Super simple page caching
When your project isn’t based on a CMS or framework, it can be a good idea to implement a simple caching system on your pages. The following code snippet is very simple, but works well for small websites.
<?php // define the path and name of cached file $cachefile = 'cached-files/'.date('M-d-Y').'.php'; // define how long we want to keep the file in seconds. I set mine to 5 hours. $cachetime = 18000; // Check if the cached file is still fresh. If it is, serve it up and exit. if (file_exists($cachefile) && time() - $cachetime < filemtime($cachefile)) { include($cachefile); exit; } // if there is either no file OR the file to too old, render the page and capture the HTML. ob_start(); ?> <html> output all your html here. </html> <?php // We're done! Save the cached content to a file $fp = fopen($cachefile, 'w'); fwrite($fp, ob_get_contents()); fclose($fp); // finally send browser output ob_end_flush(); ?>
Calculate distances in PHP
Here is a very handy function, which calculate the distance from a point A to a point B, using latitudes and longitudes. The function can return the distance in miles, kilometers, or nautical miles.
function distance($lat1, $lon1, $lat2, $lon2, $unit) { $theta = $lon1 - $lon2; $dist = sin(deg2rad($lat1)) * sin(deg2rad($lat2)) + cos(deg2rad($lat1)) * cos(deg2rad($lat2)) * cos(deg2rad($theta)); $dist = acos($dist); $dist = rad2deg($dist); $miles = $dist * 60 * 1.1515; $unit = strtoupper($unit); if ($unit == "K") { return ($miles * 1.609344); } else if ($unit == "N") { return ($miles * 0.8684); } else { return $miles; } }
Usage:
echo distance(32.9697, -96.80322, 29.46786, -98.53506, "k")." kilometers";
Convert seconds to time (years, months, days, hours…)
This useful function will convert a time in seconds to a time in years, months, weeks, days, and so on.
function Sec2Time($time){ if(is_numeric($time)){ $value = array( "years" => 0, "days" => 0, "hours" => 0, "minutes" => 0, "seconds" => 0, ); if($time >= 31556926){ $value["years"] = floor($time/31556926); $time = ($time%31556926); } if($time >= 86400){ $value["days"] = floor($time/86400); $time = ($time%86400); } if($time >= 3600){ $value["hours"] = floor($time/3600); $time = ($time%3600); } if($time >= 60){ $value["minutes"] = floor($time/60); $time = ($time%60); } $value["seconds"] = floor($time); return (array) $value; }else{ return (bool) FALSE; } }
» Credits
Force file download
Some files, such as mp3, are generally played throught the client browser. If you prefer forcing download of such files, this is not a problem: The following code snippet will do that job properly.
function downloadFile($file){ $file_name = $file; $mime = 'application/force-download'; header('Pragma: public'); // required header('Expires: 0'); // no cache header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0'); header('Cache-Control: private',false); header('Content-Type: '.$mime); header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.basename($file_name).'"'); header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary'); header('Connection: close'); readfile($file_name); // push it out exit(); }
Get current weather using Google API
Want to know today’s weather? This snippet will let you know, in only 3 lines of code. The only thing you have to do is to replace ADDRESS by the desired adress, on line 1.
$xml = simplexml_load_file('http://www.google.com/ig/api?weather=ADDRESS'); $information = $xml->xpath("/xml_api_reply/weather/current_conditions/condition"); echo $information[0]->attributes();
Basic PHP whois
Whois services are extremely useful to get basic information about a domain name: owner, creation date, registrar, etc. Using PHP and the whois
unix command, it is extremely easy to create a basic whois PHP function. Please note that the whois
unix command must be installed on your server for this code to work.
$domains = array('home.pl', 'w3c.org'); function creation_date($domain) { $lines = explode("\n", `whois $domain`); foreach($lines as $line) { if(strpos(strtolower($line), 'created') !== false) { return $line; } } return false; } foreach($domains as $d) { echo creation_date($d) . "\n"; }
Get latitude and longitude from an adress
With the popularity of the Google Maps API, developers often needs to get the latitude and longitude of a particular place. This very useful function takes an adress as a parameter, and will return an array of data containing both latitude and longitude.
function getLatLong($address){ if (!is_string($address))die("All Addresses must be passed as a string"); $_url = sprintf('http://maps.google.com/maps?output=js&q=%s',rawurlencode($address)); $_result = false; if($_result = file_get_contents($_url)) { if(strpos($_result,'errortips') > 1 || strpos($_result,'Did you mean:') !== false) return false; preg_match('!center:\s*{lat:\s*(-?\d+\.\d+),lng:\s*(-?\d+\.\d+)}!U', $_result, $_match); $_coords['lat'] = $_match[1]; $_coords['long'] = $_match[2]; } return $_coords; }
Get domain favicon using PHP and Google
These days, many websites or webapps are using favicons from other websites. Displaying a favicon on your own site is pretty easy using Google and some PHP.
function get_favicon($url){ $url = str_replace("http://",'',$url); return "http://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=".$url; }
Calculate Paypal fees
Ah, Paypal fees. Every person who ever used the popular online payment service had to pay their fees. So what about a PHP function to easily calculate the fee for a specific amount?
function paypalFees($sub_total, $round_fee) { // Set Fee Rate Variables $fee_percent = '3.4'; // Paypal's percentage rate per transaction (3.4% in UK) $fee_cash = '0.20'; // Paypal's set cash amount per transaction (£0.20 in UK) // Calculate Fees $paypal_fee = ((($sub_total / 100) * $fee_percent) + $fee_cash); if ($round_fee == true) { $paypal_fee = ceil($paypal_fee); } // Calculate Grand Total $grand_total = ($sub_total + $paypal_fee); // Tidy Up Numbers $sub_total = number_format($sub_total, 2, '.', ','); $paypal_fee = number_format($paypal_fee, 2, '.', ','); $grand_total = number_format($grand_total, 2, '.', ','); // Return Array return array('grand_total'=>$grand_total, 'paypal_fee'=>$paypal_fee, 'sub_total'=>$sub_total); }
(Last snippet have been removed due to an error, sorry)
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