Creating PDF documents with PHP

Step 1 - Install the PDFlib extension PDFlib is not included with the default PHP 5.3 distribution, so you will have to install it. Download the PHP version of the PHPlib library from here. The Windows build of PHP 5 comes in many different varieties. I'll assume that you are using the VC9 non-thread safe build, and that you have installed PHP to the default location. Extract the libpdf_php.dll file from the PDFlib-7.0.4p6-MSWin32-php\bind\php5\php-530-nozts_VS9\ directory in the...

Dispaying your Twitter status with PHP

Step 1 - Define a URL Regular Expression Twitter posts quite often include links. However, the Twitter API will only return a status update as text, without the HTML markup to identify a link. To get around this we will use regular expressions to turn URLs into clickable links. The following is a simple Regular Expression that will match URLs in the Twitter status posts. $url_re = ...

Filtering Wordpress Categories Using an Undocumented Hook

In this article, we will briefly cover Wordpress hooks and use an undocumented one in order to manipulate category listings. After some further digging, while it is not listed on the Wordpress filter list, it appears that this “undocumented hook” is mentioned on the get_terms() function reference. So, we’ll call this a somewhat undocumented hook. Anybody who knows me knows that I love Wordpress, if perhaps not more than any man should love a collection of code. I...

Guestbook tutorial in 3 easy steps

Step #1: creating the database and table. First of all you need to create a database, the process of doing so is fairly simple. To create a database, you will need to use a database management tool. I personally recommend using phpMyAdmin – it is one of the most popular database management tools out there. Local servers: If you are using an web server pack (i.e. xampp), it will most likely be here: http://127.0.0.1/phpmyadmin/ If not, you will have to install it manually. You can...

Very simple PHP counter

This is a simple tutorial on how to make your own Web Counter, to put it into your web page. We’ll start by creating a counter text file named “hitcounter.txt” and save it to the same directory you will put your counter in. Next, open your PHP editor and save the document as “counter.php”. Now, we’ll set the variable for the file named “hitcounter.txt”. Remember to place the filename in quotes. Code: <?php $count_my_page =...

Installing Wamp Server (Apache+MySQL+PHP)

WampServer, originally called WAMP5, is a compilation of Apache, MySQL and PHP that is really easy to install and use. It come also with PHPMyAdmin, for you to easily manage your local databases. WAMP is the acronym of Windows + Apache + MySQL + PHP. As you can see, this is the most important for you to get ready to programming in your local computer as a server. WampServer install file is about 16MB, and at this time, these are the versions used on WampServer 2.0i: Apache 2.2.11; PHP...

How to write Shorthand PHP if and else assignments

What you don’t hear as a beginner When you are learning a scripting language such as PHP you will get the basics of assignment, evaluating and comparison operators such as == <= and != (equal, less than or equal, not equal). They are all you need to start writing code that can vary it’s behaviour according to what inputs it is given. Before long though you will want quicker ways of doing things. In this blog post I’m going to start with the long way of doing...

PHP Tutorial (File Handling): Scratch Pad

Prerequisite Knowledge of basic PHP syntax. In this tutorial you will learn about File Handling Functions We will be using 3 predefined functions for file handling fopen: To open a file file_get_content: To read a file fclose: To close a file Little theory before we begin Opening a file Predefined function fopen() is used to open a file. It returns a variable which can be used for accessing the file. Returned variable is called as file handler. Syntax: $var =...

Filtering Wordpress Categories Using an Undocumented Hook

In this article, we will briefly cover Wordpress hooks and use an undocumented one in order to manipulate category listings. After some further digging, while it is not listed on the Wordpress filter list, it appears that this “undocumented hook” is mentioned on the get_terms() function reference. So, we’ll call this a somewhat undocumented hook. Anybody who knows me knows that I love Wordpress, if perhaps not more than any man should love a collection of code. I...

Creating a Basic Template System in PHP

After implmenting this template system in your webistes, you will achieve the following benefits If you have a lot of pages that use the same design. If you want to make a layout change in the header, menu, footer or right section then you don't have to update numerous files. You will have to edit a single php file You will have less vertical scrolling when typing PHP code as the whole section will be replaced by a single line of php (i.e we will use php include function to include...