If you want to reseed your primary key (i.e. change the value of the next primary key generated), you can do it like this: This is useful for starting a new site, and you don’t want to leave hints that you have just launched. For example, if you sign up a new user whose user_id…
An excellent alternative method to assigning string variables is to use the heredoc syntax. If you are assigning long strings of text with characters that need escaping, try this: To me, it looks a bit messy at first, but it does make large chunks of text more readable in your code. Consider this alternative to…
As an example, if you have an array of users with an ID field as the key and the username as the value, such as: You may want to perform an action on or with each of these array elements. If the array is assigned to the value $users you can loop through easily and…
Cron is a method for running a script at regular intervals. It is available on most good hosts and can be configured usually by a web interface on the control panel or via shell access. If you do not have Cron functionality on your server and want to run a script automatically, check out Web…
One thing that has always been important to me, no matter what coding language I am using, is maintaining the readability of my code. We are constantly under pressure to get our development done, and a bit of foresight can help with maintainability in the future. The Perl mentality is the idea of solving a…
Feeds have been around for a long time now and most net-savvy users have adopted them as a quick and clever way to keep up to date on the information you want. However, I must admit I am a late adopter of this technology and although I was aware of them I didn’t use them…
In most applications, there is a need for set values that do not change during the execution of a script. Examples of these values are: A bad way to handle these values is to “hard code” them. This is the process of inserting the values in your code as and when you need them. This…
One of the best ways to improve your skills as a developer is to work for a purpose; that is, work to achieve something. If you attempt to study web development, you will probably find that if you don’t work towards a goal there is little motivation to keep you going. Building cookie-cutter websites and…
REGISTER_GLOBALS is a PHP directive that, when enabled, automatically initialises variables with the values from forms, sessions, GET etc. For example, the data in a login form with the input fields named “username” and “password” will automatically be available as $username and $password. REGISTER_GLOBALS is, in my opinion, very bad practice and should be avoided…
Try this for a simple way to echo a variable in your HTML template files: You can also use this to show the return value of a function: This requires the PHP directive short_open_tag to be set to 1 (done via php.ini or .htaccess). Most hosts will have this set to 1 by default although…
