PHP SOAP WSDL Script
Below is a simple example on how to use SOAP-WSDL with PHP. This example will help you pull data from WSDL using SOAP in PHP.
<?php $client = new SoapClient("http://footballpool.dataaccess.eu/data/info.wso?wsdl"); $result = $client->TopGoalScorers(array('iTopN'=>5)); if ($_POST['topn'] > 0 && (int) $_POST['topn'] <= 20){ $topn = (int) $_POST['topn']; $client = new SoapClient("http://footballpool.dataaccess.eu/data/info.wso?wsdl"); $result = $client->TopGoalScorers(array('iTopN' => $topn)); // Note that $array contains the result of the traversed object structure $array = $result->TopGoalScorersResult->tTopGoalScorer; print " <table border='2'> <tr> <th>Rank</th> <th>Name</th> <th>Goals</th> </tr> "; foreach($array as $k=>$v){ print " <tr> <td align='right'>" . ($k+1) . "</td> <td>" . $v->sName . "</td> <td align='right'>" . $v->iGoals . "</td> </tr>"; } print "</table>"; } else { ?> <form id="topscorers" action="1.php" method="post"> How long should your topscorers list be? (Choose a digit between 1 and 20). <input id="topn" name="topn" size="2" type="text" value="10" /> <input id="submit" name="submit" type="submit" value="submit" /> </form> <?php } ?>
Nepali Calendar Module for Joomla
[ad#300x250] Nepali Calendar is a Bikram Sambat based Calendar mostly used in Nepal. Bikram Sambat based Nepali Calendar is approximately 56 years and 81/2 months ahead of the Gregorian calendar. The new year of Nepalese calendar lies in the middle of April. The days of month are not predetermined as in the Gregorian calendar and are calculated on the basis of moments of the planets. Nepali Calendar is used by government of Nepal as official calendar. Bikram Sambat based Nepali Calendar is also used in countries like India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Malaysia.
Click Here to Download Joomla Nepali Calendar Module
Installation and Documentation
The installation process is similar to installation of other joomla modules. To install Nepali Calendar module, first download the module by clicking on the above link. After then, log in to the administration site of your joomla site. Then click on the Extension->Install/Uninstall menu. Browse for the mod_npcalendar.zip module from your computer and click on Upload File and Install button to install the component. If everything goes right, a message will be displayed to show the successful installation of the module. The screenshot after the installation is shown below:
Module Configuration
After the installation of Nepali Calendar Module, you need to configure the module for publishing it in the front page of the site template. To configure the module, go to Extensions->Module Manager. Click on the Nepali Calendar Module which is displayed in the list. You can configure various parameters to show the Nepali Calendar at your required position.
In the module parameters section, you can configure parameters like Day Length, Display links and CSS style sheet for the module. Day length parameter is to display the length of name of the Day. By Default the day length will be fixed to 1, which means for Sunday only S will be displayed and so on. Put zero (0) not to display the day name or put eight (8) to display all the letters of the day. The next parameter is for displaying the next or previous link of the month. If you select no for the links, the user can only view the current month (i.e. User cannot roam around previous and next months). The third parameter is for changing the css styles of the Module. You can change the width and height, background color and other several design issues by adding appropriate style sheets to this parameters.
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PHP Session Variables
A PHP session variable is used to store information about, or change settings for a user session. Session variables hold information about one single user, and are available to all pages in one application.
PHP Session Variables
When you are working with an application, you open it, do some changes and then you close it. This is much like a Session. The computer knows who you are. It knows when you start the application and when you end. But on the internet there is one problem: the web server does not know who you are and what you do because the HTTP address doesn’t maintain state.
A PHP session solves this problem by allowing you to store user information on the server for later use (i.e. username, shopping items, etc). However, session information is temporary and will be deleted after the user has left the website. If you need a permanent storage you may want to store the data in a database.
Sessions work by creating a unique id (UID) for each visitor and store variables based on this UID. The UID is either stored in a cookie or is propagated in the URL.
Starting a PHP Session
Before you can store user information in your PHP session, you must first start up the session.
Note: The session_start() function must appear BEFORE the <html> tag:
<?php session_start(); ?> <html> <body> </body> </html> |
The code above will register the user’s session with the server, allow you to start saving user information, and assign a UID for that user’s session.
