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$_SESSION vs $_COOKIE

admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 06:14:47 +0000

Storing data across pages using PHP is done with two variables in the global scope, called $_SESSION and $_COOKIE, and although accomplishing the same end goal, the both go about it in very different ways. The purpose of this post is to give a brief look into the differences between cookies and sessions, when it is better to use one versus the other, and the pros and cons of the both.

The difference is in how each store data. Cookies store the data locally in the user’s browser, while sessions store data on the webserver.

Session Basics

Sessions are simply server-side cookies each with a corresponding client side cookie that contains only a reference to its server-side counterpart. When a user visits a page, the client sends the reference code to the server, and PHP will then match that reference code to a server-side cookie and load the data in the server’s cookie into the $_SESSION superglobal.

Pros

Save bandwidth by passing only a reference to the session each pageload. A client-side cookie has to pass all of its data.
Session can easily store very large amount of data without any special configuration.
The data is stored on the web server and this property makes session more secure, because the data cannot be viewed or edited by the client.

Cons

Session ends when the browser is closed unless you’ve configured php.ini to extend sessions’ cookie lifetime. Sesssion cannot last forever like cookies.
Because the session variables can be created on the fly, used whenever, and do not require the developer to dispose of them explicitly, so the overuse of Session variables can lead to very unreadable and unmaintainable code.
Session variables and cookies are synonymous. If a user has set his browser not to accept any cookies, then session variables cannot work for that particular web surfer.

Cookies Basics

On every page load, cookie data is sent to the web server. PHP reads and stores the value into the $_COOKIE superglobal. After cookie is created, you can give it a lifespan. And it will expire after that lifespan runs out.

Pros

Cookies last as long as the website needs. Cookies values still exists and still be there even if the browser is closed and reopened.
Cookies are very useful for “remember me” logins option. You can find this option in the sign-in pages of yahoo, hotmail, gmail etv
Useful for storing temporary user settings. For example, if a user is browsing a paginated list of items, sorted a certain way, the sorting setting can be stored in a cookie.

Cons

Stored in the users filesystem. This means that the user can tamper with it and view it.
Can only store a limited amount of data.
Must pass all data to the webserver each pageload. This takes up more bandwidth.

Creating a Cookie

bool setcookie ( string name [, string value [, int expire [, string path [, string domain [, int secure]]]]])


if (!isset($_COOKIE['Ordering'])) {
setcookie("Ordering", $_POST['ChangeOrdering'], time() + 31536000);
}

Using a Cookie

echo (isset($_COOKIE['ordering'])) ? $_COOKIE['ordering'] : 'cookie not set';

Deleting a Cookie

setcookie('favorite_color');

To se the cookie with no value is same as to delete it. This will not remove the file from the client computer. To delete cookie, you can set the cookie expiration date to a time in the past, and the browser will take care of it.

Creating a Session

session_start();

This line of code should be called at the top of the code before any output. When you call this function, PHP will check to see if the user sent a session cookie. If so, it will load the session data into $_SESSION. If not, it will create a new session file on the server and send the ID back to the client.

Set Session Value

$_SESSION['first_name'] = 'Tom';

Read Session Value

$_SESSION['first_name'];

Remove Session Data

unset($_SESSION['first_name']);

End Session

session_destroy();

Sessions are cookies where the data is stored on the server. Cookies are stored in the users filesystem mostly in the “Temporary Internet Files” folder. Both have their advantages, but coders use sessions more as compared to cookies.

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Basics of Web Frameworks

Jia Muraash — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 06:00:36 +0000

No doubt, the javascript and html are the basic principles of web development, but the current need is not just a static website. If we discuss present scanario i.e. in near future we will find out that people visiting web just want a real life experience and that cannot be accomplished by static website, for that a website needs too be dynamic, robust and interactive.

Mostly dynamic websites are built on Web application frameworks. Nowadays, there are number of frameworks available today both paid and free. Let us take a over view of what is Web application frameworks.

