Andrei DANEASA » PHP

Book review: PHP 5 e-commerce Development by Michael Peacock (Packt Publishing)

andreiash — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 17:53:19 +0000

PHP is one of my preferred languages. I’ve been using it for almost 10 years, since version 3, I witnessed the release of 4.0… in some words: I have a bit of experience.
I’ve been given by Packt one of the latest PHP books they published, called “PHP 5 e-Commerce Development“. The title sounds very promising and I expected to get an update on the latest technologies and techniques related to e-Commerce out of it.

First, the book is following what it says in the title, creating one e-Commerce site from the ground. From authentication to discount codes, everything is covered by the book. It touches also some APIs from payment gateways and Google. So who wants to have a ride in knowing how to build an eCommerce site with PHP 5 should read the book.

If you want just the positive feedback you should stop here.

Secondly, I don’t think the book has a well defined target, because author’s own framework is used all over the book and the explanations are not sufficient enough in my opinion. When there are so many frameworks on the market, it’s a very high chance that the users to use one of these frameworks (not the author’s one) to build the eShop. In this case most of the code is useless and you’ll remain just with the explanation of the logic behind. I also expected more specific info on payment processing, SEO, marketing, newsletters, admin alerts, and not necessary all the source code out there.

I reckon I didn’t read the description, excerpt or anything else about the book before starting to read it, so that’s why I was a bit dissapointed. The book’s description on Packt is correct: “This is a fast-paced tutorial focusing on creating a framework and using it to build an online store through an ongoing case study. Later chapters include examples to illustrate how easily the framework can be adapted for different situations. The framework and code are enhanced and built upon with each chapter, adding more and more functionality. “. So online store is just a case study, the book is focused on the framework.

However, the book is still very interesting for people that want to create their own in-house light framework and that don’t want to rely on a fat framework like CodeIgniter, phpCake, ZendFramework.

My conclusion: a nice reading, 4 stars out of 5, but if you don’t plan to use the framework presented in the book, then the source code is too much and hard to follow.

****~ (4.0/5)

openSource e-shop solutions: prestaShop, osCommerce.

Enjoy!

I’m going to review one/some Packt book(s)

Thank you ZendEditor !

Thumbnail generation with PHP tutorial

Thank you ZendEditor !

andreiash — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:21:42 +0000

Seems that my thumbnail generation tutorial was somehow appreciated by community and somebody posted an article on Zend Developer Zone describing my tutorial as “Advanced Thumbnail Trickery with PHP“.

First, thank you!
Second, I never had so many visitors coming from the same referred. When I saw my statistics I thought that my internal statistics tool went crazy and I checked my google analytics account. Seems that it’s true.

I promise I will elaborate the topic and make a class with it. I will also try to do the same thing with ImageMagick as a visitor suggested.

Thumbnail generation with PHP tutorial

andreiash — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 08:19:25 +0000

No, it’s not yet another PHP thumbnail generation tutorial! I recently needed a function to:

create square thumbnails
don’t crop the initial image, but scale it and fill with white background
center the thumbnail in the square
call the function in a loop to process an entire folder

I found no suitable example and I decided that instead of digging too much it’s better to create my own function and a class for it.

Let’s start with a photo that we need to create a thumbnail for:

Nice kid, huh?

… and what we want to achieve:

First step would be the thumbnail generation snippet:

$square_size = 167;
$quality = 100;
//get original image attributes
list($width, $height, $type, $attr) = getimagesize($photos_dir."/".$file);
$thumb=imagecreatefromjpeg($photos_dir."/".$file);
$thumb_p = imagecreatetruecolor($square_size, $square_size);
imagecopyresampled($thumb_p, $thumb, 0, 0, 0, 0, $square_size, $square_size, $width, $height);
//save the file
imagejpeg($thumb_p,$thumbs_dir."/".$file,$quality);

This would be the result:

As we can see, the photo is distorted and we need to scale it, by adding 2 variables:

