to open the file for reading. Here's the code to read-open the file we created in the PHP File Write lessons. PHP Code: $myFile = \"
testFile.txt\"
; $fh = fopen($myFile, 'r'); The file we created in the last lesson was named \"
testFile.txt\"
. Your PHP script that you are writing should reside in the same directory as \"
text.txt\"
. Here are the contents of our file from File Write. testFile.txt Contents: Floppy Jalopy Pointy Pinto Now that the file is open, with read permissions enabled, we can get started! PHP - File Read: fread Function The fread function is the staple for getting data out of a file. The function requires a file handle, which we have, and an integer to tell the function how much data, in bytes, it is supposed to read. One character is equal to one byte. If you wanted to read the first five characters then you would use five as the integer. PHP Code: $myFile = \"
testFile.txt\"
; $fh = fopen($myFile, 'r'); $theData = fread($fh, 5); fclose($fh); echo $theData; Display: Flopp The first five characters from the testFile.txt file are now stored inside$theData. You could echo this string, $theData, or write it to another file. If you wanted to read all the data from the file, then you need to get the size of the file. The filesize function returns the length of a file, in bytes, which is just what we need! The filesize function requires the name of the file that is to be sized up. PHP Code: $myFile = \"
testFile.txt\"
; $fh = fopen($myFile, 'r'); $theData = fread($fh, filesize($myFile)); fclose($fh); echo $theData; Display: Floppy Jalopy Pointy Pinto Note: It is all on one line because our \"
testFile.txt\"
file did not have a tag to create an HTML line break. Now the entire contents of the testFile.txt file is stored in the string variable $theData. PHP - File Read: gets Function PHP also lets you read a line of data at a time from a file with the gets function. This can or cannot be useful to you, the programmer. If you had separated your data with new lines then you could read in one segment of data at a time with the gets function. Lucky for us our \"
testFile.txt\"
file is separated by new lines and we can utilize this function. PHP Code: $myFile = \"
testFile.txt\"
; $fh = fopen($myFile, 'r'); $theData = fgets($fh); fclose($fh); echo $theData; testFile.txt Contents: Floppy Jalopy The fgets function searches for the first occurrence of \"
\n\"
the newline character. If you did not write newline characters to your file as we have done in File Write, then this function might not work the way you expect it to. PHP - File Delete You know how to create a file. You know how to open a file in an assortment of different ways. You even know how to read and write data from a file! Now it's time to learn how to destroy (delete) files. In PHP you delete files by calling the unlink function. PHP - File Unlink When you view the contents of a directory you can see all the files that exist in that directory because the operating system or application that you are using displays a list of filenames. You can think of these filenames as links that join the files to the directory you are currently viewing. If you unlink a file, you are effectively causing the system to forget about it or delete it! Before you can delete (unlink) a file, you must first be sure that it is not open in your program. Use the fclose function to close down an open file. PHP - Unlink Function Remember from the PHP File Create lesson that we created a file namedtestFile.txt. PHP Code: $myFile = \"
testFile.txt\"
can't open file\"
); fclose($fh); Now to delete testFile.txt we simply run a PHP script that is located in the same directory. Unlink just needs to know the name of the file to start working its destructive magic. PHP Code: $myFile = \"
testFile.txt\"
; unlink($myFile); The testFile.txt should now be removed. PHP - Copy Function Now to copy testFile.txt to other location or other name, we simply run a PHP script that is located in the same directory. PHP Code: $myFile = \"
testFile.txt\"
; //Block 1 if (!copy($myFile, $myFile.'.bak')) { print (\"
failed to copy $ myFile... \n\"
); } // copy to other sub directory /test/ // sub directory must exist. //Block 2 if (!copy($myFile, '/test/'.$ myFile.'.bak')) { print (\"
failed to copy $ myFile... \n\"
