jb j
- Bio
- Website
- @catswhocode
-
10 super useful PHP snippets
Email
Having the right code snippet at the right time can definitely be a life saver for web developers. Today, I’ve compiled 10 really awesome PHP code snippets that will, I hope, be very helpful in your forthcomming developments.
Super simple page caching
When your project isn’t based on a CMS or framework, it can be a good idea to implement a simple caching system on your pages. The following code snippet is very simple, but works well for small websites.
<?php
// define the path and name of cached file
$cachefile = 'cached-files/'.date('M-d-Y').'.php';
// define how long we want to keep the file in seconds. I set mine to 5 hours.
$cachetime = 18000;
// Check if the cached file is still fresh. If it is, serve it up and exit.
if (file_exists($cachefile) && time() - $cachetime < filemtime($cachefile)) {
include($cachefile);
exit;
}
// if there is either no file OR the file to too old, render the page and capture the HTML.
ob_start();
?>
<html>
output all your html here.
</html>
<?php
// We're done! Save the cached content to a file
$fp = fopen($cachefile, 'w');
fwrite($fp, ob_get_contents());
fclose($fp);
// finally send browser output
ob_end_flush();
?>
Calculate distances in PHP
Here is a very handy function, which calculate the distance from a point A to a point B, using latitudes and longitudes. The function can return the distance in miles, kilometers, or nautical miles.
function distance($lat1, $lon1, $lat2, $lon2, $unit) {
$theta = $lon1 - $lon2;
$dist = sin(deg2rad($lat1)) * sin(deg2rad($lat2)) + cos(deg2rad($lat1)) * cos(deg2rad($lat2)) * cos(deg2rad($theta));
$dist = acos($dist);
$dist = rad2deg($dist);
$miles = $dist * 60 * 1.1515;
$unit = strtoupper($unit);
if ($unit == "K") {
return ($miles * 1.609344);
} else if ($unit == "N") {
return ($miles * 0.8684);
} else {
return $miles;
}
}
Usage:
echo distance(32.9697, -96.80322, 29.46786, -98.53506, "k")." kilometers";
Convert seconds to time (years, months, days, hours…)
This useful function will convert a time in seconds to a time in years, months, weeks, days, and so on.
function Sec2Time($time){
if(is_numeric($time)){
$value = array(
"years" => 0, "days" => 0, "hours" => 0,
"minutes" => 0, "seconds" => 0,
);
if($time >= 31556926){
$value["years"] = floor($time/31556926);
$time = ($time%31556926);
}
if($time >= 86400){
$value["days"] = floor($time/86400);
$time = ($time%86400);
}
if($time >= 3600){
$value["hours"] = floor($time/3600);
$time = ($time%3600);
}
if($time >= 60){
$value["minutes"] = floor($time/60);
$time = ($time%60);
}
$value["seconds"] = floor($time);
return (array) $value;
}else{
return (bool) FALSE;
}
}
» Credits
Force file download
Some files, such as mp3, are generally played throught the client browser. If you prefer forcing download of such files, this is not a problem: The following code snippet will do that job properly.
function downloadFile($file){
$file_name = $file;
$mime = 'application/force-download';
header('Pragma: public'); // required
header('Expires: 0'); // no cache
header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');
header('Cache-Control: private',false);
header('Content-Type: '.$mime);
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.basename($file_name).'"');
header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
header('Connection: close');
readfile($file_name); // push it out
exit();
}
Get current weather using Google API
Want to know today’s weather? This snippet will let you know, in only 3 lines of code. The only thing you have to do is to replace ADDRESS by the desired adress, on line 1.
$xml = simplexml_load_file('http://www.google.com/ig/api?weather=ADDRESS');
$information = $xml->xpath("/xml_api_reply/weather/current_conditions/condition");
echo $information[0]->attributes();
Basic PHP whois
Whois services are extremely useful to get basic information about a domain name: owner, creation date, registrar, etc. Using PHP and the whois unix command, it is extremely easy to create a basic whois PHP function. Please note that the whois unix command must be installed on your server for this code to work.
$domains = array('home.pl', 'w3c.org');
function creation_date($domain) {
$lines = explode("\n", `whois $domain`);
foreach($lines as $line) {
if(strpos(strtolower($line), 'created') !== false) {
return $line;
}
}
return false;
}
foreach($domains as $d) {
echo creation_date($d) . "\n";
}
Get latitude and longitude from an adress
With the popularity of the Google Maps API, developers often needs to get the latitude and longitude of a particular place. This very useful function takes an adress as a parameter, and will return an array of data containing both latitude and longitude.
function getLatLong($address){
if (!is_string($address))die("All Addresses must be passed as a string");
$_url = sprintf('http://maps.google.com/maps?output=js&q=%s',rawurlencode($address));
$_result = false;
if($_result = file_get_contents($_url)) {
if(strpos($_result,'errortips') > 1 || strpos($_result,'Did you mean:') !== false) return false;
preg_match('!center:\s*{lat:\s*(-?\d+\.\d+),lng:\s*(-?\d+\.\d+)}!U', $_result, $_match);
$_coords['lat'] = $_match[1];
$_coords['long'] = $_match[2];
}
return $_coords;
}
Get domain favicon using PHP and Google
These days, many websites or webapps are using favicons from other websites. Displaying a favicon on your own site is pretty easy using Google and some PHP.
function get_favicon($url){
$url = str_replace("http://",'',$url);
return "http://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=".$url;
}
Calculate Paypal fees
Ah, Paypal fees. Every person who ever used the popular online payment service had to pay their fees. So what about a PHP function to easily calculate the fee for a specific amount?
function paypalFees($sub_total, $round_fee) {
// Set Fee Rate Variables
$fee_percent = '3.4'; // Paypal's percentage rate per transaction (3.4% in UK)
$fee_cash = '0.20'; // Paypal's set cash amount per transaction (£0.20 in UK)
// Calculate Fees
$paypal_fee = ((($sub_total / 100) * $fee_percent) + $fee_cash);
if ($round_fee == true) {
$paypal_fee = ceil($paypal_fee);
}
// Calculate Grand Total
$grand_total = ($sub_total + $paypal_fee);
// Tidy Up Numbers
$sub_total = number_format($sub_total, 2, '.', ',');
$paypal_fee = number_format($paypal_fee, 2, '.', ',');
$grand_total = number_format($grand_total, 2, '.', ',');
// Return Array
return array('grand_total'=>$grand_total, 'paypal_fee'=>$paypal_fee, 'sub_total'=>$sub_total);
}
(Last snippet has been removed due to an error, sorry)
(Note: Opinions expressed in this article and its replies are the opinions of their respective authors and not those of DZone, Inc.)
Comments
Nabeel Manara replied on Fri, 2012/01/27 - 10:40am
There’s some very useful scripts here.
Recently I was working on a whois function at work to continuously whois any number of domains from a database. I soon discovered though that Whois lookup (through mainly Nominet, not sure about others) has a limit on how many you can do within a certain time frame. So, it if checking more than a few domains, I’d recommend adding sleep(xx); to the foreach loop, as such:
foreach($domains as $d) {
echo creation_date($d) . “\n”;
sleep(xx);
}