I tried 100 ways to get the file extension from a complete file path including directories and file name with extension. This one works perfectly. This uses php function pathinfo to get the directory name, filename and its extension for you which is very handy.

I am working on an expressionengine application these days. As I am using the beta version of expression engine until they release the final version, so the source files are encoded with the zend optimizer. Zend optimizer has a limitation that it can’t work with version 5.3 of PHP so far.

I had the latest XAMPP installed on my Windows VISTA machine for a year now but I found out that Zend optimiser isn’t compatible with version of PHP it provided i.e PHP 5.3, so I downloaded the version 1.6.8 of XAMPP from http://sourceforge.net/projects/xampp/files/ which has the older version of PHP i.e 5.2 which is compatible with Zend Optimizer.

Now here is the thing, I downloaded the Zend Optimizer from this link and installed it.  In its installation steps it asks you for two locations which you have to tell it correctly or else it will not work properly.

1. The path to php.ini
2. The path to Apache websrver’s root.

Based on the installation directory of your XAMPP, you can select appropriate directories in these steps. I chose default C:\xampp while installing XAMPP,  so I selected C:\xampp\apache\bin and C:\xampp\apache for the Steps 1 and 2 respectively.

And before that, using XAMPP control panel, I had stopped the Apache so when the configuration changes take place, the next time apache runs, it loads this new php.ini file which is changed by the zend optimizer installation.

Next thing you want to do is, check the php info using phpinfo.php file using the follwing url.

http://localhost/xampp/phpinfo.php

It will open up a page with a bunch of information. Look for the text  Loaded Configuration File and open the same php file using windows explorer.

For me it was

So I opened the php.ini folder and searched for the line where Zend Optimiser properties were mentioned and

In the above code I changed


zend_optimizer.enable_loader = 0


to


zend_optimizer.enable_loader = 1


So its loaded the next time I start the apache.

I have recently been working on PHP RSS reader script that was supposed to do three different things with RSS description text. To make a teaser RSS text, I was asked to develop the functionality in a such a way that text can be cropped in these three ways.

• with defining the number of words.
• with defining the numbers of characters.
• with defining the number of sentences.

Here is a set of functions that helps you crop a text in three different ways. The usage of the function is also mentioned at the end f the script.
<?php

/**
* cropsentence()
*
* @param mixed $str
* @param mixed $noof
* @param integer $mode
// 0 means crop by no of characters // 1 means crop by no of sentences // 2 means crop by number of words
* @param string $appendwith
* @return
*/
function cropsentence($str, $noof, $mode = 0, $appendwith = “…”)
{
if (strlen($str) > $chars) {
if ($mode == 0) { // 0 means crop by no of characters
$str = substr($str, 0, $noof);
} elseif ($mode == 1) { // 1 means crop by no of sentences
$str = getLeadingSentences($str, $noof);
} elseif ($mode == 2) { // 2 means crop by number of words
$str = wordTrim($str, $noof);

} elseif ($mode < 0 || $mode > 2) { // others means do nothing
echo “The current mode is not correct.”;
}
$str = $str . $appendwith;
return $str;
} else {
return $str;
}
}

//getLeadingSentences
//Copyright (c) 2000 Jason R. Pitoniak.  All rights reserved.
//jason@interbrite.com http://www.interbrite.com

//If you find this code useful, find a bug, or have a suggestion,
//please email me.  Feel free to use this code for any purpose.

/**
* getLeadingSentences()
*
* @param mixed $data
* @param mixed $max
* @return
*/
function getLeadingSentences($data, $max)
{
//given string $data, will return the first $max sentences in that string

//in: $data = the string to parse, $max = maximum # of sentences to return
//returns: string containing the first $max sentences
//(If the # of sentences in the string is less than $max,
//then entire string will be returned.)

//a sentence is any charactors except ., !, and ?
//any number of times,  plus one or more .s, ?s, or !s
//and any leading or trailing whitespace:
$re = “^s*[^.?!]+[.?!]+s*”;
$out = “”;
for ($i = 0; $i < $max; $i++) {
if (ereg($re, $data, $match)) {
//if a sentence is found, take it out of $data and add it to $out
$out .= $match[0];
$data = ereg_replace($re, “”, $data);
} else {
$i = $max;
}
}
return $out;
}

/**
* getLeadingWords()
*
* @param mixed $data
* @param mixed $max
* @return
*/
function getLeadingWords($data, $max)
{
//given string $data, will return the first $max sentences in that string

//in: $data = the string to parse, $max = maximum # of sentences to return
//returns: string containing the first $max sentences
//(If the # of sentences in the string is less than $max,
//then entire string will be returned.)

