10 basic blocks of PHP-code

There are some basic and useful lines of code that you often end up using when programming in PHP. I'll put 10 common ones I often use here, partly for myself but foremost for you readers. Please feel free to complement if you have any suggestions or improvements.

Redirect user to another page:

header("Location: http://www.thedomain.com/aPage.htm");

Include the contents of another page:

include('include/aPage.php'); /* Warning message on failure */
// OR
require('include/aPage.php'); /* Fatal error message on error and halt processing. */

Create a connection and set current active database:

/* Set values of $mysql_host, $mysql_database, $mysql_username, $mysql_password */

$link = mysql_connect($mysql_host, $mysql_username, $mysql_password) or die("Could not connect to database: " . mysql_error());

mysql_select_db($mysql_database, $link) or die("Could not set database");

Create and execute simple select-query to SQL-database:

$select_query = "SELECT * FROM someTable";

/* Perform Query */
$select_result = mysql_query($select_query);

/* Check result */
if (!$select_result) {
$message = 'Invalid query: ' . mysql_error() . "\n";
$message .= 'Whole query: ' . $select_query;
die($message);
}

Create random string:

function createRandomString($len) {
$source_arr = array("0","1","2","3","4","5","6","7","8","9");

for ($i=0; $i<$len; $i++) {
$random_key = array_rand($source_arr);
$random_str .= $source_arr[$random_key];
}

return $random_str;
}

Create time and date variables on different formats:

$dt = date("Y-m-d"); // 2008-07-18
$dt = date("m/d/Y"); // 07/18/2007
$dt = date("F j, Y, g:i a"); // July 18, 2008, 1:22 am

Set pointer to the first position of a mysql resultset:

mysql_data_seek($result, 0);

Mail function:

/* Send mail */
function sendMail($to, $subject, $message) {
$headers = "From: \"From address\" <fromAddress@mail.com>" . "\r\n" .
"Reply-To: \"Reply address\" <replyAddress@mail.com>" . "\r\n" .
"X-Mailer: PHP/" . phpversion();
mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
}

Replace all occurrences of a search string with a replacement string:

/* $string_before => 'abcdef abcdef' */
$resultString = str_replace("a", "", $string_before);
/* $resultString => bcdef bcdef */

Url-encode a string (for use in a query part of an url for example):

$url = "http://www.domain.com/test.php?q=" + urlencode($query_part_of_url);

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Category: PHP