10 super useful PHP snippets you probably haven’t seen

When working with PHP, it is very useful to have a “toolbox” of handy functions and code snippets that can save lots of time when needed. Today, I’m going to show you 10 super useful code snippets that you probably never heard of.

Text messaging with PHP using the TextMagic API

If for some reason, you need to send text messages to your clients cell phones, you should definitely have a look toTextMagic. They provide an easy API which allow you to send SMS to cell phones. Please note that the TextMagic service isn’t free.

The example below shows how easy it is to send a SMS to a cell phone using the TextMagic API:

// Include the TextMagic PHP lib
require('textmagic-sms-api-php/TextMagicAPI.php');

// Set the username and password information
$username = 'myusername';
$password = 'mypassword';

// Create a new instance of TM
$router = new TextMagicAPI(array(
 'username' => $username,
 'password' => $password
));

// Send a text message to '999-123-4567'
$result = $router->send('Wake up!', array(9991234567), true);

// result:  Result is: Array ( [messages] => Array ( [19896128] => 9991234567 ) [sent_text] => Wake up! [parts_count] => 1 )

Source: http://davidwalsh.name/php-text-messaging

Detect location by IP

Here is an useful code snippet to detect the location of a specific IP. The function below takes one IP as a parameter, and returns the location of the IP. If no location is found,UNKNOWN is returned.

function detect_city($ip) {

        $default = 'UNKNOWN';

        if (!is_string($ip) || strlen($ip) < 1 || $ip == '127.0.0.1' || $ip == 'localhost')
            $ip = '8.8.8.8';

        $curlopt_useragent = 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)';

        $url = 'http://ipinfodb.com/ip_locator.php?ip=' . urlencode($ip);
        $ch = curl_init();

        $curl_opt = array(
            CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION  => 1,
            CURLOPT_HEADER      => 0,
            CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER  => 1,
            CURLOPT_USERAGENT   => $curlopt_useragent,
            CURLOPT_URL       => $url,
            CURLOPT_TIMEOUT         => 1,
            CURLOPT_REFERER         => 'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'],
        );

        curl_setopt_array($ch, $curl_opt);

        $content = curl_exec($ch);

        if (!is_null($curl_info)) {
            $curl_info = curl_getinfo($ch);
        }

        curl_close($ch);

        if ( preg_match('{<li>City : ([^<]*)</li>}i', $content, $regs) )  {
            $city = $regs[1];
        }
        if ( preg_match('{<li>State/Province : ([^<]*)</li>}i', $content, $regs) )  {
            $state = $regs[1];
        }

        if( $city!='' && $state!='' ){
          $location = $city . ', ' . $state;
          return $location;
        }else{
          return $default;
        }

    }

Source: http://snipplr.com/view/48386/detect-location-by-ip-city-state/

Display source code of any webpage

Want to be able to display the source code of any webpage, with line numbering? Here is a simple code snippet to do it. Just modify the url on line 2 at your convenience. Or even better, make a pretty function according to your needs.

<?php // display source code
$lines = file('http://google.com/');
foreach ($lines as $line_num => $line) {
 // loop thru each line and prepend line numbers
 echo "Line #<b>{$line_num}</b> : " . htmlspecialchars($line) . "<br>\n";
}

Source: http://perishablepress.com/code-snippets/#code-snippets_php

Check if server is HTTPS

Is my script running on a HTTPS server? Good question. This handy snippet can give you the answer. Nothing complicated at all!

if ($_SERVER['HTTPS'] != "on") {
 echo "This is not HTTPS";
}else{
 echo "This is HTTPS";
}

Source: http://snipplr.com/view/62373/check-if-url-is-https-in-php/

Display Facebook fans count in full text

Want to display how many Facebook fans do you have, in full text, on your blog? It’s very easy using the following snippet:

function fb_fan_count($facebook_name){
    // Example: https://graph.facebook.com/digimantra
    $data = json_decode(file_get_contents("https://graph.facebook.com/".$facebook_name));
    echo $data->likes;
}

Source: http://www.digimantra.com/

Determine the dominant color of an image

This code will be super useful for people managing images or photography website. With it, you can analyze any image and get its dominant color (R, G, or B).

$i = imagecreatefromjpeg("image.jpg");

for ($x=0;$x<imagesx($i);$x++) {
    for ($y=0;$y<imagesy($i);$y++) {
        $rgb = imagecolorat($i,$x,$y);
        $r   = ($rgb >> 16) & 0xFF;
        $g   = ($rgb >>  & 0xFF;
        $b   = $rgb & 0xFF;

        $rTotal += $r;
        $gTotal += $g;
        $bTotal += $b;
        $total++;
    }
}

$rAverage = round($rTotal/$total);
$gAverage = round($gTotal/$total);
$bAverage = round($bTotal/$total);

Source: http://forums.devnetwork.net/viewtopic.php?t=39594

Get info about your memory usage

In order to optimize your scripts, you may definitely want to know how many amount of RAM they use on your server. This snippet will check memory and then print initial, final and peak usages.

echo "Initial: ".memory_get_usage()." bytes \n";
/* prints
Initial: 361400 bytes
*/

// let's use up some memory
for ($i = 0; $i < 100000; $i++) {
 $array []= md5($i);
}

// let's remove half of the array
for ($i = 0; $i < 100000; $i++) {
 unset($array[$i]);
}

echo "Final: ".memory_get_usage()." bytes \n";
/* prints
Final: 885912 bytes
*/

echo "Peak: ".memory_get_peak_usage()." bytes \n";
/* prints
Peak: 13687072 bytes
*/

