PHP like many other programming languages has facilities to handle exceptions. Using them is pretty easy, but sometimes lazy programmers seems to misuse them to suppress error messages. A try/catch in PHP is usually constructed something like this:

try {
	// Something can go (horribly) wrong...
} catch {
}

The lazy programmer may leave the catch empty, but frankly you should never do it. When you’re doing something - try’ing - it’s for a reason, and if it fails, someone quite possible need to know - the end user, a log file for the sysadm or someone else. Never leave your catch empty, and if you really have a case, where it’s applicable, at least leave a comment in catch block explaining why it’s okay to do nothing.

In PHP when you have a string and want to find out if it contains another string, there are a few ways to do it. You can use regular expressions, use the strstr functions and a few other methods. The easiest way though is probably by using strpos, which returns the number of the character containing the first occurrence of the thing you’re looking for - and false if the string isn’t found.

When using memcache from PHP, you can save values with either set or replace. You can probably safely ignore the replace method:

“Memcached::replace() is similar to Memcached::set(), but the operation fails if the key does not exist on the server.”

- PHP Documentation

In PHP many things can be done several different ways. Picking which way to do something may be a matter of personal taste or habit. Sometimes however, things may be much clearer for the next developer, if you choose one way over another.

A very simple example of this, is adding a new item to an array. Often I come across this construct:

$valuepairs[] = 'Some value'

It’s valid and compact syntax, but in terms of clarity, I’d prefer this construct anytime:

When playing the role of the DBA, it’s often useful to get a quick listing of how many rows each table in a database contains. The syntax for this is pretty simple in Mysql:

SELECT table_name, table_rows 
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES 
WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA = '***database name***';

Notice that when using innodb tables, it’s only a rough estimate.

If you’re using a Debian based Linux Desktop such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint - or Debian itself naturally - you can easily create a simple text file of all packages installed on the machine.

I have a habit of removing a lot of the “extras” (junk) which comes with the basic install - not religiously, but just to keep it reasonably tidy and not have too much stuff eating up the harddisk, requiring updates (without providing any value).

One of the great features of Wordpress is the wide variety of plugins available. They often enable a lot of interesting functionality and integrations to other services not native to Wordpress itself. Most of these plugins are developed by individuals or small teams independent of the core community - and often not with a keen interest in security, but an exclusive focus on “making stuff work”.

I’ve been using the Wordpress “Google AdSense Dashboard” for awhile, and after the recent host of password leaks, I’ve been changing and upgrading password all around. This change lead to expose what I would call a critical password exposure in the plugin and so far caused me to remove the plugin everywhere I’ve installed it.

While surfing the net, you often come across web agencies how promote SSL-certificates (or TLS security) on their products - or their ability to create “secure web applications” with SSL. Most users know HTTPS/SSL/TLS as the little lock, that promises “security” when visiting a page - but what kind of security it actually provides is rarely explained - and far worse often misunderstood.

The while SSL is the popular name (and as it was once known) and HTTPS usually is the way users sees it (as part of a URL in a browser) - the correct name is TLS a short for Transport Layer Security.

A url may contain a hash/an anchor reference. If you need to remove it from url, it’s quite easy. Here’s a short recipe on how to do it in PHP (including a little test input):

$urls = array(
	'http://example.com/',
	'http://example.com/#test',
	'http://example.com/?id=1',
	'http://example.com/?id=1#test',
	'http://example.com/?id=1&id2=2#test#test',
	'http://example.com/?id=1#test#test'
);

foreach ($urls as $url) {
	if (strpos($url, '#')) {
		$url = substr($url, 0, strpos($url, '#'));
	}
	echo $url, "\\n";
}

Apart from removing the hash ending from urls, the function can naturally also be used on any number of other similar cases, where you need to trim a string.

PHP 5.4 comes with a built-in webserver, which can be useful for development and quick tests. It easily launched from the command-line, but if you’re running Linux Mint or Ubuntu, the PHP version, isn’t 5.4 but 5.3.x. If you don’t have the time/courage/energy to compile PHP 5.4 yourself, some nice fellow on the internet has done the work and made it available through a package repository which makes it a breeze to install.