What is a Web Framework

A web application framework is a software framework that is designed to support the development of dynamic websites, web applications and web services. The framework aims to alleviate the overhead associated with common activities performed in Web development. For example, many frameworks provide libraries for database access, templating frameworks and session management, and they often promote code reuse.

Functions of Framework

Web application frame works are made to cater wide range of needs of designers and developers.

Database: Nowadays, mostly Web development frame works are database driven because they provide support to multiple databases like My SQL, SQL ++, Oracle and others.

Web Templates: Dynamic website is divided in two parts static i.e. HTML and Dynamic Template i.e. code generation part for HTML. In a template we can insert variables without the knowledge coding.

User Management: One of the most important features of any framework is user management because it supports User Logins there roles and there limitations as a user.

URL Mapping: This make it possible for a framework to interpretate URL with ease and simplification for user. URL mapping means URL simplification. Nowadays, mostly Web development frame works are database driven because they provide support to multiple databases like My SQL, SQL ++, Oracle and others.

Web Templates: – Dynamic website is divided in two parts static i.e. HTML and Dynamic Template i.e. code generation part for HTML. In a template we can insert variables without the knowledge coding.

User Management: One of the most important features of any framework is user management because it supports User Logins there roles and there limitations as a user.

URL Mapping: This make it possible for a framework to interpretate URL with ease and simplification for user. URL mapping means URL simplification.

Most Popular Frameworks

Zend Framework
Symfony
Codelgniter
CakePHP
Kohana

Currently, there are numbers of Web application frameworks available but among all, three are most popular once and they are CMS (Content Management System).

WordPress
Joomla
Drupal

I believe this topic will help you to get the basic understanding of frameworks.

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Traditional VS Bracketless if-else condition

admin — Mon, 02 May 2011 10:17:07 +0000

There is no denying the fact that some developers are using traditional statements and some are using bracket less. But witch one is better to use?
Iam trying to prove it by doing a simple test. I created 3 files: mytest1.php, mytest2.php and mytest3.php. Inside these I’m running PHP’s for loop which is executed exactly 1 million times and I’m checking every number if it is odd or even with if-else statements. Difference:

mytest1.php: traditional: if(){do_smth;}else{do_smth;}
mytest2.php: curly brackets: if()do_smth;else do_smth;
mytest3.php: colon: if():do_smth;else: do_smth;endif;

mytest1.php

<?php
$time = microtime();
$time = explode(" ", $time);
$time = $time[1] + $time[0];
$start = $time;

for($i = 1; $i <= 1000000; $i++){

if($i % 2){
echo $i." is odd";
}else{
echo $i." is even";
}
}
$time = microtime();
$time = explode(" ", $time);
$time = $time[1] + $time[0];
$finish = $time;
$totaltime = ($finish - $start);
printf ("This page took %f seconds to load.", $totaltime);
?>

mytest2.php

<?php
$time = microtime();
$time = explode(" ", $time);
$time = $time[1] + $time[0];
$start = $time;

for($i = 1; $i <= 1000000; $i++){

if($i % 2)
echo $i." is odd";

else

echo $i." is even";
}
$time = microtime();
$time = explode(" ", $time);
$time = $time[1] + $time[0];
$finish = $time;
$totaltime = ($finish - $start);
printf ("This page took %f seconds to load.", $totaltime);
?>

mytest3.php

<?php
$time = microtime();
$time = explode(" ", $time);
$time = $time[1] + $time[0];
$start = $time;

for($i = 1; $i <= 1000000; $i++){

if($i % 2):
echo $i." is odd";

else:
echo $i." is even";

endif;
}
$time = microtime();
$time = explode(" ", $time);
$time = $time[1] + $time[0];
$finish = $time;
$totaltime = ($finish - $start);
printf ("This page took %f seconds to load.", $totaltime);
?>

Testing

Iam running each file 5 times and then I’ll count an average time for each one. We will see if there is any difference in load time.

