ColdFusion to PHP

[rwilkerson]

I'm an experienced CF developer taking my first stab at OSS development. I'm struggling with several translations between the languages and their capabilities, but my current concern is the url. In order to make my urls more search engine friendly, I construct them as follows:

http://domain.com/file.cfm/n1/v1/n2/v2/n3/v3

Given CFs environmental variables and support for lists, I can easily create a custom function to parse this and retrieve the query string and all of its name value pairs. Because I'm so new to PHP, though, I don't have the tools yet to manipulate the language in a sophisticated manner. How can I extract the required variables from the url above to end up with $n1="v1", $n2="v2" and $n3="v3"?

Also, a couple of quick questions:

1. Does PHP support dot notation for structures/associative arrays?
2. Is there a function to format a date (similar to DateFormat() in CF)?
3. Is there an easier way to reference URL variables other than $HTTP_GET_VARS["var"]?
4. Given a typical query string (e.g. ?n=v&n2=v2 ), how do I access the entire query string as a whole?
5. Is there a GOOD book someone can recommend for an advanced developer new to PHP? I've got Wrox's "Beginning PHP" and Sams' "PHP Developer's Cookbook", but am incredibly disappointed with both.

I'm running PHP4 against a MySQL database on W2K. I've got a ton of other quickie questions, but I'll save them for another time.

Any help is greatly appreciated. I know this is a large post that covers a lot of ground, but like all new beginnings this is pretty frustrating. Thanks for all of the help I am (and will be) posting here.

[Anon]

I cant really awswer any of your other questions other then the book one. I am fairly new to php also and I found the Php Bible extremely helpful. If you don't want to take random peoples words for it, go to Barns and Noble and read for a few mins. But trust me the Php Bible is a great resource.

[Anon]

1. Does PHP support dot notation for structures/associative arrays?

Answer. No PHP does not use dot notation for variables. PHP uses instead similar language constructs to PERL or C.

2. Is there a function to format a date (similar to DateFormat() in CF)?

Answer. Yes, the date() function allows for formatting of dates. This used in conjunction with other time functions allows you to perform date formatting.

3. Is there an easier way to reference URL variables other than $HTTP_GET_VARS["var"]?

Answer. Yes, the example you refered to could easily be refered to as $var.

4. Given a typical query string (e.g. ?n=v&n2=v2 ), how do I access the entire query string as a whole

Answer. $argv - When called via the GET method, this will contain the query string.

[rwilkerson]

Thanks for the response. Your answers, of course lead to a couple of follow ups:

1. Even in C, structures are available and can be referenced via dot notation. That's why I had hoped PHP would have that available.

2. Where can I find a practical example of the function and a chart of the possible formatting codes?

3. Given the URL "http://.../_shell.php?section=phonetype", I try to reference $section, but the value is empty. Any idea why?

4. Likewise, with the same url, trying to echo "$argv" returns null.

I know it's a pain dealing with newbies (especially frustrated ones), but any additional info would be appreciated. As I mentioned, my books appear to suck. No mention of argv, no example of the use of date() and no explanation as to why my use of $var to display a url variable would return null. Ugh.

Thanks again.

[Anon]

1. PHP, like Perl, uses -> notation for classes:
   $obj->func();

2. http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.date.php

3. Are you inside a function or something? Variables from the query string are not global, you have to declare them so in the function:

function func() {
global $section;
print $section;
}

4. try $QUERY_STRING

Diego

[rwilkerson]

Thanks for 1 and 2, but 3 and 4 are still a problem. I'm not inside a function and, when I call $QUERY_STRING, I get nothing. I turned on the register_globals setting in my ini file in case that was it, but I got nothing. No kidding, the first line of code on my page is echo 'section = ' . $section and all I see displayed is "section =".

At this point I'm beyond frustration. This should be easiest part of programming and yet I'm somehow managing to fud it up.

Thanks for your help.

[Anon]

Hmm...that's really weird. Just to be sure, do you have a script like this:

<head>
<title>Test</title>
</head>
<body>
<?
print "section: $section";
?>
</body>

and are you calling your script:

http://domain.com/script.php?section=test

?

Diego

[rwilkerson]

Okay...

I'm not a religious man, but as God is my witness, it wasn't working last night. And yet, I come home from the office and all of a sudden...POOF! Not only can I reference url variables just by their name, but I can also retrieve the entire query string with the QUERY_STRING variable.

The only thing I can think of that changed is that I turned on the register_globals setting in the INI file last night. I tested again after doing so, though, so I'm not sure what's going on.

Thanks for everyone's patience and help.