ServerAdminBlog » PHP

PHP redirect

admin — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 10:28:12 +0000

It is not hard to remember but here it is… This code can be used to redirect visitors to any other page.

header("Location: http://www.blabla.com/page.php"); ?>

PHP error reporting

admin — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 10:14:27 +0000

Error reporting in PHP is a very usable option but sometimes you can be buried with “PHP Notice” lines which you don’t need (save space and bandwith).

PHP Notice:  Undefined index: 11 in /home/website/blabla.php on line 52

To turn on reporting on all errors add this line above all other php lines (before error happens)

// Report all PHP errors
error_reporting(E_ALL);

To turn on all errors except E_NOTICE

error_reporting(E_ALL ^ E_NOTICE);

To turn off reporting (not recommended)

error_reporting(0);

To be sure that this will work, place error_reporting right below opening php tag (< ? php)

More about this options can be found HERE.

Using PHP as a shell scripting language

admin — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:28:12 +0000

As most of us already know, PHP is one of the most popular scripting language for developing dynamic web pages. But you probably don’t know that PHP can be used as a shell scripting language. It isn’t robust as Bash or Perl but it has some advantages.

The only difference between a PHP shell script and a regular PHP file which serves web page is the first line:

#!/usr/bin/php -q

The ‘-q’ switch is here to suppress the HTTP headers. After the first line, you just add standard PHP tags:

?>

Here is the example so you can see what I’m talking about:

#!/usr/bin/php -q

 
    print("Hi there folks !\n");
 
?>

Save these lines as test.php and execute with:

# php test.php

Good idea is to add the next lines at the beginning:

if (!isset($_SERVER["argv"][0]) || isset($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'])  || isset($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'])) {
	die ("
Shell access only");
}

In this case, this script can be accessible via browser but those lines will kill the script in case if it is issued via browser.

Upgrading to PHP 5.2.5 on RHEL and CentOS

admin — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 23:12:10 +0000

As you probably know, the latest CentOS and RHEL distros are available only with PHP 5.1.6 and if you want to upgrade PHP, you need to install it manually (or to find someone to do it for you ). The 5.2.5 release brings several security enhancements, more than 60 bug fixes, and improved performance for those of you that like arrays (and really, who doesn’t?). I wanted to install latest RoundCube webmail application and it won’t work if you don’t have PHP> 5.2. Also, latest Vivvo won’t work without 5.2.x

So, if you don’t want to build rpms or to go through ./configure, make, make install nightmare, you can enable Jason Litka yum repository to your RHEL or CentOS system. To do this please follow next few steps.

First you need to validate that the packages came from Jason Litka and you’ll do it with next command:

#rpm --import http://www.jasonlitka.com/media/RPM-GPG-KEY-jlitka

After you added his public GPG key, you’ll need to adjust yum so he can search at his repo. To do this, please follow next steps:

#nano -w /etc/yum.repos.d/utterramblings.repo

Now copy next lines inside this file and save those changes.

[utterramblings]
name=Jason's Utter Ramblings Repo
baseurl=http://www.jasonlitka.com/media/EL$releasever/$basearch/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://www.jasonlitka.com/media/RPM-GPG-KEY-jlitka

Now you can upgrade your PHP installation with simple:

#yum update php

More information about this can be found HERE.

#php -v

should return

[root@ns1 ~]# php -v
PHP 5.2.6 (cli) (built: May  5 2008 10:32:59)
Copyright (c) 1997-2008 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2008 Zend Technologies
[root@ns1 ~]#

I forget to say that you should restart httpd after upgrade.