Some PHP Tricks You May Not Know

PHP is a wonderful web programming language. Even though PHP has some very powerful features, it’s quite easy to get buried with the complex stuff that you may not be aware of some really cool PHP tricks. You can use these tricks to speed up your development quite a lot.

Short-Hand Echo

Normally:

echo $variable; ?>

Trick:

$var?>

Quickly Preview the Contents of an Array

Instead of using the foreach loop to echo the values, you can simply use the code below to preview the indexes and the values associated with each index of an array using the following function.

$array = array("Color" => "Blue", "Legs" => 4, "PlayStation 3" => "WWE Smackdown VS Raw");

echo '';
print_r($array);
echo '';

?>

 "Blue", "Legs" => 4, "PlayStation 3" => "WWE Smackdown VS Raw");

echo '
';
print_r($array);
echo '
';

?>

Outputs:

Array
(
    [Color] => Blue
    [Legs] => 4
    [PlayStation 3] => WWE Smackdown VS Raw
)

Array
(
    [Color] => Blue
    [Legs] => 4
    [PlayStation 3] => WWE Smackdown VS Raw
)

Print Blocks of Texts

Instead of using the complicated concatenation to join strings, you can use this nifty block command to print your long string.

$text = <<

This is awesome!

Indeed!

OPEN;

echo $text;

$text = <<This is awesome!


Indeed!

OPEN;

echo $text;

Force a Secure HTTP Connection

if(!($HTTPS))
{
    header("Location: https://".$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);
    exit;
}

if(!($HTTPS))
{
 header("Location: https://".$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);
 exit;
}

Use Comma Instead of Concatenation

$name = 'roosevelt';

echo 'just testing ', $name;

$name = 'roosevelt';

echo 'just testing ', $name;

Use isset to check limits, rather than strlen

isset is faster, than strlen

$name = "Jack";

//Slow
if (strlen($name) < 10)
    echo "Not long enough!";

//Faster
if(!isset($name{10}))
    echo "Not long enough!";

$name = "Jack";

//Slow
if (strlen($name) < 10)
 echo "Not long enough!";

//Faster
if(!isset($name{10}))
 echo "Not long enough!";

Use isset to search in an Array

$Items = array("Rock", "Paper", "Ball", "Bat");

//Slow
if (in_array('Bat', $Items))
    echo "Found!";

$Items = array("Rock" => 0, "Paper" => 0, "Ball" => 0, "Bat" => 0);

//Fast
if (isset($Items['Bat']))
    echo "Found!";

$Items = array("Rock", "Paper", "Ball", "Bat");

//Slow
if (in_array('Bat', $Items))
 echo "Found!";

$Items = array("Rock" => 0, "Paper" => 0, "Ball" => 0, "Bat" => 0);

//Fast
if (isset($Items['Bat']))
 echo "Found!";

Quickly Get Date

$Today = getdate();
$Month = $Today ['month'];
$Day = $Today ['mday'];
$Year = $Today ['year'];

$Today = getdate();
$Month = $Today ['month'];
$Day = $Today ['mday'];
$Year = $Today ['year'];

Avoid Unnecessary Curley Braces (2nd Bracket)

$test = true;

//Not Good

if($test)
{
    echo "Testing!";
}

//Good

if($test)
    echo "Testing!";

$test = true;

//Not Good

if($test)
{
 echo "Testing!";
}

//Good

if($test)
 echo "Testing!";