Storing a Session Variable
The correct way to store and retrieve session variables is to use the PHP $_SESSION variable:
<?php session_start(); // store session data $_SESSION['views']=1; ?> <html> <body> <?php //retrieve session data echo "Pageviews=". $_SESSION['views']; ?> </body> </html> |
Output:
Pageviews=1 |
In the example below, we create a simple page-views counter. The isset() function checks if the “views” variable has already been set. If “views” has been set, we can increment our counter. If “views” doesn’t exist, we create a “views” variable, and set it to 1:
<?php session_start(); if(isset($_SESSION['views'])) $_SESSION['views']=$_SESSION['views']+1; else $_SESSION['views']=1; echo "Views=". $_SESSION['views']; ?> |
Destroying a Session
If you wish to delete some session data, you can use the unset() or the session_destroy() function.
The unset() function is used to free the specified session variable:
<?php unset($_SESSION['views']); ?> |
You can also completely destroy the session by calling the session_destroy() function:
<?php session_destroy(); ?> |
Note: session_destroy() will reset your session and you will lose all your stored session data.
Few other Session Functions
- session_cache_expire – Return current cache expire
- session_cache_limiter – Get and/or set the current cache limiter
- session_commit – Alias of session_write_close()
- session_decode – Decodes session data from a string
- session_destroy – Destroys all data registered to a session
- session_encode – Encodes the current session data as a string
- session_get_cookie_params – Get the session cookie parameters
- session_id – Get and/or set the current session id
- session_is_registered – Find out whether a global variable is registered in a session
- session_module_name – Get and/or set the current session module
- session_name – Get and/or set the current session name
- session_regenerate_id – Update the current session id with a newly generated one
- session_register – Register one or more global variables with the current session
- session_save_path – Get and/or set the current session save path
- session_set_cookie_params – Set the session cookie parameters
- session_set_save_handler – Sets user-level session storage functions
- session_start – Initialize session data
- session_unregister – Unregister a global variable from the current session
- session_unset – Free all session variables
- session_write_close – Write session data and end session
Server Side Cookie, PHP Cookies
A cookie is often used to identify a user.
What is a Cookie?
A cookie is often used to identify a user. A cookie is a small file that the server embeds on the user’s computer. Each time the same computer requests a page with a browser, it will send the cookie too. With PHP, you can both create and retrieve cookie values.
How to Create a Cookie?
The setcookie() function is used to set a cookie.
Note: The setcookie() function must appear BEFORE the <html> tag.
Syntax
setcookie(name, value, expire, path, domain); |
Example 1
In the example below, we will create a cookie named “user” and assign the value “Alex Porter” to it. We also specify that the cookie should expire after one hour:
<?php
setcookie("user", "Alex Porter", time()+3600);
?>
<html> ..... |
Note: The value of the cookie is automatically URLencoded when sending the cookie, and automatically decoded when received (to prevent URLencoding, use setrawcookie() instead).
Example 2
You can also set the expiration time of the cookie in another way. It may be easier than using seconds.
<?php
$expire=time()+60*60*24*30;
setcookie("user", "Alex Porter", $expire);
?>
<html> ..... |
In the example above the expiration time is set to a month (60 sec * 60 min * 24 hours * 30 days).
How to Retrieve a Cookie Value?
The PHP $_COOKIE variable is used to retrieve a cookie value.
In the example below, we retrieve the value of the cookie named “user” and display it on a page:
<?php // Print a cookie echo $_COOKIE["user"]; // A way to view all cookies print_r($_COOKIE); ?> |
In the following example we use the isset() function to find out if a cookie has been set:
<html> <body> <?php if (isset($_COOKIE["user"])) echo "Welcome " . $_COOKIE["user"] . "!<br />"; else echo "Welcome guest!<br />"; ?> </body> </html> |
How to Delete a Cookie?
When deleting a cookie you should assure that the expiration date is in the past.
Delete example:
<?php
// set the expiration date to one hour ago
setcookie("user", "", time()-3600);
?>
|
What if a Browser Does NOT Support Cookies?
If your application deals with browsers that do not support cookies, you will have to use other methods to pass information from one page to another in your application. One method is to pass the data through forms (forms and user input are described earlier in this tutorial).
The form below passes the user input to “welcome.php” when the user clicks on the “Submit” button:
<html> <body> <form action="welcome.php" method="post"> Name: <input type="text" name="name" /> Age: <input type="text" name="age" /> <input type="submit" /> </form> </body> </html> |
Retrieve the values in the “welcome.php” file like this:
<html> <body> Welcome <?php echo $_POST["name"]; ?>.<br /> You are <?php echo $_POST["age"]; ?> years old. </body> </html> |
Description
bool setcookie ( string name [, string value [, int expire [, string path [, string domain [, int secure]]]]])
setcookie() defines a cookie to be sent along with the rest of the HTTP headers. Like other headers, cookies must be sent before any output from your script (this is a protocol restriction). This requires that you place calls to this function prior to any output, including <html> and <head> tags as well as any whitespace. If output exists prior to calling this function, setcookie() will fail and return FALSE. If setcookie() successfully runs, it will return TRUE. This does not indicate whether the user accepted the cookie.