); } Result: Block 1: This will create the new file name “testFile.txt.bak” Block 2: This will create the new file name “testFile.txt” in sub directory “test” PHP - Rename Function We also can rename testFile.txt to other name; we simply run a PHP script that is located in the same directory. PHP Code: $myFile = \"
testFile.txt\"
; if (!rename($myFile, 'newtestFile.txt')) { print (\"
failed to rename $myFile... \n\"
); } Result: Block 1: This will create the new file name “newtestFile.txt” and delete the file name “testFile.txt” PHP - Unlink: Safety First! With great power comes a slough of potential things you can mess up! When you are performing the unlink function be sure that you are deleting the right file! PHP - File Append So far we have learned how to open, close, read, and write to a file. However, the ways in which we have written to a file so far have caused the data that was stored in the file to be deleted. If you want to append to a file, that is, add on to the existing data, then you need to open the file in append mode. PHP - File Open: Append If we want to add on to a file we need to open it up in append mode. The code below does just that. PHP Code: $myFile = \"
testFile.txt\"
; $fh = fopen($myFile, 'a'); If we were to write to the file it would begin writing data at the end of the file. PHP - File Write: Appending Data Using the testFile.txt file we created in the File Write lesson, we are going to append on some more data. PHP Code: $myFile = \"
testFile.txt\"
; $fh = fopen($myFile, 'a') or die(\"
can't open file\"
New Stuff 1\n\"
New Stuff 2\n\"
; fwrite($fh, $stringData); fclose($fh); You should notice that the way we write data to the file is exactly the same as in the Write lesson. The only thing that is different is that the file pointer is placed at the end of the file in append mode, so all data is added to the end of the file. Contents of the testFile.txt File: Floppy Jalopy Pointy Pinto New Stuff 1 New Stuff 2 PHP - Append: Why Use It? The above example may not seem very useful, but appending data onto a file is actually used every day. Almost all web servers have a log of some sort. These various logs keep track of all kinds of information, such as: errors, visitors, and even files that are installed on the machine. A log is basically used to document events that occur over a period of time, rather than all at once. PHP - File Truncate As we have mentioned before, when you open a file for writing with the paramater 'w' it completely wipes all data from that file. This action is also referred to as \"
truncating\"
a file. Truncate literally means to shorten. PHP - File Open: Truncate To erase all the data from our testFile.txt file we need to open the file for normal writing. All existing data within testFile.txt will be lost. PHP Code: $myFile = \"
testFile.txt\"
; $fh = fopen($myFile, 'w'); fclose($fh); PHP - Truncate: Why Use It? Truncating is most often used on files that contain data that will only be used for a short time, before needing to be replaced. These type of files are most often referred to as temporary files. For example, you could create an online word processor that automatically saves every thirty seconds. Every time it saves it would take all the data that existed within some HTML form text box and save it to the server. This file, say tempSave.txt, would be truncated and overwritten with new, up- to-date data every thirty seconds. This might not be the most efficient program, but it is a nice usage of truncate. PHP - File Upload A very useful aspect of PHP is its ability to manage file uploads to your server. Allowing users to upload a file to your server opens a whole can of worms, so please be careful when enabling file uploads. PHP - File Upload: HTML Form Before you can use PHP to manage your uploads, you must first build an HTML form that lets users select a file to upload. See our HTML Form lesson for a more in-depth look at forms. HTML Code: <form enctype=\"
multipart/form-data\"
action=\"
uploader.php\"
method=\"
POST\"
> <input type=\"
hidden\"
name=\"
MAX_FILE_SIZE\"
value=\"
100000\"
/> Choose a file to upload: <input name=\"
uploadedfile\"
type=\"
file\"
/> /> <input type=\"
submit\"
value=\"
Upload File\"
/> </form> Here is a brief description of the important parts of the above code: enctype="multipart/form-data" - Necessary for our to-be-created PHP file to function properly.