Source: http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/9-useful-php…

Compress data using gzcompress()

When working with strings, it is not rare that some are very long. Using the gzcompress() function, strings can be compressed. To uncompressed it, simply call thegzuncompress() function as demonstrated below:

$string =
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur
adipiscing elit. Nunc ut elit id mi ultricies
adipiscing. Nulla facilisi. Praesent pulvinar,
sapien vel feugiat vestibulum, nulla dui pretium orci,
non ultricies elit lacus quis ante. Lorem ipsum dolor
sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aliquam
pretium ullamcorper urna quis iaculis. Etiam ac massa
sed turpis tempor luctus. Curabitur sed nibh eu elit
mollis congue. Praesent ipsum diam, consectetur vitae
ornare a, aliquam a nunc. In id magna pellentesque
tellus posuere adipiscing. Sed non mi metus, at lacinia
augue. Sed magna nisi, ornare in mollis in, mollis
sed nunc. Etiam at justo in leo congue mollis.
Nullam in neque eget metus hendrerit scelerisque
eu non enim. Ut malesuada lacus eu nulla bibendum
id euismod urna sodales. ";

$compressed = gzcompress($string);

echo "Original size: ". strlen($string)."\n";
/* prints
Original size: 800
*/

echo "Compressed size: ". strlen($compressed)."\n";
/* prints
Compressed size: 418
*/

// getting it back
$original = gzuncompress($compressed);

Source: http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/9-useful-php…

Whois query using PHP

If you need to get the whois information for a specific domain, why not using PHP to do it? The following function take a domain name as a parameter, and then display the whois info related to the domain.

function whois_query($domain) {

    // fix the domain name:
    $domain = strtolower(trim($domain));
    $domain = preg_replace('/^http:\/\//i', '', $domain);
    $domain = preg_replace('/^www\./i', '', $domain);
    $domain = explode('/', $domain);
    $domain = trim($domain[0]);

    // split the TLD from domain name
    $_domain = explode('.', $domain);
    $lst = count($_domain)-1;
    $ext = $_domain[$lst];

    // You find resources and lists
    // like these on wikipedia:
    //
    // http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whois
    //
    $servers = array(
        "biz" => "whois.neulevel.biz",
        "com" => "whois.internic.net",
        "us" => "whois.nic.us",
        "coop" => "whois.nic.coop",
        "info" => "whois.nic.info",
        "name" => "whois.nic.name",
        "net" => "whois.internic.net",
        "gov" => "whois.nic.gov",
        "edu" => "whois.internic.net",
        "mil" => "rs.internic.net",
        "int" => "whois.iana.org",
        "ac" => "whois.nic.ac",
        "ae" => "whois.uaenic.ae",
        "at" => "whois.ripe.net",
        "au" => "whois.aunic.net",
        "be" => "whois.dns.be",
        "bg" => "whois.ripe.net",
        "br" => "whois.registro.br",
        "bz" => "whois.belizenic.bz",
        "ca" => "whois.cira.ca",
        "cc" => "whois.nic.cc",
        "ch" => "whois.nic.ch",
        "cl" => "whois.nic.cl",
        "cn" => "whois.cnnic.net.cn",
        "cz" => "whois.nic.cz",
        "de" => "whois.nic.de",
        "fr" => "whois.nic.fr",
        "hu" => "whois.nic.hu",
        "ie" => "whois.domainregistry.ie",
        "il" => "whois.isoc.org.il",
        "in" => "whois.ncst.ernet.in",
        "ir" => "whois.nic.ir",
        "mc" => "whois.ripe.net",
        "to" => "whois.tonic.to",
        "tv" => "whois.tv",
        "ru" => "whois.ripn.net",
        "org" => "whois.pir.org",
        "aero" => "whois.information.aero",
        "nl" => "whois.domain-registry.nl"
    );

    if (!isset($servers[$ext])){
        die('Error: No matching nic server found!');
    }

    $nic_server = $servers[$ext];

    $output = '';

    // connect to whois server:
    if ($conn = fsockopen ($nic_server, 43)) {
        fputs($conn, $domain."\r\n");
        while(!feof($conn)) {
            $output .= fgets($conn,128);
        }
        fclose($conn);
    }
    else { die('Error: Could not connect to ' . $nic_server . '!'); }

    return $output;
}

Source: http://www.jonasjohn.de/snippets/php/whois-query.htm

Email PHP errors instead of displaying it

By default, most servers are set to display an error message when an error occured in one of your script. For security reasons, you may want to get an email with the error, instead of displaying it to the public.

<?php

// Our custom error handler
function nettuts_error_handler($number, $message, $file, $line, $vars){
 $email = "
  <p>An error ($number) occurred on line
  <strong>$line</strong> and in the <strong>file: $file.</strong>
  <p> $message </p>";

 $email .= "<pre>" . print_r($vars, 1) . "</pre>";

 $headers = 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\r\n";

 // Email the error to someone...
 error_log($email, 1, 'you@youremail.com', $headers);

 // Make sure that you decide how to respond to errors (on the user's side)
 // Either echo an error message, or kill the entire project. Up to you...
 // The code below ensures that we only "die" if the error was more than
 // just a NOTICE.
 if ( ($number !== E_NOTICE) && ($number < 2048) ) {
  die("There was an error. Please try again later.");
 }
}

// We should use our custom function to handle errors.
set_error_handler('nettuts_error_handler');

// Trigger an error... (var doesn't exist)
echo $somevarthatdoesnotexist;

Source: http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/quick-tip…