Hello, I am BuzzLY

[BuzzLY]

Allow myself to introduce... my.. uh, self. I am BuzzLY, a web / software designer veteran and relative PHP newbie. It's not too hard to pick up, but there sure do seem to be a few nuances. One hell of a scripting language, though -- I am quite impressed. I just wish the people at Lotus would take notice and learn a few things (I am a Lotus Notes developer -- shhhhh).

One of the first recommendations I picked up was the use of register_globals, or rather the suggestion to disable it. I have done so, and as a result have had to rewrite almost all of the scripts I have found on the web. So my question is, is it really necessary to disable them, and if so, why do most people seem to submit example code with registered global variables?

(as an example... to get the variable "page" from "http://www.url.com/index.php?page=foo", I have to use $_GET["page"] instead of "$page." Most people's examples use $page)

It's been good so far for making me go through all the code I get and learn things, but after a while it gets annoying to have to do this just to get the code snippets to work on my server.

Anyhow, hello, pleased ta meetcha, hope to grok PHP soon!

[Shadeless]

well me just newbie to,

but the register thingie came with newer versions of php, most of ur scripts probaly are written befor that, and that's why u need to rewrite it.. i think 🙂

Correct me if me is wrong 😉

btw welcome

[BuzzLY]

Unfortunately, I am not familiar with PHP3. I don't know if register_globals is a 4.x directive or not. However, I have discovered that as of PHP 4.2.0, register_globals is off by default. This is where I read that the recommendation is to use the so-called SuperGlobals ($GET, $POST, etc.).

Your explanation makes sense, though. I guess I'll just have to go through the code I download and make the necessary changes.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Elizabeth]

Welcome from a fellow Cincinnatian 🙂 What part of Cincinnati are you from?

This place is wonderful for picking up tips and tricks- you will really get a lot out of it... I know I do, anyway. 🙂

-Elizabeth

[BuzzLY]

Cool... I never meet people online from Cincinnati LOL. I was starting to think nobody in Cincinnati used a computer 😉

I live and work in Blue Ash. I used to live in Wyoming, but I moved to Blue Ash a couple of months ago. I have lived in Cinci for a little over 5 years -- originally from the SF Bay Area.

I have already gleaned some info from PHPBuilder and the Forum. It is a very good resource. I have found that the best place to get help is from other people who are working with it. Books and online tutorials, while useful, can only help so much.

Thanks for the welcome! I feel all warm and fuzzy now 😃

[dalecosp]

I'll welcome you also...

I've already seen a number of your posts here, and you look like you'll be much more of an asset to the community than I am 🙂

Also, what a nick/avatar. I have trouble not LOL when you make a statement that's the least bit funny, just because I'm being stared at by a ridiculous toy (with a great personality BTW).

As to the issue with register_globals, I believe that it's just that PHP is getting so popular that they're clamping down on the default install setup so that they don't get a reputation of being insecure. Variable poisoning is one issue there --- scr*pt kiddi3z have discovered that in a URL with a ? you can have fun by sticking in other words/values, for example. There may have been others.......

So, it's a classic example of reduced functionality vs. increased security.

The syntax is only slightly new. You'll notice that the $_POST array, for example, is analogous to the older $HTTP_POST_VARS array, "which is now deprecated" to quote the handbook.

Welcome to PHP!

dalecosp

"To infinity, & beyond!!"

[dalecosp]

Originally posted by BuzzLY

Your explanation makes sense, though. I guess I'll just have to go through the code I download and make the necessary changes.

Not necessarily. If you search, you'll find a few alternatives, such as a quick for/each to stick into the top of each script, or even a sitewide mod that can be stuck into Apache's httpd.conf (if that's your webserver) which is what I'm using until I get everything converted. It is a heck of a lot more typing....

dalecosp

[royviggo]

One of the first things I learned was to use a generic database class instead of the mysql spesific functions.

Also I wrote a small class to get the parameters:

<?php
class CGI {
    var $params  = array();

function CGI() {
    while (list($key, $val) = each($GLOBALS["HTTP_POST_VARS"])) {
        $this->params[$key] = addslashes($val);
    }
    while (list($key, $val) = each($GLOBALS["HTTP_GET_VARS"])) {
        $this->params[$key] = addslashes($val);
    }
}

function param($key) {
    return $this->params[$key];
}

function params($key) {
    return $this->params;
}
}
?>

Using the class:

include('cgi.php');
$cgi = new CGI;
$email = $cgi->param('email');

I'm used to Perl and the CGI.pm module. I let the PHP class methods match the CGI.pm methods so I can use similar (exactly the same in fact) code. Small tricks to ease development.

Roy

[royviggo]

If you really want to use the old style, and have PHP 4.1.x or later, try this code to generate global variables from the $_REQUEST array:

while(list($name, $value) = each($_REQUEST)) $$name = $value;

Roy