Archive for December, 2007

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BRINGING FORMS (Web hosting comparison) TO LIFE if (function_exists(’nukeMagicQuotes’)) { nukeMagicQuotes();

Sunday, December 9th, 2007

BRINGING FORMS TO LIFE if (function_exists(’nukeMagicQuotes’)) { nukeMagicQuotes(); } ?> The file corefuncs.php contains the function nukeMagicQuotes(). To prevent errors if corefuncs.php can t be accessed, the call to nukeMagicQuotes() is wrapped in a conditional statement using function_exists() as described in the last chapter. 5. Save contact.php and click the Reload button in your browser. Confirm that you want to resend the post data. The $_POST array should now be clear of backslashes, as shown in Figure 5-4. You can check your code with contact03.php. Figure 5-4. The nukeMagicQuotes() function cleans up the $_POST array ready for use in an email. Processing and acknowledging the message You can now build the message body with the contents of the $_POST array and email it to your inbox. You also need some way of informing the user that the message has been sent or if there is a problem. Rather than redirect the user to a different page, the following PHP Solution displays the result on the same page. I ve adopted this approach because an improved version later in the chapter redisplays the user s input if any required fields are missing. Once the final version of the form is complete, you can redirect the user to a separate acknowledgment page by adding only two lines of code. PHP Solution 5-2: Sending email from the feedback form Continue using the same files. Alternatively, use contact03.php from the download files. 1. Now that you have finished testing the $_POST array, delete the following three lines of code that were used to display its contents (they re just after the closing

tag):

125
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Post office web site - PHP SOLUTIONS: DYNAMIC WEB DESIGN MADE EASY Removing

Saturday, December 8th, 2007

PHP SOLUTIONS: DYNAMIC WEB DESIGN MADE EASY Removing unwanted backslashes from form input As explained in Unraveling the magic quotes tangle in Chapter 3, many PHP servers automatically insert backslashes in front of quotes when a form is submitted. You need to remove these backslashes. PHP Solution 5-1: Eliminating magic quotes Continue working with the file from the previous exercise. Alternatively, use contact02.php from the download files for this chapter. Copy it to your working site and rename it contact.php. 1. Load contact.php into a browser. Enter some text. It doesn t matter what it is, as long as it contains an apostrophe or some double quotes. Click Send message. 2. Check the contents of the $_POST array at the bottom of the screen. If magic quotes are on, you will see something like Figure 5-3. A backslash has been inserted in front of all single and double quotes (apostrophes are treated the same as single quotes). If magic quotes are off, you will see no change from your original text. Figure 5-3. PHP magic quotes automatically insert a backslash in front of quotes when a form is submitted. 3. It s the setting on your remote server that matters, not what you see locally. Refer to Chapter 3 for instructions on how to check whether your remote server uses magic quotes. If it doesn t, make sure they are turned off in your local testing setup, and move on to PHP Solution 5-2. If in doubt, continue with the remaining steps. You can safely use the nukeMagicQuotes() function even if magic quotes have been disabled. 4. If your remote server uses magic quotes, copy includes/corefuncs.php from the download files for this chapter to the includes folder in your working site, and add the following code shown in bold to the end of the code block at the top of contact.php: Go visit our java server pages services for a reliable, lowcost webhost to satisfy all your needs.

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Web design online - BRINGING FORMS TO LIFE You may come across

Saturday, December 8th, 2007

BRINGING FORMS TO LIFE You may come across scripts that use $_REQUEST, which avoids the need to distinguish between $_POST or $_GET. It s less secure. Always use $_POST or $_GET instead. Old scripts may use $HTTP_POST_VARS or $HTTP_GET_VARS, which have exactly the same meaning as $_POST and $_GET. The longer versions have been removed from PHP 6. Use $_POST and $_GET instead. Sending email The PHP mail() function takes up to five arguments, all of them strings, as follows: The address(es) of the recipient(s) The subject line The message body A list of other email headers Additional parameters The first three arguments are required. Email addresses in the first argument can be in either of the following formats: ‘user@example.com’ ‘Some Guy ‘ To send to more than one address, use a comma-separated string like this: ‘user@example.com, another@example.com, Some Guy ‘ The second argument is a string containing the subject line. The third argument is the message body, which must be presented as a single string, regardless of how long it is. I ll explain how the fourth argument works later. Most people are unlikely to need the fifth argument, although some hosting companies now make it a requirement. It ensures that the email is sent by a trusted user, and it normally consists of -f followed (without a space) by your own email address, all enclosed in quotes. Check your hosting company s instructions to see whether this is required and the exact format it should take. It s important to understand that mail() isn t an email program. It passes the address, sub ject line, message, and any additional email headers to the web server s mail transport agent (MTA). PHP s responsibility ends there. It has no way of knowing if the email is deliv ered to its intended destination. Email doesn t always arrive when testing mail() in a local testing environment. Normally, this has nothing to do with your configuration, but with your service provider s security policies. If email fails to arrive, upload the script to your remote server and test it there. 123
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PHP SOLUTIONS: DYNAMIC WEB DESIGN MADE (Remote web server) EASY Because

