Junal on the run

To check if an image/file URL exist, first thing came in my mind was file_exist() function. Thought it would be the best way to find whether my parameter that is throwing an image url is right or wrong. So I had to set a default image if there was no image found from the given link. file_exist() has a problem that it reads the directory of the file/image so when i’m reading an URL it will always return false. Well, I could separate the directory from the URL but it would be lengthy and messy, so I was searching for a better way. After reading the PHP manual online version I have found that this task can be done by getimagesize(). It returns an Array() with 7 elements. So idea is simple, if I get an array from the given URL then I can say that image is found otherwise not!

An example could be like this:

$url=getimagesize(“http://www.flickr.com/photos/27505599@N07/2564389539/”);

if(!is_array($url))

{

$default_image =”…/directoryFolder/junal.jpg”;

}

Recently, I have studied three types of PHP functions and they are: String functions, Date functions and Array functions. I have noted down some functions that were interesting. Well, PHP got thousands of built in functionality and I guess this is what makes PHP great. So, let’s have a look at some interesting functions from my collection.

String functions:

strpbrk ()

-          Search a string for any of a set of characters

Example :

$text = ‘Junal is studying php functions’;

echo strpbrk($text, ‘s’);
What will be the output? Well its will output: “studying php function”, because‘s’ is matched first.

strrev()

-          This will reverse the given string

Example:

echo strrev(“junal likes to be lost”);

output : “tsol eb ot sekil lanuj” – funny eh ?

strtok()

-          Tokenizing a string

-          Example :

$string = “Junal is being tokenized”;

$tok = strtok($string, ” \n\t”);

while ($tok !== false) {

echo “Word=$tok<br />”;

$tok = strtok(” \n\t”);

}

Output :

Word=Junal
Word=is
Word=being
Word=tokenized

ucfirst()

-          Ahh ! This is one of the most interesting and needy one that I used currently one of out facebook application, it uppercase the first letter of first word!

Example:

$string = ‘junal rahman’;

echo ucfirst($string);

output : “Junal rahman”

ok this above function make first letter of first word uppercase right. How about if we want all word’s first letter to be uppercase? Simple! We just have to use ucwords() function !

Date Functions:

Well, among all date functions I found one date function interesting

idate()

-          Format a local time/date as integer

Example:

$timestamp = strtotime(’9th February 2008′);

echo idate(‘m’, $timestamp);

Output: “2″

Array Functions

Array_diff()

-          Computes the difference of arrays.

-          Example :

$array1 = array(“a” => “junal”, “anupom”, “manzil”, “ahsan”);

$array2 = array(“b” => “junal”, “anupom”, “manzil”);

$result = array_diff($array1, $array2);

print_r($result);

output : “ahsan”

array_key_exists ()

-          Checks if the given key or index exists in the array

array_multisort ()

I used this function in several occasions. Very handy function to sort the multiple arrays. It does a lot of help when we want to sort an array by rank/number.

array_product()

-          Calculate the product of values in an array

Example:

$a = array (2, 4, 6, 8);

echo $a;

output :” 384″

natcasesort ()

-           Sort an array using a case insensitive “natural order” algorithm

range ()

-          Create an array containing a range of elements

Well that’s all! After studying these array functions, I have found another interesting thing about ArrayObject.

$array = array(’1′ => ‘one’,

’2′ => ‘two’,

’3′ => ‘three’);

$arrayobject = new ArrayObject($array);

Excellent stuff! By the way, I have to go now. There are thousands thing I don’t know about PHP. Have to get idea about them, have to run ….

Reference : PHP manual.

There are tons of PHP tutorials in the web. But a good tutorial depends on how easily it’s written and of course example is very vital to make a tutorial better. I have just read this tutorial from here, which are actually written for beginners. This tutorial that I’m talking about has three parts. I’m pretty sure if a beginner just read it carefully and practices, it will be really help him/her to understand what PHP and how it actually works. Well, this tutorial will give a good idea about php Framework concept as well.

First part: it starts from the very beginning. It includes database design and describes how to create some basic functions for the application.

Second part: you will see how to create a dynamic menu using php. I did the same thing with CakePHP for my garments ERP project. So, second part will give you some idea about framework concept.

Third part: it says about how to handle multiple items. So you will get a concept of foreach, for and while loop concept.

My requests, if you read these tutorials then please start from the first part. And of course if you run the code in your localhost you will understand it more.