//set dimensions
if($width> $height) {
$width_t=$square_size;
//respect the ratio
$height_t=round($height/$width*$square_size);
} elseif($height> $width) {
$height_t=$square_size;
$width_t=round($width/$height*$square_size);
}
else {
$width_t=$height_t=$square_size;
}

We also need to change the imagecopyresampled function call to add these 2 new variables:

imagecopyresampled($thumb_p, $thumb, 0, 0, 0, 0, $width_t, $height_t, $width, $height);

The new result would be:

The image is not distorted anymore but now it’s not centered. We need to move the point where the scaled image appears on the thumb to the right with a number of pixels equal to the half of the difference between height and width of the thumb. This offset is implemented also in the imagecopyresampled function, the first 2 zeros from the set of 4.

//set dimensions
if($width> $height) {
$width_t=$square_size;
//respect the ratio
$height_t=round($height/$width*$square_size);
//set the offset
$off_y=ceil(($width_t-$height_t)/2);
$off_x=0;
} elseif($height> $width) {
$height_t=$square_size;
$width_t=round($width/$height*$square_size);
$off_x=ceil(($height_t-$width_t)/2);
$off_y=0;
}
else {
$width_t=$height_t=$square_size;
$off_x=$off_y=0;
}

We also need to change the imagecopyresampled function call to add these 2 new variables:

imagecopyresampled($thumb_p, $thumb, $off_x, $off_y, 0, 0, $width_t, $height_t, $width, $height);

The new thumbnail look like this:

It’s better, the last thing I want is to set a white background to the thumb and I’m done. By default imagecreatetruecolor is creating a black canvas with no parameter to change it to white. In order to do this we need to declare a white background and fill the canvas with it BEFORE adding the scaled image:

$bg = imagecolorallocate ( $thumb_p, 255, 255, 255 );
imagefill ( $thumb_p, 0, 0, $bg );

Now it’s what I want:

The whole source code is the following:

function set_thumb($file, $photos_dir=‘uploads/photos’,$thumbs_dir=‘uploads/photos/thumbs’, $square_size=167, $quality=100) {
//check if thumb exists
if (!file_exists($thumbs_dir."/".$file)) {
//get image info
list($width, $height, $type, $attr) = getimagesize($photos_dir."/".$file);

//set dimensions
if($width> $height) {
$width_t=$square_size;
//respect the ratio
$height_t=round($height/$width*$square_size);
//set the offset
$off_y=ceil(($width_t-$height_t)/2);
$off_x=0;
} elseif($height> $width) {
$height_t=$square_size;
$width_t=round($width/$height*$square_size);
$off_x=ceil(($height_t-$width_t)/2);
$off_y=0;
}
else {
$width_t=$height_t=$square_size;
$off_x=$off_y=0;
}

$thumb=imagecreatefromjpeg($photos_dir."/".$file);
$thumb_p = imagecreatetruecolor($square_size, $square_size);
//default background is black
$bg = imagecolorallocate ( $thumb_p, 255, 255, 255 );
imagefill ( $thumb_p, 0, 0, $bg );
imagecopyresampled($thumb_p, $thumb, $off_x, $off_y, 0, 0, $width_t, $height_t, $width, $height);
imagejpeg($thumb_p,$thumbs_dir."/".$file,$quality);
}
}

*Note: Nobody was hurt during this tutorial. The cute dude is Razvan‘s son, Danut.

How to send HTML emails via PHP

andreiash — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 19:47:25 +0000

HTML emails….. hmm, not such a good idea.
I am not such a big fan of HTML emails, because I am assaulted by tens of such emails daily, most of them spam ones. And using Microsoft Outlook as email client, it ask me to download (or not) pictures from the server. This could be a bad idea sometimes, because harmful code could be be hidden in image files today (especially GIF files).

I was hired to make a newsletter module for one website and first I started to search how to make this.
The steps are below.