action="uploader.php" - The name of our PHP page that will be created, shortly.

method="POST" - Informs the browser that we want to send information to the server using POST.

input type="hidden" name="MA... - Sets the maximum allowable file size, in bytes, that can be uploaded. This safety mechanism is easily bypassed and we will show a solid backup solution in PHP. We have set the max file size to 100KB in this example.

input name="uploadedfile" - uploadedfile is how we will access the file in our PHP script. Save that form code into a file and call it upload.html. If you view it in a browser it should look like this: Display: After the user clicks Upload File, the data will be posted to the server and the user will be redirected to uploader.php. This PHP file is going to process the form data and do all the work. PHP - File Upload: What's the PHP Going to Do? Now that we have the right HTML form we can begin to code the PHP script that is going to handle our uploads. Typically, the PHP file should make a key decision with all uploads: keep the file or throw it away. A file might be thrown away from many reasons, including: The file is too large and you do not want to have it on your server.

You wanted the person to upload a picture and they uploaded something else, like an executable file (.exe).

There were problems uploading the file and so you can't keep it. This example is very simple and omits the code that would add such functionality. PHP - File Upload: uploader.php When the uploader.php file is executed, the uploaded file exists in a temporary storage area on the server. If the file is not moved to a different location it will be destroyed! To save our precious file we are going to need to make use of the $_FILES associative array. The $_FILES array is where PHP stores all the information about files. There are two elements of this array that we will need to understand for this example. uploadedfile - uploadedfile is the reference we assigned in our HTML form. We will need thisto tell the $_FILES array which file we want to play around with.

$_FILES['uploadedfile']['name'] - name contains the original path of the user uploaded file.

