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Custom WordPress Dashboard Widgets with Configurable Content

June 13, 2015 by Josh Hartman

After working with WordPress dashboard widgets in a recent project I wanted to present a complete example with arguments and usage of the control callback for saving widget options. Using the code in the Gist below you will be able to configure custom content for this widget with the native WYSIWYG editor. When you hover over the widget’s title bar the “Configure” link will be revealed – you must be an Administrator to configure the widget. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Web Development Tagged With: dashboard, php, widget, wordpress

EventDispatcher Component Usage Example

May 2, 2015 by Josh Hartman

As I was browsing through Composer packages on Packagist I came across the EventDispatcher component from the Symfony framework, which can be used independent of Symfony (I believe all components of Symfony are now modular).

The EventDispatcher component allows you to adopt the observer pattern – events/listeners, events/observers (Magento and others), actions/hooks (WordPress), etc. They all follow the same basic pattern but have different implementations.

Once you run composer require symfony/event-dispatcher in your project’s directory you’ll be ready to try it out. If you’re not familiar with Composer, get acquainted now. I don’t think we’d be having a PHP revolution without it.

I’ve put together a simple but complete example of how it can be used in the following Gist:

Note: Adjust the path to autoload.php as needed.

Filed Under: Web Development Tagged With: composer, event, observer, packagist, php, symfony

Loose comparisons with ==

May 1, 2015 by Josh Hartman

UPDATE (2/17/2022): String-to-number loose comparisons have changed with the release of PHP 8.0. See https://www.php.net/manual/en/migration80.incompatible.php for more information. The information below relates to PHP versions prior to PHP 8.0.

My ZCE studies didn’t expose me to these edge cases, well except for the first one.

If you use == watch out for these and related:


<?php
echo ((0 == 'hello') ? 'true' : 'false').PHP_EOL; //true
echo ((0 == '1hello') ? 'true' : 'false').PHP_EOL; //false
echo (('0' == '0e0') ? 'true' : 'false').PHP_EOL; //true
echo (('0' == '0e0e') ? 'true' : 'false').PHP_EOL; //false
echo (('0' == '0ee') ? 'true' : 'false').PHP_EOL; //false
echo ((0 == '0x0') ? 'true' : 'false').PHP_EOL; //true
echo ((0 == '0x0x') ? 'true' : 'false').PHP_EOL; //true
echo ((0 == '0x0b') ? 'true' : 'false').PHP_EOL; //false
?>

Whoa, we don’t want any of these to return true, what’s a developer to do?

Strict comparisons with ===


<?php
echo ((0 === 'hello') ? 'true' : 'false').PHP_EOL; //false
echo ((0 === '1hello') ? 'true' : 'false').PHP_EOL; //false
echo (('0' === '0e0') ? 'true' : 'false').PHP_EOL; //false
echo (('0' === '0e0e') ? 'true' : 'false').PHP_EOL; //false
echo (('0' === '0ee') ? 'true' : 'false').PHP_EOL; //false
echo ((0 === '0x0') ? 'true' : 'false').PHP_EOL; //false
echo ((0 === '0x0x') ? 'true' : 'false').PHP_EOL; //false
echo ((0 === '0x0b') ? 'true' : 'false').PHP_EOL; //false
?>

Much better.

Learn more at http://php.net/manual/en/types.comparisons.php

Filed Under: Quick Tips Tagged With: comparisons, loose, php, strict, type

Escape HTML Function for Browser Output Prevents XSS (Cross-Site Scripting)

April 20, 2013 by Josh Hartman

I don’t know about you but my fingers get tired of escaping output by typing the long-winded htmlspecialchars($str, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8'); over and over again in small PHP projects that don’t need a full-blown framework with automatic output filtering (e.g. CodeIgniter). No matter how small your project is though filtering your output is extremely important so that you prevent malicious users from executing XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) JavaScript code.

So I decided to give my fingers some relief and finally write a short little helper function and share it. See the code and example in the gist below.

Filed Under: Web Development Tagged With: escape, function, helper, html, htmlspecialchars, output, php, xss

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