Note: In PHP 4, you can use output buffering to send output prior to the call of this function, with the overhead of all of your output to the browser being buffered in the server until you send it. You can do this by calling ob_start() and ob_end_flush() in your script, or setting the output_buffering configuration directive on in your php.ini or server configuration files.
All the arguments except the name argument are optional. You may also replace an argument with an empty string (“”) in order to skip that argument. Because the expire and secure arguments are integers, they cannot be skipped with an empty string, use a zero (0) instead. The following table explains each parameter of the setcookie() function, be sure to read the Netscape cookie specification for specifics on how each setcookie() parameter works and RFC 2965 for additional information on how HTTP cookies work.
| Parameter | Description | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| name | The name of the cookie. | ‘cookiename’ is called as $_COOKIE['cookiename'] |
| value | The value of the cookie. This value is stored on the clients computer; do not store sensitive information. | Assuming the name is ‘cookiename’, this value is retrieved through $_COOKIE['cookiename'] |
| expire | The time the cookie expires. This is a Unix timestamp so is in number of seconds since the epoch. In otherwords, you’ll most likely set this with the time() function plus the number of seconds before you want it to expire. Or you might use mktime(). | time()+60*60*24*30 will set the cookie to expire in 30 days. If not set, the cookie will expire at the end of the session (when the browser closes). |
| path | The path on the server in which the cookie will be available on. | If set to '/', the cookie will be available within the entire domain. If set to '/foo/', the cookie will only be available within the /foo/ directory and all sub-directories such as /foo/bar/ of domain. The default value is the current directory that the cookie is being set in. |
| domain | The domain that the cookie is available. | To make the cookie available on all subdomains of example.com then you’d set it to '.example.com'. The . is not required but makes it compatible with more browsers. Setting it to www.example.com will make the cookie only available in the www subdomain. Refer to tail matching in the spec for details. |
| secure | Indicates that the cookie should only be transmitted over a secure HTTPS connection. When set to 1, the cookie will only be set if a secure connection exists. The default is 0. | 0 or 1 |
Once the cookies have been set, they can be accessed on the next page load with the $_COOKIE or $HTTP_COOKIE_VARS arrays. Note, autoglobals such as $_COOKIE became available in PHP 4.1.0. $HTTP_COOKIE_VARS has existed since PHP 3. Cookie values also exist in $_REQUEST.
Note: If the PHP directive register_globals is set to on then cookie values will also be made into variables. In our examples below, $TextCookie will exist. It’s recommended to use $_COOKIE.
Common Pitfalls:
- Cookies will not become visible until the next loading of a page that the cookie should be visible for. To test if a cookie was successfully set, check for the cookie on a next loading page before the cookie expires. Expire time is set via the expire parameter. A nice way to debug the existence of cookies is by simply calling print_r($_COOKIE);.
- Cookies must be deleted with the same parameters as they were set with. If the value argument is an empty string (“”), and all other arguments match a previous call to setcookie, then the cookie with the specified name will be deleted from the remote client.
- Cookies names can be set as array names and will be available to your PHP scripts as arrays but separate cookies are stored on the users system. Consider explode() or serialize() to set one cookie with multiple names and values.
In PHP 3, multiple calls to setcookie() in the same script will be performed in reverse order. If you are trying to delete one cookie before inserting another you should put the insert before the delete. In PHP 4, multiple calls to setcookie() are performed in the order called.
Some examples follow how to send cookies:
Note that the value portion of the cookie will automatically be urlencoded when you send the cookie, and when it is received, it is automatically decoded and assigned to a variable by the same name as the cookie name. If you don’t want this, you can use setrawcookie() instead if you are using PHP 5. To see the contents of our test cookie in a script, simply use one of the following examples:
<?php |
When deleting a cookie you should assure that the expiration date is in the past, to trigger the removal mechanism in your browser. Examples follow how to delete cookies sent in previous example:
You may also set array cookies by using array notation in the cookie name. This has the effect of setting as many cookies as you have array elements, but when the cookie is received by your script, the values are all placed in an array with the cookie’s name: