Commonly used abbreviations in php

While working with php or when we talk about php, some abbreviations are more frequently used. I have compiled some most commonly used abbreviations. Here is the list.

    

    AJAX  =>  Asynchronous JavaScript And XML
    API   =>  Application Programming Interface
    ASCII =>  American Standard Code for Information Interchange
    CMS   =>  Content Management System
    CSS   =>  Cascading Style Sheet
    CGI   =>  Common Gateway Interface
    CLI   =>  Command Line Interface
    DB    =>  DataBase
    DNS   =>  Domain Name System
    DOM   =>  Document Object Model
    FTP   =>  File Transfer Protocol
    GD    =>  Graphics Draw | Gif Draw
    HTML  =>  Hypertext Markup Language
    HTTP  =>  Hypertext Transfer Protocol
    HTTPS =>  Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure
    IP    =>  Internet Protocol
    IIS   =>  Internet Information Services
    JS    =>  JavaScript  
    JSON  =>  JavaScript Object Notation
    LAMP  =>  Linux Apache MySQL PHP
    MAMP  =>  Macintosh Apache MySQL PHP
    MIME  =>  Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
    OOP   =>  Object Oriented Programming
    PCRE  =>  Perl Compatible Regular Expressions
    PEAR  =>  PHP Extension and Application Repository
    PECL  =>  PHP Extension Community Library
    PHP   =>  Hypertext Preprocessor
    PDO   =>  PHP Data Objects
    POSIX =>  Portable Operating System Interface
    RegEx =>  Regular Expression
    REST  =>  Representational State Transfer
    RSS   =>  Really Simple Syndication
    SAPI  =>  Server Application Programming Interface
    SOAP  =>  Simple Object Access Protocol
    SPL   =>  Standard PHP Library
    SMTP  =>  Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
    SQL   =>  Structured Query Language
    INI   =>  INItialization
    SEO   =>  Search Engine Optimization
    PING  =>  Packet InterNet Groper
    SSH   =>  Secure SHell
    SSL   =>  Secure Sockets Layer
    UCS   =>  Universal Character Set
    URI   =>  Uniform Resource Identifier
    URL   =>  Uniform Resource Locator
    UTF   =>  Unicode Transformation Format
    WAMP  =>  Windows Apache MySQL PHP
    WWW   =>  World Wide Web
    XAMPP =>  X (any of four different operating systems) Apache MySQL PHP & Perl
    XML   =>  eXtensible Markup Language
    XML-RPC=> XML Remote Procedure Call
    XPATH =>  XML PATH
    XSS   =>  cross Site Scripting

Useful HTACCESS Examples

htaccess is a common file used by several web servers to control configuration for a directory. Using this file we can change the behaviour of the server. This file is used to Rewrite Urls and some other things which is described below.

Create a 404 Error Page

The 404 or Not found error tells that the client didn't get the requested file. And the default error page is displayed. We can create a custom error page using following code in .htaccess file and creating and error page named 404.php in following example.

Create a 404.php file in the root and put the following code in .htaccess file. It will display the customized error page.

   
    ErrorDocument 404 /404.php

Redirect non WWW to WWW

  
   RewriteEngine On
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} example\.com [NC]
   RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Rewrite dynamic urls to look like static urls

   RewriteEngine on
   RewriteRule ^product-([^/]+).\html$ product.php?type=$1
   RewriteRule ^user/([^/]+)$ users.php?name=$1

The output of above rewrite examples will be

http://example.com/product-car.html
http://example.com/user/altaf 

Allow or Deny specific IP Addresses

   order allow,deny
   deny from 122.16.219.88
   deny from 168.35.210.15
   allow from all

Allow or deny specific IP Addresses using above code. Put your list of IP Addresses as given above.

Cache files using htaccess

  <FilesMatch "\.(ico|pdf|flv|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|js|css|swf)$">
  Header set Cache-Control "max-age=31449600, public"
  </FilesMatch>

Set an expiration for cache files using above code.

Disable directory listing using htacess

Directory listing may be a potential security risk on your site. When you enter any address of a directory into the browsers address bar, all files and folders af that directory are listed by default. To prevent this listing you can put a small piece of code in .htaccess file as follows.

