I am a complete noob to PHP and am working on a largish PHP/MySQL application. My approach to this, while working top-down on the general design, is to write little routines to make sure I have the coding right and also to use as code foundations or library entries for the elements of the final application.
While I can always get something to work, I thought I would take advantage of this forum to show my code and invite comments from others regarding common conventions, security, performance, things like that. I want to go into this project ensuring that I am using best practices across the board.
I am sure I can learn a lot from folks on this board and perhaps other noobs can learn from the commentary my posts generate (if any).
My first snippet is a self-referring form script. I think the comments in the script show what I am trying to do. The script works fine but I know there is no security and am not sure whether I am employing server variables according to best practices.
Noobs should be able to download this code (and the include file) and run it without modification:
<?php
/*
* self-referring_form_no_gets_inc_html.php - by <redneck@goathill.net>
*
* This script demonstrates a self-referring form which does not allow
* attempted GET calls on the script.
*
* If the script is called with the appropriate POST call, the variables
* are passed and displayed. If it is called with no parameters, the form
* for entering the variables is displayed. This form is self-referring,
* ie, it calls itself for processing.
*
* If the script is called with a GET (ie, script.php?id=variable),
* processing is skipped and a message is displayed.
*
*/
require_once('html_tests.php'); // HTML header and footer information
// first we write some HTML:
html_header("Self-referring forms test");
// next we test for user input, starting with any GET variables
if (!$_GET)
{ // okay, no GETs, how about POSTs?
if (!$_POST)
{ // no POSTs, so show the form
// note the use of $_SERVER[SCRIPT_NAME] to call the script
?>
<form method="POST" action=<?php echo "\"$_SERVER[SCRIPT_NAME]\"" ?>>
Item Name: <br><input type="text" name="item_name" size=80><br>
Description: <br><textarea name="description" rows=4 cols=80></textarea><br><input type="submit">
</form>
<p>
<?php
} else { // run this bit if script was called with POST
echo "There was user input <p>";
echo "The <em> item_name </em> value is $_POST[item_name]. <br />";
echo "The <em> description </em> value is $_POST[description] <p>";
} // end POST if
} else { // run this bit if the script was called with GET
echo "Cannot use GET.<p>";
} // end GET if
// clean it all up with the HTML footer:
html_footer($_SERVER[SCRIPT_NAME], "redneck@goathill.net");
?>
Here's the include file:
<?php
/*
* html_tests.php - by <redneck@goathill.net>
*
* This is a PHP include file for generating HTML headers and footers.
* This particular file is specific to tests scripts written to test
* certain aspects of my PHP application. There are two functions to the
* file, html_header() and html_footer().
*
*/
function html_header($title) { // straightforward header formatting
echo "<html>\n <head> \n <title> $title </title>\n </head>";
echo " <body>\n <h1> $title </h1>\n\n";
} // end of function html_header()
function html_footer($scriptpath, $email_address) {
// The $scriptpath variable is usually the __FILE__ variable passed from
// the parent script. This includes full path information which is
// stripped out for use as a filename:
$scriptname = substr($scriptpath, strrpos($scriptpath,"/") + 1);
// The full path is handy for getting the file modification timestamp:
$script_mod_date = date("m/d/y H:i T", filemtime($scriptpath));
// ...and some colors to brighten things up:
$date_color = "<font color=\"green\">";
$file_color = "<font color=\"red\">";
echo "\n\n <hr noshade>\n";
echo " The file $file_color $scriptname </font>" .
" last changed $date_color $script_mod_date</font>.\n";
// the e-mail address includes a mailto: tag
echo " <address>\n" .
" <a href=\"mailto:$email_address\"> $email_address </a>\n" .
" </address>\n";
echo " </body>\n</html>"; // close up the HTML page
} // end of function html_footer()
?>