//a sentence is any charactors except ., !, and ?
//any number of times,  plus one or more .s, ?s, or !s
//and any leading or trailing whitespace:
$re = “^s*[^.?!]+[.?!]+s*”;
$out = “”;
for ($i = 0; $i < $max; $i++) {
if (ereg($re, $data, $match)) {
//if a sentence is found, take it out of $data and add it to $out
$out .= $match[0];
$data = ereg_replace($re, “”, $data);
} else {
$i = $max;
}
}
return $out;
}

/**
* wordTrim()
*
* @param mixed $str
* @param mixed $len
* @return
*/
function wordTrim($str, $len)
{
$wordCount = 0;
$charCount = 0;

$length = strlen(strip_tags($str));
for ($i = 0; $i < $length; $i++) {
if ($str[$i] == ‘ ’) {
$wordCount++;
$charCount++;
if ($wordCount == $len)
break;
} else {
$charCount++;
} # end if
} # end for loop

$newstr = substr($str, 0, $charCount);
return $newstr;
} # end function

# Example used for testing purpose

$str2 = “Hello there I work for you. I have been working for other guys, but you are the coolest guy among them.
Also I really like the way you guide me with new technologies and the latest trends. You always tell me to keep working hard!”;
echo cropsentence($str2, 22, 2);

?>

Usage

cropsentence($str, $noof, $mode, $appendwith );

$str: This is the string / text to be cropped

$noof: Number of characters/words/sentences based on the $mode parameter

$mode: Three values of $mode can be defined

1. 0 means crop by no of characters.
2. 1 means crop by no of sentences .
3. 2 means crop by number of words.

$appendwith: This can be any characters like ‘…’ , ‘…more’ etc which will be appended with the cropped text when its returned.

Download:

You can download the script here.

I was recently working on a custom RSS feed reader where the prior most concern of the client was being able to crop the text with respect to the

1. Number of words.
2. Numbers of characters.
3. Number of sentences.

So a very important measure had to be taken. Since the cropping can end up giving us a broken link if its text  is cropped before the </a> tag, our output can end up as a disaster.

So here is a little script that can help you strip off your html tags in such situations.

<?php

$text = "This is a link to <a href='http://www.fahdmurtaza.com/myblog/'>Fahd Murtaza's </a> site!";
echo strip_tags($text, "");

?>

So strip_tags would end up removing anything from the $text. The second parameter of the strip_tags will simply declare any html tags you want to neglect while stripping the text. Off course you will need to deal with them separately in text cropping situations like I had.

Here is one more example.

Hello readers

A few minutes ago, I had a situation where

For example you have a string which is like “cat,cow,hamster,owl,”

and you want to remove the last comma from the string

then you can use this code

<?php
$string="cat,cow,hamster,owl,";
echo $string."<br/>";
$string= substr($string, 0, strlen($string)-1);
echo $string;
?>

This comes really handy in many situations.

You are a web surfer right? Thats how you stumbled upon my site. You can rate this post by clicking on these rating stars with this post and yeah you see that cool when you rate a post here. Its an Ajax script working on the background showing you the nice status bar message with this icon. Its interactive and a good usable thing for your own Ajax script. Wanna make one like that for your ajax stuff? Yeah you can do so on the web!

Keep on reading to find the link to the amazing site!

Ajax loading gif generator Create easily your own ajax loader icon

You don’t need any special gif animation tool for that. All you have to do is go to this website and create one for you with customizable colors. It generates the animation gif on the fly that you can right click and save to your computer and later on use in your Ajax solutions. Its a nice thing and a great web 2.0 application. I give 100% to usability, 90% to design, 95% to ease of use and 101% for sharing his work free of cost! But I am sorry his blog is not in English! Anyhow enjoy the cool thing and do rate this post for me so I know how may users used this thing!

Here is an example for toy to understand the concept of multiple arrays in a single loop in PHP. My friend and coworker Mohammad Khan (yeah he is from Peshawar and sits beside me in the office where we develop web applications) was working on a such a situation for an airline scheduling system for Intercontinental Airways with HTML form submission in PHP where he has multiple arrays passed as POST variables. So I did a quick search on internet and found solutions spread across the forums. I decided to do the quick and dirty mash up of all the stuff with proper editing to get you guys going on the same path along!

Lets suppose you have two arrays one for links and other for the link name. You want to us a single foreach to mash them up. Have a look

PHP Code:

$href = array('htmlfile.html', 'giffile.gif', 'phpfile.php', 'thejpglink.jpg');
$name = array('My html file', 'My gif file', 'My php file', 'My jpeg file');


You might be thinking, “How do I make it so that I can combine both arrays to make a link?”. Yeah thats what I am gonna teach you guys. Oh I forgot to mention the gals . Yep ladies I heard you saying, “I want the output to be:

PHP Code:

<a href="htmlfile.html">My html file</a>
<a href="giffile.gif">My gif file</a>
<a href="phpfile.php">My php file</a>
<a href="thejpglink.jpg">My jpg file</a>


. And I want to do this with a single foreach”.

Thoughts: Do you still think For only works with one array? Yeah you are wrong!

In both, assume that $ar1 is the first array, and $ar2 is the second array.

echo $ar1[$n].$ar2[$n]; means echo the value of that part of the first array, then that part of the second array. You could place them into links as you wish.

PHP Code:

for ($n=0; isset($ar1[$n]) && isset($ar2[$n]; $n++) { //for loop:
//set $n to zero first time
//while both the $ar1 and $ar2 at $n are set, like $ar2[7], etc.
echo $ar1[$n].$ar2[$n];
}