For the past few months I’ve been reading books and going through CDs on how to program in PHP. During this time I’ve come across some useful snippets of PHP code that I’ve had use for in some of my projects. I present to you six of them here. These are very basic scripts that PHP beginners may find use for.

Useful PHP snippets

Include a PHP File

Code:

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<?php 
 
   include "yourfile.php"; 
 
?>

Usage: This script adds the contents of “yourfile.php” to your current file. Simply replace “yourfile.php” with the your desired file name. This is a great time-saving tool when you have many pages that use a common header or footer.

PHP Redirect

Code:

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<?php 
 
   $URL="http://www.redirecthere.com/";  //URL to be redirected to 
 
   header ("Location: $URL"); 
 
?>

Usage: Place the above code in a blank php file and replace the $URL value with the URL that you want that page to redirect to. The visitor will usually not be able to notice they’ve been redirected (other then the new URL in their browser). It’s an easy fix if you’ve changed a page’s location.

Send Mail Notification

Code:

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<?php 
   $to = "admin@yoursite.com"; 
   $subject = "Your Subject Here"; 
   $message = "Your Message Here"; 
 
   //mail headers 
   $headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0\n"; 
   $headers .= "Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1\n"; 
   $headers .= "X-Priority: 3\n"; 
   $headers .= "X-MSMail-Priority: Normal\n"; 
   $headers .= "X-Mailer: php\n"; 
   $headers .= "From: \"Admin\" <admin@yoursite.com>\n"; 
   $headers .= "Return-Path: admin@yoursite.com\n"; 
   $headers .= "Return-Receipt-To: admin@yoursite.com\n"; 
 
   mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers); 
?>

Usage: This is a great way to send an email when a form has been submitted or when a page loads. Simply replace “admin@yourside.com” with the email address you want the message sent to. The $message can handle variables too.

Get Current Page

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<?php
   function curPageName() {
        return substr($_SERVER["SCRIPT_NAME"],strrpos($_SERVER["SCRIPT_NAME"],"/")+1);
        }
   $page = curPageName();
?>

Usage: This is an easy way to use the current pages file name as a variable. This could be used for setting a navigations class as “active” as in the code below:

Code:

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<ul>
   <li <?php if (
          $page == "index.php"){ 
           echo 'class="active"';} ?> >
        <a href="index.php">My Link</a>
   </li>
</ul>

Get Variable From URL

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<?php
   if (!isset($_GET['URLvariable'])) {
       $variable = "your stuff"; // Default value
    } else {
       $variable = $_GET['URLvariable'];
       }
?>

Usage: This is used to pass variables from the URL into local variables in your PHP document. This can be used when processing forms or can even be used control iframes or other things.

Remove Non-alphanumeric Characters

Code:

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<?php 
   $string = "Text with #*#* sybols and 13489 #numbers"; 
   $new_string = ereg_replace("[^A-Za-z0-9]", "", $string); 
 
echo $new_string 
 
?>

Usage: This script removes all non-alphanumeric characters (anything besides letters or numbers) from a given string. This is useful for “cleaning” given text input.

Useful Articles

• Awesome PHP/Ajax To-Do List
• How to use PHP and Javascript to Control Two Iframes at the Same Time