I am running each file 5 times and then I’ll count an average time for each one. We will see if there is any difference in load time.

mytest1.php load times:

3.062667 s
2.915338 s
3.162933 s
3.161454 s
3.521963 s

Average: 3.164871 s

mytest2.php load times:

2.688994 s
3.250662 s
3.346098 s
3.001084 s
2.978943 s

Average:3.053156 s

mytest3.php load times:

2.747105 s
3.222176 s
3.197005 s
3.235344 s
3.391850 s

Average:3.158696 s

Conclusion

All 3 tests were close, but test #2 (curly brackets) was a bit faster than rest 2. I must say, that this if-else statement was executed 1 million times, so there is absolutely no difference in any actual project at load speed. Another thing I haven’t mentioned above is your code’s readability.

With traditional brackets code is much easier to read for humans, so I would still recommend you to stick with basic, old-fashioned if(){}elseif(){}else{} variant. Share with opinions by giving your comments.

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tips to improve webpage load time

admin — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 17:02:14 +0000

Patience is a virtue, but for many, it is often a difficult concept to practice. This is really correct for web users visiting a website that takes a long time to load. Users liked websites that loads quickly, and when a site responds slowly, visitors lose their interest and come back.

Improving the speed of website is necessary not only to users, but for search engine rankings as well. Last April, Google announced that they are now including website speed in their search ranking algorithms.

I am sharing some tips to improve the performance of web page loading time

1. Test the Speed of the Website

The first thing you should do is to analyze your current page speed. This allows to track your improvement and ensure that any changes you make, positively improves your page load times.

There are various free tools out there for checking how long it takes to load your website:

Pingdom offers an easy-to-use site speed test that mimics that way a page is loaded in a web browser.
Page Speed is an open source Firefox add-on that helps you assess the performance of your web pages. It also provides suggestions on how to fix performance issues.
Web Page Test is another great tool that shows you the speed and performance of your website in different browsers.

Image Optimization

you should know that when to use the appropriate file format for your images. Changing to a different file format can dramatically decrease the file size of an image.

GIF is ideal for images with few colors like logos.
JPEG is great for images with lots of colors and details like photographs.
PNG is the choice when you need high quality transparent images.

3. Do not Scale Down the Images

Avoid using a larger image than you need just because you can set the width and height attributes of elements in HTML.

If you need a 100x100px image and you have a 700x700px image, use an image editor like Photoshop or one of these web-based image editors to resize the image to the needed dimensions. This lowers the file size of the image, thus helping to decrease page loading times.

4. Compress and Optimize Your Content

Compressing your website content can have a huge impact on reducing load times. When using HTTP compression, all of your web page data is sent in a single smaller file instead of a request that is full of many different files. For more information, see this Wikipedia article on HTTP Compression.

You can also optimize and compress your JavaScript and CSS files by combining them and minifying the source code.

5. Put Stylesheet References at the Top

Moving your stylesheet references to the of your HTML document helps your pages feel like it is loading faster because doing so allows your pages to render the styles progressively. In addition, it doesn’t hurt that it’s the W3C standard.

6. Put Script References at the Bottom

Browsers can only download two components per hostname at the same time. If you add your scripts towards the top, it would block anything else below it on the initial loading of the page. This makes it feel like the page is loading slower.

To avoid this situation, place script references as far down the HTML document as possible, preferably right before the closing tag.

7. To Place CSS & JavaScript in External Files

If your JavaScript and CSS are directly in your HTML document, they are downloaded every time an HTML document is requested. This, then, doesn’t take advantage of browser caching and increases the size of the HTML document.

Always place your CSS and JavaScript in external files; it’s a best practice and makes your site easier to maintain and update.

8. Minimise HTTP Requests

When visiting a new web page, most of the page-loading time is spent downloading components of that page (e.g. images, stylesheets, and scripts).

By minimizing the number of requests a web page needs to make, it will load faster. To reduce HTTP requests for images, one thing you can do is to use CSS sprites to combine multiple images.

If you have multiple stylesheets and JavaScript libraries, consider combining them to reduce the number of HTTP requests.

