Author: Josh Sherman
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The Importance of a Logout Page
Running social networks have proven eye opening in regard to how users interact with a website. One thing that I’ve noticed that I didn’t necessarily expect is that quite a few people click the logout button. Perhaps it’s because they have more than one account (tsk tsk as we don’t…
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Using Transactions with PHP Data Objects (PDO)
With PHP Data Objects, transactions are pretty simple. To be able to use a transaction, you simply wrap your queries with a call to beginTransaction() and either use commit() or rollBack() at the end. Rolling back is at your discretion but the easiest implementation would be to wrap the queries…
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How to Use Prepared Statements in PHP
Now that we know how to create a connection to our database using PHP Data Objects, let’s talk a bit about prepared statements. Now I’d like to think that we’ve all made this mistake before, taken user input and used it in an SQL query something like this: $db->execute(‘SELECT *…
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How to Connect to a Database with PHP Data Objects (PDO)
PHP Data Objects (PDO) provide a consistent interface to different databases including MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, SQL Server and a handful of other systems as well. Aside from database-specific SQL, the only other thing that isn’t consistent is how to connect to a database. Each database type requires a string to…
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Yet Another Linode vs. DigitalOcean Post
This has been turning into an every 3 month thing since I originally blogged about Linode vs. DigitalOcean back in late February and then again about Linode NextGen vs. DigitalOcean in May. Not to mention when I moved out of the cloud in June when I switched to bare metal…
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Split a String by Letters with PHP
Every once in a blue moon you find yourself needing to take a string and converting it to an array of characters in the string. Maybe it’s because you want to count how often certain letters exist in the string or want to convert the letters to something else. To…
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Passing Arguments to Command-Line PHP
In a previous post we discussed how to tell whether or not you are on the command-line from within your PHP script. Today we’re going to talk about passing command-line arguments to your script. When on the command-line two variables are available to you, $argc and $argv. They are the…
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Calculating page load time / execution time with PHP
So who remembers back in the day when one of the coolest things you could have on your website’s footer was the page load time? As passé as that may seem in this day in age, it’s still something that can be useful when attempting to profile a site or…
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MySQL and Redis Command Equivalents
Score another one for HitTail as this particular topic was their suggestion. MySQL (PostgreSQL, SQL Server, SQLite or any other RDBMS I didn’t list) and Redis are completely different beasts in regard to syntax and especially schema design (or lack there of). The following are just some common SQL statements…
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Check if PHP is running from the command-line
When running PHP from the command-line interface, the availability of some variables and functionality may or may not be available. Case in point, when running command-line PHP sessions are not available and $_SESSION is undefined. When you’re on the command-line there’s also the possibility that you want to use the…