9 Advanced PHP Tips That Only Expert PHP Developers Know

Sameer, one of our PHP developers, read a question on the PHP forum where a novice developer had asked advanced PHP tips to learn PHP web development.

To answer the question, Sameer has listed 9 useful advanced PHP tips and techniques that can be used to enhance and learn PHP code.

We thought to share it here on the blog as well.

Are you ready to explore it?

Level Up Your PHP Skills with These 9 PHP Techniques

Php background process code

Index.php

    $url = 'backgroundScript.php';
    $postfields = ['company_name' => "spaceo", 'developer_name' => "sameer"];
    
    $ch = curl_init($url);
    curl_setopt_array($ch, array(
        CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
        CURLOPT_NOSIGNAL => 1,
        CURLOPT_TIMEOUT_MS => 50,
        CURLOPT_VERBOSE => 1,
        CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => http_build_query($postfields),
        CURLOPT_HEADER => 1,
        CURLOPT_FRESH_CONNECT => true,
    ));
    
    curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);

backgroundScript.php

    set_time_limit(0);
    header("Connection: close");
    ignore_user_abort(true);
    
    // write your background execute code

Delete whole folder with it’s content

    $dir = 'put your folder url path here'; // ex: '../uploads/media/1

    if (is_dir($dir)) {
        array_map('unlink', glob($dir . '/*'));
        rmdir($dir);
    }

Print debug log in particular location

index.php

    require_once('errorLog.php');
    cloud_error_log('put your error result here'); // error result like text, array etc.

errorLog.php

    function cloud_error_log($errordata) {
        $handle = fopen('errorLogFile.txt', 'a+');
        $logtext = "******************" . date('d-m-Y h:i:s') . "******************\n\n";
        $logtext .= print_r($errordata, true);
        $logtext .= "\n\n**********************************************************\n\n";
        $errorlog = fwrite($handle, $logtext);
        fclose($handle);
        chmod('errorLogFile.txt', 0777);
        return true;
    }

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Getting list of dates from day name of particular year and month

    function getMonthDatefromDay($month, $year, $searchdayname) {
        $start_date = "01-" . $month . "-" . $year;
        $start_time = strtotime($start_date);
        $end_time = strtotime("+1 month", $start_time);
        for ($i = $start_time; $i < $end_time; $i += 86400) {
            if (strtolower(date('D', $i)) == $searchdayname) {
                $list[] = date('Y-m-d', $i);
            }
        }
        return $list;
    }
    
    print_r(getMonthDatefromDay(09, 2016, 'mon'));

Encrypt and Decrypt password

function encrypt_decrypt($string, $action = 'encrypt') {
    $encrypt_method = "AES-256-CBC";
    $secret_key = 'AA74CDCC2BBRT935136HH7B63C27'; // user define private key
    $secret_iv = '5fgf5HJ5g27'; // user define secret key
    $key = hash('sha256', $secret_key);
    $iv = substr(hash('sha256', $secret_iv), 0, 16); // sha256 is hash_hmac_algo

    if ($action == 'encrypt') {
        $output = openssl_encrypt($string, $encrypt_method, $key, 0, $iv);
        $output = base64_encode($output);
    } else if ($action == 'decrypt') {
        $output = openssl_decrypt(base64_decode($string), $encrypt_method, $key, 0, $iv);
    }   

    return $output;
}

echo "Your Encrypted password is => " . $pwd = encrypt_decrypt('spaceo', 'encrypt');
echo '<br/>';
echo "Your Decrypted password is => " . encrypt_decrypt($pwd, 'decrypt');

Create random Unique Key
```
echo md5(uniqid(time()));
```

Display users with suffix. (ex: Facebook users like 10K)

function formatWithSuffix($input)
{
    $suffixes = array('', 'K', 'M', 'B', 'T');
    $suffixIndex = 0;
    while(abs($input) >= 1000 && $suffixIndex < sizeof($suffixes)) {
        $suffixIndex++;
        $input /= 1000;
    }
    return ($input > 0 ? floor($input * 1000) / 1000 : ceil($input * 1000) / 1000) . $suffixes[$suffixIndex];
}
echo formatWithSuffix('10000');

Multiple array sorting

$data = array[
    ['id' => 1, 'name' => 'sameer'],
    ['id' => 2, 'name' => 'yagnesh'],
    ['id' => 3, 'name' => 'chirag']
];
foreach ($data as $key => $row) {
    $id[$key] = $row['id'];
    $name[$key] = $row['name'];
}
array_multisort($id, SORT_DESC, $name, SORT_ASC, $data);
print_r($id);
print_r($name);

Get size of the specified URL or file
```
echo filesize('test.txt');
```

Plus, bonus tip:

Never use for($i=0; $i<count($arrayName); $i++){…} instead of this use $cnt = count($arrayName); for($i=0; $i<$cnt; $i++){…}.

In the above example, the first method will call count function on each iteration for loop, while in the second iteration, count function is being called only once.

Apart from these techniques you can become a better PHP developer by reading our post on useful PHP development tools for web developers.

Want to Become a PHP Expert?

Finally, mastering advanced PHP hacks is critical for anyone learning PHP and aspiring to work in the PHP development industry. You can use these hacks to add impressive functionality to your PHP projects, such as creating an event calendar with PHP. By constantly honing your PHP skills, you can become an invaluable member of any team and propel your PHP development career to new heights.

We can assist you if you are planning to build a PHP project and need to consult with experts. Our custom PHP development company has extensive experience completing a variety of PHP projects using various frameworks. We have a team of expert PHP programmers for hire who can assist you in realising your ideas and developing high-quality web applications that meet your specific requirements. Contact us today.