When setting your Zend Form with Select field you don’t always wish to have label on that filed but rather “Select one” as a first option.

Setting the required flag on Zend Select, or adding notEmpty validator won’t always work especially if your box is being populated dynamically.

Let’s say you have something like this:

<select name="example">
    <option value="Select one">Select one</option>
    <option value="value1">value1</option>
    <option value="value2">value2</option>
    <option value="value3">value3</option>
</select>

You could easily validate this by adding Zend_Validate_Regex and passing any pattern to it
as follows in snippet:

$select->addValidator(new Zend_Validate_Regex( '/[^Select\sone]/' ))
    ->addErrorMessage('You need to select one value');

This one will check if the value is not “Select one” and let your user pass validation only in that case.

PHP fluent interfaces have been around for quite some time. They are often used just for chaining methods of an object so that we get nice readable code.

Good fluent interface takes a while to build, and will take some planning to make object methods work seamlessly. However, if you still haven’t experienced the PHP fluent interface, there is a good way to start, just check out the following snippet.

class Php_Fluent_Interface_Demo {
    protected $_first;
    protected $_second;
    protected $_third;
 
    public function setFirst($firstVal) {
        $this->_first = $firstVal;
        return $this;
    }
 
    public function setSecond($secondVal) {
        $this->_second = $secondVal;
        return $this;
    }
 
    public function setThird($thirdVal) {
        $this->_third = $thirdVal;
        return $this;
    }
}

You have noticed that all setters have one line in common return $this; and this is how you set your methods to be able to chain. Example of usage follows in next snippet:

$phpFluentInterface = new Php_Fluent_Interface_Demo();
$phpFluentInterface->setFirst(1)
    ->setSecond(2)
    ->setThird(3);

I hope that this simple example is enough to get you started if you still haven’t tried PHP fluent interface. Good luck!

CSRF or Cross-Site Request Forgery is basically a way of requesting an unauthorized commands from a website by using an authorised user.

For example: Let’s assume that you are logged in on your blog and I know that. I could then send you an e-mail with following content: <img src=”http://yoursite.com/?action=delete-article&id=12″ />.

Although you wouldn’t see the image – request for deleting article with id 12 would be sent. This can be prevented by setting up a hidden input in your Zend Framework form with a value that will be posted with your request and validated when request is sent in order to prevent possible CSRF attack.

It is quite easy in Zend Framework to set CSRF protection and here is the snippet:

$form->addElement('hash', 'csrf_token',
            array('salt' => get_class($this) . 'stunt@c0d3rs~!'));

In order to see a full example of Zend Framework CSRF protection I have prepared an example of simple form with no elements on it.

Zend Framework CSRF protection

class Stunt_Form extends Zend_Form
{
    public function init()
    {
        parent::init();
        $this->addElement('hash', 'csrf_token',
                    array('salt' => get_class($this) . 'stunt@c0d3rs~!'));
    }
}

Have you ever wondered if you could let user see his website visits on his own admin page without having to leave backend of his system? I have…

Actually – the CMS I made for my clients (written in Zend Framework) has this option for quite some time, and users love it.

So – in order to implement this function on your own website (written in Zend Framework) I have shared following code. First – copy model:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59

class Default_Model_Analytics
{ 
 
	public function auth()
	{
		$email = "your_email@domain.com";
		$passwd = "your_password";
 
		try {
			$client = Zend_Gdata_ClientLogin::getHttpClient($email, $passwd, "analytics");
		}catch (Zend_Gdata_App_CaptchaRequiredException $cre) {
			echo 'URL of CAPTCHA image: ' . $cre->getCaptchaUrl() . "\n";
			echo 'Token ID: ' . $cre->getCaptchaToken() . "\n";
			return null;
		} catch (Zend_Gdata_App_AuthException $ae) {
			echo 'Problem authenticating: ' . $ae->exception() . "\n";
			return null;
		}
 
		return new Zend_Gdata($client);
	}
 
	public function fetch($gdClient, $startDate = '2010-07-01', $endDate = null, $dimensions = array("ga:region", "ga:city"), $metrics = array("ga:visits", "ga:pageviews"))
	{
		if(empty($gdClient)) return false;
		if(empty($endDate)) $endDate = date('Y-m-d');
 
		try {
			$reportURL	=	"https://www.google.com/analytics/feeds/data?ids=ga:" . $yourAccountNumber . "&" .
							"dimensions=" . @implode(",", $dimensions) . "&" .
							"metrics=" . @implode(",", $metrics) . "&" .
							"start-date={$startDate}&" .
							"end-date={$endDate}&" .
							"sort=-ga:visits";
 
			$results = $gdClient->getFeed($reportURL);
			$titleRow = 1; // To output a row of column labels
			echo '<table>';
			foreach ($results as $rep) {
				if ($titleRow) {
					foreach ($rep->extensionElements as $elem) {
						$titles[] = $elem->extensionAttributes["name"]["value"];
					}
					echo "<tr><td>" . implode("</td><td>", $titles) . "</td></tr>\n";
					$titleRow = 0;
				}
				$row = array();
				foreach ($rep->extensionElements as $elem) {
					$row[] = $elem->extensionAttributes["value"]["value"];
				}
				echo "\t<tr>\n\t\t<td>" . implode("</td><td>", $row) . "</td>\n\t</tr>\n";
			}
			echo '</table>';
		} catch (Zend_Exception $e) {
			echo "Caught exception: " . get_class($e) . "\n";
			echo "Message: " . $e->getMessage() . "\n";
		}
	}
}

Then – run following code in your controller so user can see Analytics results:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

$analyticsModel = new Default_Model_Analytics();
//get: date start and date end of Analytics results
$postParams = $this->getRequest()->getParams();
 
if($this->getRequest()->isPost()) {
    $gdata = $analyticsModel->auth();
    $analyticsModel->fetch($gdata, $postParams['year1'] . '-' . $postParams['month1'] . '-01', $postParams['year2'] . '-' . $postParams['month2'] . '-31');
}

Notice: This is not the proper way to write code in Zend Framework, but is used as an example.

