FormBuilder updated to v1.5

It’s been almost exactly four years since I updated my FormBuilder PHP class, but believe it or not I have been slowly modifying and improving the class during the intervening years. I figured it was high time I rolled those improvements into the public version of the class, so here’s what’s new in version 1.5 of FormBuilder:

• Better handling of checkbox results in the emailResults method.
• A custom form submit URL can be passed to the FormBuilder constructor. Useful when using FormBuilder in an environment that is performing URL rewriting.
• Replaced deprecated ergei functions with preg_match.
• Checkbox field types are correctly processed when field is not mandatory, and the user didn’t check any of the available options.
• Added new field type: file (for file uploads). Note that files are currently not emailed when using the emailResults method. Any handling of the uploaded files should be accomplished manually by accessing PHP’s $_Files array.
• The textbox and textarea field types now accept an optional defaultvalue parameter.
• Fixed a bug that meant checkboxes had a CSS class of ‘fbheckbox’ instead of ‘fbcheckbox’.

If you encounter any problems with the new version please let me know.

Monokai theme for phpDesigner

Last year I created a port of the Monokai syntax highlighting theme for phpDesigner and posted it in the phpDesigner forums, but I think it deserves a proper home so I’m archiving it here on Pixel Acres.

PHP example:

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Display recent Twitter tweets using PHP

IMPORTANT! This script has been superseded by TweetPHP.

If you’ve ever wanted to display your latest Twitter tweets on a website, here is method to do that using PHP. My approach has the following features:

• Tweets are cached to avoid exceeding Twitter’s limit of 150 requests for a user’s RSS feed per hour
• A fallback is provided in case the twitter feed fails to load
• Replies (tweets beginning with @) can optionally be ignored
• A configuration parameter allows you to specify how many tweets are displayed
• Dates can optionally be displayed in “Twitter style”, e.g. “12 minutes ago”
• You can edit the HTML that wraps your tweets, tweet status and meta information
• The username which prepends each tweet in Twitter RSS feeds is automatically stripped

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Sunset: A syntax highlighting theme for phpDesigner

My weapon of choice for code editing is the excellent program phpDesigner, but every so often I like to test drive a different editor to see what I might be missing out on. Recently I spent some time playing with Notepad++, and one feature that jumped out at me was the ability to choose from a large number of pre-installed syntax highlighting themes.

When I switched back to phpDesigner, the default blue-on-white color scheme seemed a tad boring, so I decided it was time to pimp my IDE! Unfortunately user created themes for phpDesigner are thin on the ground, which left me no option but to make my own.

PHP example:

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Ajax form validation using FormBuilder

Over at roScripts there is a nice tutorial explaining how to modify my FormBuilder PHP class so that validation is performed unobtrusively using AJAX. Check it out.

The trouble with content management systems

When I started out as a web designer, content management systems belonged strictly to the realm of big budget websites. For everyone else, it was perfectly normal for a web designer to manually update a site whenever a change needed to be made. Clients didn’t expect a CMS to be included with their website, and web designers didn’t offer the option. Times have certainly changed, and in an age of blogs, Facebook, and MySpace, clients expect to be able to take control of their website’s content.

For most web designers, especially those who work solo, a custom built content management system is still a tall order. Fortunately there are numerous commercial and open source content management systems available, which offer a practical and affordable means of wrangling content. However, a “one size fits all” content management system that doesn’t address a site’s specific content requirements can introduce as many problems as it solves.

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FormBuilder update: send variables by email

I have made another update to my FormBuilder class. Version 1.4 features a new function, emailResults, which can be used to automatically send the user-submitted form variables to any email address. A number of readers asked for this functionality, which eliminates the need to write your own form processing routine. Have fun!

Securing PHP Contact Forms

One of the great benefits of PHP is that it is quick and easy for non-programmers to learn the basics of the language and begin to add server-side logic to their websites. This simplicity is a double edged sword, as many novice programmers are unaware of PHP’s security vulnerabilities and inadvertently create web applications that are an easy target for hackers and spammers. Most PHP security holes are well documented, but a newer and lesser known vulnerability is header injection, a cunning exploit whereby a spammer hijacks a website’s contact form and uses it to send bulk unsolicited email.

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Image source swapping, CSS, and Safari

Last week I was putting the finishing touches on a small website I created for a friend. Specifically, I was jazzing up the image gallery with an ‘Image loading’ animation, so that visitors knew to hang around while a new image loaded. In the process I made an interesting discovery about the way Safari (Safari 1.2 at any rate) handles javascript image source swapping.

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A Flash perspective on PHP releases

It strikes me as odd that the uptake of PHP5 has been so slow. The snail’s pace at which web hosts are migrating to PHP5 has been hampered not by lack of user interest, but because a few popular PHP applications (OSCommerce, for one) break under PHP5. In this respect, I suppose the web host’s hands are tied.

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