1. Create the HTML page for newsletter.
2. Take care to have the CSS and JS embedded in the HTML file and not outside the file.
3. Replace the relative location of image files with absolute location. E.g:
if you have:
[code lang="xml"]
name="com_soon" width="100" height="35" border="0" id="com_soon" />
[/code]
you must replace with:
[code lang="xml"]
alt="Coming Soon" name="com_soon" width="100" height="35"
border="0" id="com_soon" />
[/code]

4.1. If you want to send the email by Outlook Express, you need to open a new e-mail window, choose File » New » Mail Message. Once your mail window is open, make sure the format is set to Rich Text (HTML) by choosing Format and making sure there is a highlight next to the Rich Text (HTML) line.
Once your e-mail is set to Rich Text, choose View > Source Edit and you should see three tabs at the bottom of your mail message.
Click the Source tab, and you’ll see the HTML source for your default e-mail message. Copy and paste all your HTML code into Outlook Express Source view.
After you’ve pasted your HTML code, you can click the Preview tab to see how it will look in Outlook Express. Now all you have to do is type in your recipient’s addresses, and click “Send”.
4.2. Dinamically send via PHP. First of all you must assign all the HTML to a variable. Take care to escape double quotes. Then send via mail() function like the following:
[code lang="php"]
$to = "andrei@webxpert.ro";
$object = "newsletter";
$from = "contact@webxpert.ro";
$message="

language="javascript" type="text/javascript">

//cross-browser object creation function
function createRequestObject() {
var ret;
//read the user’s browser
var browser = navigator.appName;

//Internet Explorer has his own object
if(browser == "Microsoft Internet Explorer"){
ret = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
}
else{
ret = new XMLHttpRequest();
}
return ret;
}

//create a request object
var http = createRequestObject();

//you will call this function
function sendRequest(action) {
//here’s the catch – call an external page
http.open(‘get’, ‘req.php?action=’+action);
//wait until the request is completed
http.onreadystatechange = handleResponse;
//finalize the request
http.send(null);
}

//function that handle response state changes
function handleResponse() {
//fires only the object change to state 4
if(http.readyState == 4){
//get the text from the external procedure
var response = http.responseText;
var update = new Array();

//parse the text
if(response.indexOf(‘|’ != -1)) {
//response should be ‘divID|value"
update = response.split(‘|’);
//update the element with the divID with the value
document.getElementById(update[0]).innerHTML = update[1];
}
}
}

onload="javascript:sendRequest(‘currentDateTime’)">
This page shows how Ajax is working. Is is nothing fabulous here.

Click here for
href="javascript:sendRequest(‘currentDateTime’)">update time
id="currentDateTime" class="mark">

Nothing else but the date and time is updated.

If you want to see this example working and test it, click here.

*This is not intended to be a complete tutorial of Ajax, but it covers the main functionalities. The rest is only programmer’s imagination.

Andrei
http://www.webxpert.ro

Oracle connection and data retrieval from PHP

andreiash — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 10:41:15 +0000

This should be a guide for Oracle data manipulation from PHP.

First of all, the connection:

$ora_conn = ora_logon("username@instance","password"); ?>

the sql string (we’ll use select in this example):

$sql = "select col1, col2, col3 from table1 where 1=1"; ?>

the loop that retrieves the data and publish as a HTML table:

$ora_cur = ora_do($ora_conn, $sql);
if ($ora_cur)
{
$numCols = ora_numcols($ora_cur);
//alternative coloring
$col1 = "#eeeeee";
$col2 = "#dddddd";
$toggle = "#eeeeee";
do {
$toggle == $col1? $toggle = $col2: $toggle = $col1;
?>
"">
class="normal">echo ora_getcolumn($ora_cur,0);?>
class="normal">echo ora_getcolumn($ora_cur,1);?>
class="normal">echo ora_getcolumn($ora_cur,2);?>
class="normal">echo ora_getcolumn($ora_cur,3);?>

} while (ora_fetch($ora_cur));
}
?>

Andrei
http://www.webxpert.ro