I had to come up with a way to check if PHP is running in SSL mode today. This will work on both Apache, Nginx and IIS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 function is_ssl() { $secure_connection = false; if (!empty($_SERVER[’HTTPS’]) && $_SERVER[’HTTPS’] !== ‘off’ || $_SERVER[’SERVER_PORT’] == [...]
Detecting a Multi-Dimensional Array in PHP
I recently had to find a quick way to check if an array is a multi-dimensional array, only to find that there are no PHP built-in function to do this. Here is a quick and easy way to do it: 1 2 3 4 function is_multi_array( array $arr ) { return is_array($arr[key($arr)]); } This can [...]
Making a Radio Group Tab-able Using jQuery
Recently I had to come up with a solution to make radio boxes tab-able. Mozilla Firefox allows you to tab over each radio box in a group, however, all other browsers do not. The solution is actually quite simple. First, in your HTML make sure to name your radio boxes with the same name, but [...]
PHP Safe Redirect Function
I see PHP code every day making use of the header function. Its the standard way to make redirects in PHP, but will fail if ANY output was sent to the browser before its called. There is a safer way to do this, which use JavaScript and meta redirects as a fail safe: 1 2 [...]
PHP use Backticks as Execution Operators
PHP use backticks as execution operators, which will return the output of to be assigned to a variable. Any code between backticks will be executed as a shell command – the backtick operator is identical to shell_exec() One example where I found this useful was to get the fully qualified domain name of a server. [...]
Testing if a string is serialized in PHP
PHP offers a way to store arrays and objects through serialization. The problem is, there is no actual PHP function the check if data is serialized. I came up with a dirty little function to help with that: 1 2 3 4 function is_serial($data) { return (@unserialize($data) !== false); } unserialize will return FALSE if [...]
Create a custom feed in WordPress
Recently I was faced with the task to create various formats of the WordPress feed. My initial thought was to create a new “page” and use that as the feed. So you would call something like domain.com/custom-feed/ Then I found the add_feed() function: I could not find proper documentation for the function in the Codex, [...]
Unlimited number of function parameters in PHP
Every so often I find myself needing to pass an unknown amount of arguments into a function. For example, assume you want to create a function to add a bunch of variables: add( $a, $b, $c, $d, … ) This can easily be done using the PHP function func_get_args(). 1 2 3 4 5 6 [...]
Converting from a RHEL install to a CentOS install
A couple of days ago I received a RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) Virtual Machine image from our IT support team. The problem was that the image was made using an evaluation copy of Red Hat. I figured I would convert it to CentOS, since there is no registration required. Here is what I did, [...]
Interfaces vs. Abstract classes in PHP
Many developers do not know the main difference between intefaces and abstract classes, since they seem to provide almost the same capabilities. Hopefully this will help you decide which to use in your application. When to use Interfaces? Interfaces allow you to specify which methods a class must provide, without having to know how they [...]