9. Cache the Web Pages

If you use a content management system that dynamically generates your web pages, you should statically cache your web pages and database queries so that you can decrease the strain on your server as well as speed up page rendering times.

When you cache your page, it saves a static version of it to be presented to the user instead of recreating it every time it’s requested.

For WordPress, check out WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache (also read this WordPress codex entry on optimizing/caching WordPress). Drupal core has native caching.

10. Reduce 301 Redirects

Every time a 301 redirect is used, it forces the browser to a new URL which increases page-loading times. If possible, avoid using 301 redirects.

Conclusion

Web page speed should not be ignored if you are concerned about providing an optimal user experience.

If you want more information to improve your website’s page load times then read Google’s section on page speed, which provides tools, articles, and community feedback regarding website speed. Good luck and happy optimizing!

Finally, share your thoughts about this articles as well.

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Tip to open flash file in full screen in browser

admin — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 08:02:24 +0000

For the Flash Player 9,0,28,0 update, flash applets can go to true full-screen.

There are no fancy javascript hacks needed either. Every User toggles between normal size and fullscreen with a just mouse click, which can toggle Stage["displayState"] from “normal” to “fullScreen”.

The parameter allow FullScreen should be set to true in the applet html, otherwise it will not work

The first thing to do is create a button and add the following code to it:


 on(press){
   toggleFullScreen();
 }



The code for the function toggleFullScreen and a resize listener are  placed on the main stage.

01  //Don't scale the movie when the stage size changes
02 Stage.scaleMode="noScale";
03 //Align the stage to the top left
04 Stage.align = "TL";
05 //Function to toggle between fullscreen and normal size
06 //the toggle fullscreen button calls this function when pressed
07 function toggleFullScreen(){
08   //if normal size, go to fullscreen, else go to normal size
09   if(Stage["displayState"]=="normal"){
10     Stage["displayState"]="fullScreen";
11   }else{
12     Stage["displayState"]="normal";
13   }
14 }
15 //Create a listener for each time the Stage is resized
16 var resizeListener:Object = new Object();
17 //Called each time the stage is resized
18 resizeListener.onResize = function () {
19   //Move the button to the center of the screen
20   toggleFullScreenButton._x=Stage.width/2;
21   toggleFullScreenButton._y=Stage.height/2;
22 }
22 //Add the listener to Stage
23 Stage.addListener(resizeListener);

Example XHTML used for this applet:


09/flash-fullscreen.swf"  type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400" height="200" >
  flash-fullscreen.swf" />

The balls were added in to show that the stage extends to the borders of the screen, even when resized.

View Demo

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Top 5 AJAX File Uploaders

admin — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:38:37 +0000

1) AJAX Upload by Andrew Valums

This AJAX Upload by Andrew Valmus allows to upload multiple files without refreshing the page and use any element to show file selection window. The best thing is that it works in all major browsers and doesn’t require any javascript library to run. AJAX Upload doesn’t pollute the global namespace, and is tested with jQuery, Prototypejs.

The official website of this plugin is Ajax Upload by Andrew Valums

2) Fancy Upload

FancyUpload is a file-input replacement which features an unobtrusive, multiple-file selection menu and queued upload with an animated progress bar. It is easy to setup, is server independent, completely styleable via CSS and XHTML and uses MooTools to work in all modern browsers.

The official website of this plugin is Fancy Upload

3) AJAX Multiple Upload File form using jQuery

Its another version of fileuploader from webdeveloperplus using the jQuery library and AJAX Upload by Andrew Valums. The official website of this uploader is webdeveloperplus

4) Uploadify

Uploadify is a jQuery plugin that allows the easy integration of a multiple (or single) file uploads on your website. It requires Flash and any backend development language. An array of options allow for full customization for advanced users, but basic implementation is so easy that even coding novices can do it.

The official website of this plugin is Uploadify

5) LightLoader

LightLoader uses a similar method which is found in the GMail file upload, using a hidden IFRAME to post the file and AJAX to check the progress. There is also a tester script in the zip file for you to upload to your server to make sure that you have all the settings correct.