Friday, December 7th, 2007

PHP SOLUTIONS: DYNAMIC WEB DESIGN MADE EASY Because of these advantages, you should normally use the post method with forms. The get method is used mainly in conjunction with database searches, and has the advantage that you can bookmark a search result because all the data is in the URL. We ll return to the get method later in the book, but the rest of this chapter concentrates on the post method and its associated superglobal array, $_POST. Although the post method is more secure than get, you shouldn t assume that it s 100% safe. For secure transmission, you need to use encryption or the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). Keeping safe with PHP superglobals While I m on the subject of security, it s worth explaining the background to the PHP superglobal arrays, which include $_POST and $_GET. The $_POST array contains data sent using the post method. So it should come as no surprise that data sent by the get method is in the $_GET array. Before the release of PHP 4.2.0 in April 2002, you didn t need to worry about using special arrays to access data submitted from a form. If the name of the form element was email, all that was necessary was to stick a dollar sign on the front, like this: $email. Bingo, you had instant access to the data. It was incredibly convenient. Unfortunately, it also left a gaping security hole. All that an attacker needed to do was view the source of your web page and pass values to your script through a query string. When the loophole was closed, millions of PHP scripts stopped working. Inexperienced web developers were up in arms, and harassed hosting companies changed a setting called register_globals in php.ini to restore a little peace to their lives. You will find lots of advice on the Internet to turn register_globals on in php.ini, because it will make your life easier. This is completely misguided. Turning on register_globals is foolish for the following reasons: It s totally insecure. There is no way to override the setting for individual scripts. If your hosting company turns register_globals off, any scripts that rely on it will break. The register_globals setting has been removed completely from PHP 6. Scripts that rely on register_globals won t work, period. It s very easy to write scripts that don t rely on register_globals, so it s not the major burden that some people imply. It just requires putting the name of the form element in quotes between square brackets after $_POST or $_GET, depending on the form s method attribute. So email becomes $_POST[’email’] if sent by the post method, and $_GET[’email’] if sent by the get method. That s all there is to it.
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BRINGING FORMS TO LIFE 5. Save (Mac os x web server) contact.php, and

Thursday, December 6th, 2007

BRINGING FORMS TO LIFE 5. Save contact.php, and reload the page in your browser. Type another message, and click Send message. Your message should disappear, but nothing else happens. So where has it gone? It hasn t been lost, but you haven t done anything to process it yet. 6. In contact.php, add the following code immediately below the closing

tag:

This displays the contents of the $_POST superglobal array if any post data has been sent. As explained in Chapter 3, the print_r() function allows you to inspect the contents of arrays; the 

 tags simply make the output easier to read.   7. Save the page, and click the Refresh button in your browser. You will probably see  a warning similar to the following. This tells you that the data will be resent, which  is exactly what you want. Click OK or Send depending on your browser.  8. The code from step 6 should now display the contents of your message below the  form as shown in Figure 5-2. Everything has been stored in one of PHP s super- global arrays, $_POST, which contains data sent using the post method. The name  attribute of each form element is used as the array key, making it easy to retrieve  the content.  Figure 5-2. Data from a form is stored as an associative array, with each element identified  by its name attribute.   As you have just seen, the get method sends your data in a very exposed way, making it vulnerable to alteration. Also, some browsers limit the maximum length of a URL, so it can be  used only for small amounts of data. The post method is more secure and can be used for  much larger amounts of data. By default, PHP permits up to 8MB of post data, although  hosting companies may set a smaller limit.   121    
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PHP SOLUTIONS: DYNAMIC WEB DESIGN MADE EASY 1. (Web hosting isp)

Thursday, December 6th, 2007

PHP SOLUTIONS: DYNAMIC WEB DESIGN MADE EASY 1. Locate the opening

tag in contact.php, and change the value of the method attribute from post to get like this:
2. Save contact.php and load the page in a browser. Type your name, email, and a short message into the form, and click Send message. 3. Look in the browser address bar. You should see the contents of the form attached to the end of the URL like this: If you break up the URL, it looks like this: http://localhost/phpsolutions/contact.php ?name=David+Powers &email=david%40example.com &comments=I+hope+you+get+this.+%3B%29 &send=Send+message Each line after the basic URL begins with the name attribute of one of the form elements, followed by an equal sign and the contents of the input fields. URLs cannot contain spaces or certain characters (such as my smiley), so the browser encodes them as hexadecimal values, a process known as URL encoding (for a full list of values, see www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.asp). The first name attribute is preceded by a question mark (?) and the others by an ampersand (&). You ll see this type of URL when using search engines, which helps explain why everything after the question mark is known as a query string. 4. Go back into the code of contact.php, and change method back to post, like this:
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BRINGING FORMS TO LIFE First, let s take a

Wednesday, December 5th, 2007

BRINGING FORMS TO LIFE First, let s take a look at the XHTML code used to build the form (it s in contact.php in the download files for this chapter):

The first thing to notice about this code is that the and