PHP

PHP 7 cool new features

Hello all,

Today, I thought to give you a quick run through about cool new features in PHP 7. PHP 7 has been there for sometime but it is still worth paying some closer look at what it has to offer to the world of PHP development. In this post I will be giving few examples which are exclusively to PHP 7 and onwards. Please note that at the time I write this post PHP 7.2.5 is available to download.

Scalar type declarations

Type declaration tells the type of the arguments needs to be passed when calling a function. Available scalar types are class, self, callable, array, int, string, float, boolean and iterable. (The latter five was introduced as part of PHP 7).

declare(strict_types=1);
function getTotal(int ...$ints)
{
return array_sum($ints);
}

var_dump(getTotal(45, 85, 134));

The above will give you this,

int(264)

With the strict_types enabled if you call the same function by passing mixed type parameters like this,

var_dump(getTotal("45", '8', 134.4));

This will give you a TypeError,

Fatal error: Uncaught TypeError: Argument 1 passed to getTotal() must be of the type integer, string given, Next TypeError: Argument 2 passed to getTotal() must be of the type integer, string given, Next TypeError: Argument 3 passed to getTotal() must be of the type integer, float given.

For additional information, the declaration of strict type is per file basis and it will affect function parameter types as well as function return types. Continue reading →

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Encrypt and Decrypt using OpenSSL in PHP

Hello all,

In this topic, I will be talking about encryption and decryption using OpenSSL in PHP. I will be briefly discussing what “two way encryption” is and how to use it in your PHP application using OpenSSL encrypt and decrypt methods with a readily usable example. At the end of this page there will be a zip file where you can download and run the example.

Two way encryption (encryption and decryption) is the simplest way of securely sending some sensitve information over the Internet using a shared secret key. To make things understandble picture this scenario. A web user fills a form with some data and press the submit button. When the form is submitted, data will go from place A to place B. If we send data as it is, anyone (i.e. Spy) has access to data packets can open and see what’s inside. So, before sending data as it is we will use a convertion method (encryption) to transform human readable data (i.e. Plain text) into a human unreadable format (i.e. Cipher text). Then the receiving end will perform a data convertion exercise (decryption) to transform data back to readable format.

(Image URL :- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crypto.png)

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How to call an Oracle Function in Symfony 2

Hi All,

How are you doing? Seems like my fingers do not want me to stay away from Symfony2 despite the Spring Bank Holiday. 🙂

Today, I am going to talk about how to call an Oracle Function in Symfony2. A function (aka stored function) is a collection of SQL statements which is used to perform various different activities within the Database. The good thing about the function is you can write your chunks of SQL inside the function and call it using a name to initiate. I will be focusing on how to call an Oracle Function in Symfony2 and if you would like to know more about Oracle functions please click here.

First, let’s take a look at a sample function which I have created and is saved in Oracle 12c Database.

create or replace 
FUNCTION testFunc123(old_bname IN VARCHAR2) 
   RETURN VARCHAR2 IS 
   BEGIN 
      IF old_bname = 'TEST' THEN
          RETURN 'Y';
      ELSE
        RETURN 'N';
      END IF;  
    END;


The role of the above created Oracle function is to check whether the value of ‘old_name’ is equal to ‘TEST’ or not. If it is ‘TEST’, then the function will return ‘Y’ otherwise ‘N’. So, now what we going to do is call this function inside a Symfony2 controller. This is really easy, thankfully to wonderful Doctrine2.


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CSV to DataTables, WordPress plugin

 

Update! The plugin has been approved by WordPress and it is currently available to download within the extensions directory – https://wordpress.org/plugins/aj-csv-to-datatable

Hi tech heads,

Today, I got the opportunity to create my first ever WordPress plugin. Well, this wasn’t quite planned like this but somehow I ended up creating my own WordPress plugin. Since few days, I badly wanted to show CSV data in a DataTable (yes, in Allan’s DataTables) within WordPress. So, I browsed the WordPress extensions page and found an interesting, easily configurable plugin “csv-to-sortable” which uses the JS sortable library. That is a decent plugin and does the job very well, but I wanted use DataTable instead. (Maybe I am in deep love with DataTables). I got extremely inspired by this plugin and then I decided to create a similar looking WordPress plugin so it can use DataTables to present data. I have submitted this plugin to WordPress plugins and it is currently being reviewed. However, if you want to get your hands dirty with this, before WordPress finish reviewing, then here it is.

Link to download the plugin – http://e-innoving.com/samples/wp-plugins/AJ-CSV-to-DataTable.zip

I have created a new repository in GitHub for this plugin so anyone can see what’s happening inside. Click on the link below to view the repository. Installation and usage details are also mentioned inside the GitHub page.

AJ-CSV-to-DataTable in GitHub

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Accessing SQL parameters and its values in DQL 2 in Symfony 2

Hi All,

When you are executing a DQL there must be situation where you might need to see the parameters and its values for the underlying SQL. Usually Doctrine queries are prepared statements and you will not be able to see the values which pass through the query. Prepared statement works in the following way,

  1. Sending the statement,
  2. Sending the parameters,
  3. And executing the prepared statement.
    (More information on prepared statements :- http://www.w3schools.com/pHp/php_mysql_prepared_statements.asp)

So, what you see when you get the SQL query is something similar to this,

 SELECT * FROM some_table WHERE column1 = ? AND column2 = ?

So today, I am going to show you a workaround to get the parameters (such as column1, column2 and so on…) and most importantly get the respective values for those parameters. Continue reading →

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