  
   Options -Indexes

HTTP status codes and its meaning

HTTP status codes are the codes that the Web server uses to communicate with the Web browser or user agent.

Here is a list of HTTP status codes that might be returned:

    
    1xx:  Information
    
    100   Continue
    101   Switching Protocols
    103   Checkpoint
    
    2xx:  Successful
    
    200   OK
    201   Created
    202   Accepted
    203   Non-Authoritative Information
    204   No Content
    205   Reset Content
    206   Partial Content
    
    3xx:  Redirection
    
    300   Multiple Choices
    301   Moved Permanently
    302   Found
    303   See Other
    304   Not Modified
    305   Use Proxy
    306   (Unused)
    307   Temporary Redirect
    
    4xx:  Client Error
    
    400   Bad Request
    401   Unauthorized
    402   Payment Required
    403   Forbidden
    404   Not Found
    405   Method Not Allowed
    406   Not Acceptable
    407   Proxy Authentication Required
    408   Request Timeout
    409   Conflict
    410   Gone
    411   Length Required
    412   Precondition Failed
    413   Request Entity Too Large
    414   Request-URI Too Long
    415   Unsupported Media Type
    416   Requested Range Not Satisfiable
    417   Expectation Failed
    
    5xx:  Server Error
    
    500   Internal Server Error
    501   Not Implemented
    502   Bad Gateway
    503   Service Unavailable
    504   Gateway Timeout
    505   HTTP Version Not Supported

Of the above the most common HTTP status codes are

   200   OK
   301   Moved Permanently
   403   Forbidden
   404   Not Found
   500   Internal Server Error

Url Rewriting with .htaccess file

Now, Its time to clean up our url. It is very important to have keywords in the url so that search engines can tackle them easily. Further Rewriting urls makes it more readable and it looks very clean.

We can rewrite our urls using .htaccess file. So let us start with

What is .htaccess file?

It is a common file used by several web servers to control configuration for a directory. Also known as hypertextaccess. It is an extremely sensitive file.

A missing semi colon, incorrect letter or an extra backslash can mess everything up. So, be careful while working with this file.

To achieve this we have to follow these steps :
 
1. Create a .htaccess file. Save this file in root directory.
2. Enable the RewriteEngine with this code

        RewriteEngine on
 
3. Now define RewriteRule for the configuration

       RewriteRule ^product-([^/]+)\.html$ product.php?category=$1

Syntax : RewriteRule INPUTURL OUTPUTURL [FLAGS]

 RewriteEngine on
 RewriteRule ^product-([^/]+).\html$ product.php?category=$1

Above code will result following url -

Original Url    : http://example.com/product.php?category=car
After Rewriting : http://example.com/product-car.html

We can also make our urls look like directories as follows.
 

 RewriteEngine on
 RewriteRule ^product/([^/]+).\html$ product.php?category=$1

Wait... One thing to note : Always use absolute paths for your links while dealing with directory type url rewriting.

Add hit counter to your website

Hello friends. To add a hit counter on your website or webpage visit one of the following links.

• http://www.website-hit-counters.com/

• http://www.e-zeeinternet.com/

You can customize your counter as per your need. Copy generated code and paste into your webpage.

Add favicon to your website

Favicon is a small icon basically of 16x16 pixels displayed on your browser's address bar. It is the acronym for Favourite icon. Adding a favicon to a website or webpage is very easy. To do so first create a small icon of size 16x16.

You can create favicon of your image from
http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/

Just add this code into your webpage's head section.

   <link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" href="favicon.ico">

How to setup a cronjob in your cPanel

A cronjob is a command or task which is to be executed automatically at a certain time. Cronjob is a very useful tool when you want to run some scripts  automatically.

To setup a cronjob follow the steps.

1. Log into your cPanel.

2. Find the Cron jobs icon in advanced section. Click it and follow steps.

3. Enter an email address ( the cron output will be sent to this email )

4. Setup the time when the script to be executed.

5. Enter the full path to your script to be executed like

  php /home/[username]/public_html/send_mail.php

6. Click on the 'Add New Cron Job' button

Change [username] with your username and the path of your php script (send_mail.php) in above syntax.

If you have filled the Cron email box, An email will be sent when the cronjob runs. Or you can leave it blank if you dont want any email