I decided to give the a whirl in Codeigniter which out of the box does not allow this to happen because of the MVC pattern.

If you want vanity url’s in Codeigniter you have a couple of choices. They both involve URI Routing if you open that file (application/config/routes.php) and paste the following code in:

// if you are using modules
if($handle = opendir(APPPATH.'/modules'))
{
while(false !== ($module = readdir($handle)))
{
if($module != '.' && $module != '..')
{
$route[$module] = $module;
$route[$module.'/(:any)'] = $module.'/$1';
}
}
closedir($handle);
}

// if you are using standard MVC
if($handle = opendir(APPPATH.'/controllers'))
{
while(false !== ($controller = readdir($handle)))
{
if($controller != '.' && $controller != '..' && strstr($controller, '.') == '.php')
{
$route[strstr($controller, '.', true)] = strstr($controller, '.', true);
$route[strstr($controller, '.', true).'/(:any)'] = strstr($controller, '.', true).'/$1';
}
}
closedir($handle);
}

// these are the /username routes
$route['([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)'] = 'controller/index/$1';
$route['([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/subpage'] = 'controller/subpage/$1';

Then in a controller you would have:

function index($username = '')
{
echo $username;
}

function subpage($username = '')
{
echo $username.' subpage';
}

The other method is very similar, just a different way of achieving it in URI Routing:

// modules
if($handle = opendir(APPPATH.'/modules'))
{
while(false !== ($module = readdir($handle)))
{
if($module != '.' && $module != '..')
{
$controllers[] = $module;
}
}
closedir($handle);
}

// controllers
if($handle = opendir(APPPATH.'/controllers'))
{
while(false !== ($controller = readdir($handle)))
{
if($controller != '.' && $controller != '..' && strstr($controller, '.') == '.php')
{
$controllers[] = strstr($controller, '.', true);
}
}
closedir($handle);
}

$url_parts = explode('/',$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
$reserved_routes = $controllers;

// these are the /username routes
if( ! in_array($url_parts[1], $reserved_routes))
{
$route['([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)'] = 'controller/index/$1';
$route['([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/subpage'] = 'controller/subpage/$1';
}

Obviously if you aren’t using modules you can remove the modules code and vice versa.

Hope it helps.

You did simple arrays the old way like this:-

$array = array(
"foo" => "bar",
"bar" => "foo",
);

The new way you do it like this:-

$array = [
"foo" => "bar",
"bar" => "foo",
];

You can do arrays without key like this:-

$array = ['foo', 'bar'];

The old way still works and always will do. For me it just makes sense to do it the new way as it will keep your code looking alot cleaner.

Presuming you have an Apache server, first off you will need to create a .htaccess file and put the following code in:-

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}

What does the above code do? The first lines tells Apache that we want to use the mod_rewrite module, the second line checks whether HTTPS is off, the third line forces https.

Once you are happy simply upload the file to the root directory of your website.

I hope this helps some of you out there.

Anyway, I’ve been posting some stuff on here that I may find userful for other developers, whether they know how or not. I wanted to do some alternative row colour for some table results within the system and this is what I did.

Presuming you have a counter such as $i, try this:

$i = 0;
foreach($vars as $var) {
$i++;

if($i%2 == 0) { echo 'class="first"'; } else { echo 'class="second"'; }

On the first row it will add the class ‘first’ and on the second row it will add ‘second’. It will keep repeating this until the last row.

In simple english: The variable $i is 0 before the foreach loop, we check if the variable is divided by 2, we will see if it is odd or even. If it divides, the remainder will be 0, and the classes will echo.

One thing I ran into was exiting the loop when after say 3 items have been listed.

This is what I did:

<?php
$i=0;
foreach($files as $file) {
if ($i == 3) {
break;
} else {
$i++;
} ?>

// do stuff here

<?php
} ?>

That’s it! Of course, some people prefer to do this with a for loop:

<?php
for($i=0; $i<3; $i++) { ?>

// do stuff here

<?php
} ?>

At the end of the day it’s personal preference.

Around a year ago i started to look for a PHP framework, to see which one i’ll be using in the long term. I’ve tried many different frameworks and these include Zend, Cake and Symfony but the one that stood out the most was Codeigniter. Every framework comes with classes that will help you develop an application but it’s how easy it is to use them and this is where Codeigniter takes my pick.

Codeigniter is for you if:-

• You want a framework with a small footprint.
• You need exceptional performance.
• You need broad compatibility with standard hosting accounts that run a variety of PHP versions and configurations.
• You want a framework that requires nearly zero configuration.
• You want a framework that does not require you to use the command line.
• You want a framework that does not require you to adhere to restrictive coding rules.
• You are not interested in large-scale monolithic libraries like PEAR.
• You do not want to be forced to learn a templating language (although a template parser is optionally available if you desire one).
• You eschew complexity, favoring simple solutions.
• You need clear, thorough documentation.

Codeigniter delivers, it’s easy to setup, easy to use and has a great forum if you ever need any help.

Over the next few months i’ll be using this blog to track and show you any personal projects i work on. The kind of projects i want to produce are from small little applications such as image uploaders to full scale websites. Stay tuned!

AddType text/xsl .xsl

What this basically does is make your server read those sort of files (.xsl) and therefore won’t throw any error up. After you’ve done that submit the sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools.

First of all the size of this database was roughly 80MB, secondly the server only allowed a max upload of around 2MB via phpMyAdmin so i thought how the hell am i going to get this across. I did some research, looked on forums and basically searched Google for the answer and to be honest i didn’t find the answer until i ran into what looks like the best script to do the exact task.

BigDump did the job for me. I had the database moved across within the next hour, was happy and immediately bookmarked the site. If you are having trouble moving a database across due to hosting restrictions i highly recommend taking a look at BigDump.

To restore the very large backup of your mySQL database (or a part of it) into the new or the same mySQL database. You can’t access the server shell and you can’t import the dump using phpMyAdmin or any other scripts due to hard memory resp. runtime limit of the web server.

It does exactly what it says on the tin. All you need to do is export the database from phpMyAdmin, upload the database to the same directory as bigdump.php, run the script and Kudos! You’ve imported a large database without any hassle.

If anyone has found any other scripts worth taking a look at, please let me know.