There is an easy way to get current domain name in Zend Framework. To get domain name in Zend Framework – use following snippet in your view file.

echo $this->serverUrl();

Get number of Twitter followers using this PHP snippet is easy. Once you get all the data from Twitter, you just have to isolate followers_count. Besides followers count, you can extract following data as well:

1. id
2. name
3. screen_name
4. location
5. description
6. profile_image_url
7. url
8. friends_count
9. created_at
10. lang

Now, finally, to get number of Twitter followers, use following snippet:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7

$screenName = 'stuntsnippets';
$getData = 'followers_count';
 
$xml = file_get_contents('http://twitter.com/users/show.xml?screen_name=' . $screenName);
 
if(preg_match('/' . $getData . '>(.*)</', $xml, $match) !=0)
	echo $match[1];

Notice: Don’t forget to do some PHP caching for your script. You don’t want to have too many requests toward Twitter.

Have you ever wondered how to display Magento static block inside your app/store? It is an easy task, so just use following snippet. First, you have to create your static block in Magento admin, and than use its name to load it in your web application.

1
2

$block = Mage::getModel('cms/block')->setStoreId(Mage::app()->getStore()->getId())->load("Magento_static_block_name");
echo $block;

So, almost every website needs contact form – is it a real contact form or just a feedback from your users. We need to make a contact form as easy to deal with as possible. There is a simple way of dealing with all elements on your contact form by doing a simple trick. We are going to use a name convention to easily get all elements entered by user, to wrap them, and finally – to get them sent to the website owner.

First we shall start with a little bit of HTML as it is necessary for our contact form to live. Here – we are going to use our name convention to easily deal with details.

HTML contact form:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28

<form action="contact.php" method="post">
<dl class="php_contact_form">
	<dt>
		<label for="php_contact_form[email]">E-mail:</label>
	</dt>
	<dd>
		<input type="text" name="php_contact_form[email]" />
	</dd>
	<dt>
		<label for="php_contact_form[subject]">Subject:</label>
	</dt>
	<dd>
		<input type="text" name="php_contact_form[subject]" />
	</dd>
	<dt>
		<label for="php_contact_form[message]">Message:</label>
	</dt>
	<dd>
		<textarea type="text" name="php_contact_form[message]" ></textarea>
	</dd>
	<dt>
 
	</dt>
	<dd>
		<input type="submit" value="Submit" />
	</dd>
</dl>
</form>

Now – you might have noticed that all names are in “array” naming convention. They all belong to a single parameter that is going to be posted: php_contact_form.

As we are posting data from our PHP contact form to a contact.php, this is how contact.php should look like:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17

//if there is any data posted - we should process it
if(!empty($_POST)) {
  //we shall be sending e-mail with data from our php contact form,
  //so let just fill in a message
  $message = '';
 
  foreach($_POST['php_contact_form'] as $name=>$value)
    $message .= $name . ': ' . $value . '<br/>';
 
  $headers  = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
  $headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8' . "\r\n";
 
  //now that we have a message from our php contact form
  //we should send it to recipient
  mail('contact@domain.com', 'New message from our php contact form', $message, $headers);
  echo 'Thank you for contacting us!';
}

Notice: Real contact form should have some form of validation on both client and server side. It should also be protected with (at least) simple php captcha to prevent spam bots from sending a large amount of SPAM mail. However – this is just an example of how PHP contact form can be made for easy handling.

This is an example how PHP download counter could be made. This is just a basic but still functional example. So, in order to make a download counter we shall need three scripts:

• download_file.php
• download_count.php
• show_download_number.php

First part of our PHP download counter script will be replacing actual file that should be downloaded, and will count number of times someone has downloaded that file. Lets say your HTML link to a file will not be file.xls, but download_file.php instead. This is what a whole file should look like:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

$download_num = require 'download_count.php'; //get number of times file has been downloaded
$download_num++;
 
$my_stat = "download_count.php";
$handler = fopen($my_stat, 'w');
fwrite($handler, "<?php return " . $download_num . "; ?>"); //rewrite a whole download_count.php file
fclose($handler);
 
header('location: /file.xls'); //redirect user to his file

Second file (download_count.php) should be one line PHP file containing nothing but code from following snippet:

<?php return 0; ?>

This PHP file only returns value of download count, and since this is our setup, number of downloads should be zero.

Third file is used to see how many downloads has our counter recorded. So, include following snippet in your administration in order to present administrator with number of downloads of his file.

1
2

$download_num = require 'download_count.php';
echo 'PHP download counter has recorded: ' . $download_num . ' downloads of your file.xls';

Notice: This is a basic level script, and script of this kind should be able to track downloads of all files – and not just one. With simple adjustments this could be done, but it was not the scope of this article.

Script authors: Drasko Gomboc and Sankovic Marko.

When running automated backup it is a good practice to save exact time when you made backup in your file name. This snippet shows you how to automatically add date and time before extension in your file name.

1
2
3

$filepath = '/backup/folder/drasko_gomboc-and-sankovic_marko.txt';
$new_filepath = preg_replace("/(\.[^\.]*)$/", date('-Y-m-d-h-i-s') . "$1", $filepath); // Add date and time before file extension
echo $new_filepath; //output should look like this -> /backup/folder/drasko_gomboc-and-sankovic_marko-2010-10-27-09-00-00.txt

Script has been provided by generous guys and great developers: Drasko Gomboc and Sankovic Marko.