[PHP] checking for utilities/applications in the PATH

[Chris Wagner]

hi,

i am trying to do a simple check for archiving utilities (zip, unzip,
...), to make sure they exist within the PATH, and are executable by
PHP.

i could not find a better way to do this through php, so i went ahead
and did an

exec('which ' . $utility, $output, $return_value);

then, i check the $return_value for a non-zero value, which would
indicate that the utility was not found.  using GNU/Linux this seems to
work fine, but i wouldn't mind keeping my work cross-platform.

so, my question is, is there a better way to do this?

and, if not, what i have done, for now is the following:

$result = exec('which ' . $utility, $output, $return_val);
return( $result  &&  !$return_val );

from one quick test i ran, i determined that exec() simply returns NULL
or nothing if the given utility/command doesn't exist (`which`, in this
case).

so, i expect the above code to simply return true, or skip the test for
my $utility rather, if the `which` utility is not present on the system.

will this work as expected in all cases/systems?

thanks a lot.

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[PHP] triggering php scripts...

[Chris Wagner]

hello,

i am wondering if there is a good way to trigger a php script from a web
page *without* sending the user to a new page or opening a new browser
windows.

for instance, suppose you wanted to make a button/link on a web page
that, when clicked, would cause a database entry to be decremented. 
however, you do not want to refresh the page or open a popup window or
any stinky little tricks like that.

or, if this is not possible, does anyone know how to trigger a php
script when someone accesses a particular file from an apache server? 
or if a file from a particular directory is downloaded...


thanks a lot!

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[PHP] triggering scripts through apache configuration

[Chris Wagner]

hello,

wondering how you might go about triggering PHP scripts from an apache
configuration file, for certain events...

for instance, how might i trigger a script whenever a file was accessed
within a given directory.  and, would it be possible to know which file
was accessed?

if the above is possible, could you also trigger different scripts for
when a "file download begins" and when a "file download finishes"?

thanks.

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[PHP] Apache Config: php_value "auto_prepend_file" & "auto_append_file"

[Chris Wagner]

hi,

i'm running a server with Fedora Core 1.  this is using Apache 2.0.48
and PHP 4.3.4.

i have my http server root at /var/www/html/.  i have some virtual hosts
setup.

i've just installed phpMyAdmin 2.5.6.  my problem lies within the
auto_prepend_file and auto_append_file directives provided by PHP.  i
have no default prepended or appended files, but have these directives
set up for each virtual host.  so, the section of my httpd.conf file
that takes care of this, looks like so:


  php_value auto_prepend_file /var/www/html/virtual_host1/header.php
  php_value auto_append_file /var/www/html/virtual_host1/footer.php



  php_value auto_prepend_file /var/www/html/virtual_host2/header.php
  php_value auto_append_file /var/www/html/virtual_host2/footer.php



now, i have no header or footer defined for phpMyAdmin, which lies under
/var/www/html/phpMyAdmin/.  but what happens, is that the header and
footer from my 1st virtual host are randomly included, making phpMyAdmin
look hideous, and often making it not work because it needs to place
information in the HTML Header.  whether or not these files are included
seems to be quite random, tho, as it does not happen all the time.  i
could log into phpMyAdmin just fine, browse through a few tables, and
then it will begin including the header and footer.  another thing i've
noticed though, is that these files never get included in the Fedora
Core Apache Test Page, which lies under /var/www/html/.

i think this looks like a bug in either PHP or Apache...  any ideas?

thanks!

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[PHP] determining number of rows in a mysql table

[Chris Wagner]

this should be easy...

how would one go about determining the number of rows in a mysql table,
without actually wasting the time of querying for *.

is this the best way?

$result = mysql_query('SELECT * FROM tablename');
$num_rows = mysql_num_rows($result);

does this actually take up time searching?

thanks.

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[PHP] PHP Sessions

[Chris Wagner]

hello,

i recently started using PHP's sessions.  i am finding that the sessions
seem to "expire" after 20 or 30 minutes -- or, at least the variables
which i set, within $_SESSION, are getting cleared after this relatively
short amount of time.

before calling session_start(), i do a few initializations:

ini_set('session.use_cookies', 1);
ini_set('session.use_trans_sid', 0);
ini_set('session.save_handler', 'files');
ini_set('session.serialize_handler', 'php');
ini_set('session.name', 'session-id');

i am not setting the 'session.cache_expire' INI variable, and even did a
check to make sure it was not being modified, and i found that it
contains the default value of 180 (minutes).

furthermore, the *cookie* is not expiring.  i've also checked
'session.cookie_lifetime', and it is 0 (zero, for "until browser is
closed").  i've also checked the browser's cookie list, and the cookie
is still around at the time that i lose my session variables.

does anyone have any ideas as to why i may be losing my session
variables so early?

thank you!

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