$_FILES['uploadedfile']['tmp_name'] - tmp_name contains the path to the temporary file that resides on the server. The file should exist on the server in a temporary directory with a temporary name. Now we can finally start to write a basic PHP upload manager script! Here is how we would get the temporary file name, choose a permanent name, and choose a place to store the file. PHP Code: // Where the file is going to be placed $target_path = \"
uploads/\"
; /* Add the original filename to our target path. Result is \"
uploads/filename.extension\"
*/ $target_path = $target_path . basename( $_FILES['uploadedfile']['name']); $_FILES['uploadedfile']['tmp_name']; NOTE: You will need to create a new directory in the directory where uploader.php resides, called \"
uploads\"
, as we are going to be saving files there. We now have all we need to successfully save our file to the server. $target_path contains the path where we wan tto save our file to. PHP - File Upload: move_uploaded_file Function Now all we have to do is call the move_uploaded_file function and let PHP do itsmagic. The move_uploaded_file function needs to know 1) The path of the temporary file (check!) 2) The pathwhere it is to be moved to (check!). PHP Code: $target_path = \"
uploads/\"
; $target_path = $target_path . basename( $_FILES['uploadedfile']['name']); if(move_uploaded_file($_FILES['uploadedfile']['tmp_name'], $target_path)) { echo \"
The file \"
. basename( $_FILES['uploadedfile']['name']). \"
has been uploaded\"
; } else{ echo \"
There was an error uploading the file, please try again!\"
; } If the upload is successful, then you will see the text \"
The filefilename has been uploaded\"
. This is because $move_uploaded_filereturns true if the file was moved, andfalse if it had a problem. If there was a problem then the error message \"
There was an error uploading the file, please try again!\"
would be displayed. PHP - File Upload: Safe Practices! These few lines of code we have given you will allow anyone to upload data to your server. Because of this, we recommend that you do not have such a simple file uploader available to the general public. Otherwise, you might find that your server is filled with junk or that your server's security has been compromised. We hope you enjoyed learning about how to work with uploading files with PHP. In the near future we will be adding an advanced lesson that will include more security and additional features! Cookies and SessionPHP Sessions - Why Use Them? As a website becomes more sophisticated, so must the code that backs it. When you get to a stage where your website needs to pass along user data from one page to another, it might be time to start thinking about using PHP sessions. A normal HTML website will not pass data from one page to another. In other words, all information is forgotten when a new page is loaded. This makes it quite a problem for tasks like a shopping cart, which requires data(the user's selected product) to be remembered from one page to the next. PHP Sessions - Overview A PHP session solves this problem by allowing you to store user information on the server for later use (i.e. username, shopping cart items, etc). However, this session information is temporary and is usually deleted very quickly after the user has left the website that uses sessions. It is important to ponder if the sessions' temporary storage is applicable to your website. If you require a more permanent storage you will need to find another solution, like a MySQL database. Sessions work by creating a unique identification (UID) number for each visitor and storing variables based on this ID. This helps to prevent two users' data from getting confused with one another when visiting the same webpage. Note: If you are not experienced with session programming it is not recommended that you use sessions on a website that requires high-security, as there are security holes that take some advanced techniques to plug. Starting a PHP Session Before you can begin storing user information in your PHP session, you must first start the session. When you start a session, it must be at the very beginning of your code, before any HTML or text is sent. Below is a simple script that you should place at the beginning of your PHP code to start up a PHP session. PHP Code: <?php session_start(); // start up your PHP session! ?> This tiny piece of code will register the user's session with the server, allow you to start saving user information and assign a UID (unique identification number) for that user's session. Storing a Session Variable When you want to store user data in a session use the $_SESSION associative array. This is where you both store and retrieve session data. In previous versions of PHP there were other ways to perform this store operation, but it has been updated and this is the correct way to do it. PHP Code: <?php session_start(); $_SESSION['views'] = 1; // store session data echo \"
Pageviews = \"
. $_SESSION['views']; //retrieve data ?> Display: Pageviews = 1 In this example we learned how to store a variable to the session associative array $_SESSION and also how to retrieve data from that same array. PHP Sessions: Using PHP's isset Function Now that you know can easily store and retrieve data from the $_SESSION array, we can now explore some of the real functionality of sessions. When you create a variable and store it in a session, you probably want to use it in the future. However, before you use a session variable it is necessary that you check to see if it exists already! This is where PHP's isset function comes in handy. isset is a function that takes any variable you want to use and checks to see if it has been set. That is, it has already been assigned a value. With our previous example, we can create a very simple pageview counter by using isset to check if the pageview variable has already been created. If it has we can increment our counter. If it doesn't exist we can create a pageview counter and set it to one. Here is the code to get this job done: PHP Code: <?php session_start(); if(isset($_SESSION['views'])) $_SESSION['views'] = $_SESSION['views']+ 1; else $_SESSION['views'] = 1; echo \"
views = \"
. $_SESSION['views']; ?> The first time you run this script on a freshly opened browser the if statement will fail because no session variable views would have been stored yet. However, if you were to refresh the page the if statement would be true and the counter would increment by one. Each time you reran this script you would see an increase in view by one. Cleaning and Destroying your Session Although a session's data is temporary and does not require that you explicitly clean after yourself, you may wish to delete some data for your various tasks. Imagine that you were running an online business and a user used your website to buy your goods. The user has just completed a transaction on your website and you now want to remove everything from their shopping cart. PHP Code: <?php session_start(); if(isset($_SESSION['cart'])) unset($_SESSION['cart']); ?> You can also completely destroy the session entirely by calling the session_destroy function. PHP Code: <?php session_start(); session_destroy(); ?> Destroy will reset your session, so don't call that function unless you are entirely comfortable losing all your stored session data! PHP Cookies - Background Cookies have been around for quite some time on the internet. They were invented to allow webmaster's to store information about the user and their visit on the user's computer. At first they were feared by the general public because it was believed they were a serious privacy risk. Nowadays nearly everyone has cookies enabled on their browser, partly because there are worse things to worry about and partly because all of the \"
trustworthy\"
websites now use cookies. This lesson will teach you the basics of storing a cookie and retrieving a cookie, as well as explaining the various options you can set with your cookie. Creating Your First PHP Cookie When you create a cookie, using the function setcookie, you mustspecify three arguments. These arguments are setcookie(name, value, expiration): name: The name of your cookie. You will use this name to later retrieve your cookie, so don't forget it!

value: The value that is stored in your cookie. Common values are username(string) and last visit(date).

expiration: The date when the cookie will expire and be deleted. If you do not set this expiration date, then it will be treated as a session cookie and be removed when the browser is restarted. In this example we will be creating a cookie that stores the user's last visit to measure how often people return to visit our webpage. We want to ignore people that take longer than two months to return to the site, so we will set the cookie'sexpiration date to two months in the future! PHP Code: <?php //Calculate 60 days in the future //seconds * minutes * hours * days + current time $inTwoMonths = 60 * 60 * 24 * 60 + time(); setcookie('lastVisit', date(\"
G:i - m/d/y\"
), $inTwoMonths); ?> Don't worry if you can't follow the somewhat involved date calculations in this example. The important part is that you know how to set a cookie, by specifying the three important arguments: name, value and expiration date. Retrieving Your Fresh Cookie If your cookie hasn't expired yet, let's retrieve it from the user's PC using the aptly named $_COOKIE associative array. The name of your stored cookie is the key and will let you retrieve your stored cookie value! PHP Code: <?php if(isset($_COOKIE['lastVisit'])) $visit = $_COOKIE['lastVisit']; else echo \"
You've got some stale cookies!\"
; echo \"
Your last visit was - \"
. $visit; ?> This handy script first uses the isset function to be sure that our \"
lastVisit\"
cookie still exists on the user's PC, if it does, then the user's last visit is displayed. If the user visited our site on February 14, 2010 it might look something like this: Display: Your last visit was - 11:48 - 02/14/10 Deleting a Cookies If you want to delete your cookies that you have set, just remember your cookies name then set it again with the value Null then expiration to time() – 3600. PHP Code: setcookie (\"
TestCookie\"
, \"
\"
, time() - 3600); // set the time to minus to remove the cookie. Mail Function in PHPThe PHP mail() Function The PHP mail() function is used to send emails from inside a script. Syntax mail(to,subject,message,headers,parameters); ParameterDescriptiontoRequired. Specifies the receiver / receivers of the emailsubjectRequired. Specifies the subject of the email. Note: This parameter cannot contain any newline charactersmessageRequired. Defines the message to be sent. Each line should be separated with a LF (\n). Lines should not exceed 70 charactersheadersOptional. Specifies additional headers, like From, Cc, and Bcc. The additional headers should be separated with a CRLF (\r\n)parametersOptional. Specifies an additional parameter to the send mail program Note: For the mail functions to be available, PHP requires an installed and working email system. The program to be used is defined by the configuration settings in the php.ini file. PHP Simple E-Mail The simplest way to send an email with PHP is to send a text email. In the example below we first declare the variables ($to, $subject, $message, $from, $headers), then we use the variables in the mail() function to send an e-mail: PHP Code: <?php $to = \"
someone@example.com\"
; $subject = \"
Test mail\"
; $message = \"
Hello! This is a simple email message.\"
; $from = \"
someonelse@example.com\"
; $headers = \"
From: $from\"
; mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers); echo \"
Mail Sent.\"
; ?> PHP Mail Form With PHP, you can create a feedback-form on your website. The example below sends a text message to a specified e-mail address: PHP Code: <html> <body> <?php if (isset($_REQUEST['email'])) //if \"
email\"
is filled out, send email { //send email $email = $_REQUEST['email'] ; $subject = $_REQUEST['subject'] ; $message = $_REQUEST['message'] ; mail( \"
someone@example.com\"
, \"
Subject: $subject\"
, $message, \"
From: $email\"
); echo \"
Thank you for using our mail form\"
; } else //if \"
email\"
is not filled out, display the form { echo \"
<form method='post' action='mailform.php'> Email: <input name='email' type='text' /> Subject: <input name='subject' type='text' /> Message: <textarea name='message' rows='15' cols='40'> </textarea> <input type='submit' /> </form>\"
; } ?> </body> </html> This is how the example above works: First, check if the email input field is filled out

If it is not set (like when the page is first visited); output the HTML form

If it is set (after the form is filled out); send the email from the form

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