The official website of this plugin is LightLoader

I believe you people will like this post. Kindly share it on your social networks and do not forget to post your comments.

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Image Magick and GD library installation on FEDORA server

admin — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 18:29:04 +0000

PHP scripting language is mostly used to manipulate and create image files in various different image formats including GIF, PNG, JPEG, WBMP, and XPM with the help of GD. Also PHP can output image streams directly to a browser.

ImageMagick is an open source software suite for displaying, converting, and editing raster image files. It can read and write more than 100 image file formats.

So lets start with its installation. I am going to explain 10 easy step to achieve this.

Step : 1

yum install php-gd

Step : 2

yum install glib

Step : 3

yum install glib2

Step : 4

yum install libpng

Step : 5

yum install libjpeg

Step : 6

yum install libtiff

Step : 7

yum install ghostscript

Step : 8

yum install freetype

Step : 9

yum install ImageMagick

Step : 10

yum install ImageMagick-perl

I believe that by implementing these steps, any one can install the ImageMagick and GD libraries on FEDORA SERVER

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Ajax Validation with Jquery

admin — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 17:59:51 +0000

In simple words, Ajax can execute the request without refreshing the page. There is no doubt that its a very cool client-side feature but for the safe end its a recommended practice to use server-side validation as well. This is because if some malicious user turn off the javascript then he can simply bypass the ajax validations.

Step 1: Loading jQuery and its Plugins

To apply this validation, you have to include two javascript files. These files are related to jQuery. One file is the jQuery library file, while the other one is the plugin for main jQuery library. Now there are two ways to load the files.

1) Load the files locally within your site
2) Reference the files online through google API libraries

I am loading the minified version of the javascript to reduce the file size

Step 2: HTML Form

Now let’s start the HTML form. Now you see a form with fields i.e. name, email and two password fields.

"ajaxform" action="#" method="post">
"name">Name:
"name" type="text" />"email">Email:
"email" type="text" />"password">Password:
"password" name="password" type="password" />"password_again">Re-enter Password:
"password_again" name="password_again" type="password" /> "submit" type="submit" value="Submit" />

Step 3: Initialize jQuery and its Plugin

Initialize the jQuery library and its plugin

This code says that when the document(DOM) is ready, just run a function. That function is to validate the form with the ID of “ajaxform”. You have now successfully initialized the plugin. Although the plugin is now listening on your requirements, it will not act until you tell it what to look for. In the next step we will do just that!

Step 4: Validation
There are two ways to apply conditions and requirements. Let me tell you the easy way first and then the more complex way but much more customizable. Firstly, we want to simply make sure the “name” field and “email” field is filled in. We don’t want any blank inputs there. The easiest way to do this is simply add a class of “required” to each inputs that you would like for the plugin to check.

"name">Name:
"required" name="name" type="text" /> "email">Email:
"required email" name="email" type="text" />

The important thing is to note that I added the class “required” to both input fields and the email input field has “email” as a class as well. The reason for this is we are telling the plugin to make sure this field is required and also conforms to a valid email address format.

Step 5: Customization

You can easily notice that how easy it was to validate the name and email fields with jQuery validation, let’s take a look at the password fields. What we want here is to make both password fields required but also match a certain length of characters. Furthermore, the second password input needs to match the first one. See this

In the same section where you added the initialization of the jQuery inside the head section of the HTML, add the following lines.

Now rules have added with password being required set to true and it needs a minlength of 6 and the second condition is for password_again set to required true and it has to “equalTo” the input field with id of password. With these conditions set, we are able to achieve what we are wanting. Do not forget to check the demo of the post to see how it works. For more documentation and resource on this plugin visit jQuery Validation Plugin

I believe that this tutorial has very helpful and you will put it to good use.

Finally, checkout the demo at this link. You can also download the files from here.

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HTML5 New Tags

admin — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:40:00 +0000

Some new features in HTML 5 are functions to embedd audio, video, graphics, client-side data storage, and interactive documents. It also contains new elements like