Bits ‘n Bytes

Password hashing class phpass was suggested in /r/php/ so I decided to use it on one of my CodeIgniter applications. I changed a bit how constructor works to be able to load it as any other CodeIgniter library and modified it’s methods to be able to call them statically.

If you want to give it a try – download it and copy Hash.php to your /application/libraries directory.

 
In your controller, load the library:

1

$this->load->library('hash');

 
Now you can use static methods anywhere in your application – your auth library, users controller, etc.

 
For example, to hash a password you can do this:

1

$hash = Hash::HashPassword($this->input->post('password'));

 
To verify password:

1
2
3
4

if (Hash::CheckPassword($this->input->post('password'), $hash) !== TRUE)
{
	// Login failed
}

 
Hope you’ll find it useful.

Arnas

I was looking for POP3/IMAP library to read and delete emails from POP3/IMAP accounts but one I found on CodeIgniter forums was quite buggy. Fortunately I noticed this post on Reddit which featured Flourish PHP “unframework” and it’s fMailbox class.

I tried to run fMailbox class stand-alone and it worked quite well, so I decided to use it on my CodeIgniter application. I had to change how this class is initiated to use it as regular CodeIgniter library. Also in some places I had to replace Flourish exceptions with CodeIgniter’s error handling.

So, this is how you initiate library with just required parameters:

1
2
3
4
5
6

$config['type'] = 'imap';
$config['host'] = 'mail.example.com';
$config['username'] = 'info@example.com';
$config['password'] = 'letsplay';
 
$this->load->library('mailbox', $config);

More options are available:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

$config['type'] = 'imap';
$config['host'] = 'mail.example.com';
$config['username'] = 'info@example.com';
$config['password'] = 'letsplay';
$config['port'] = 993;
$config['secure'] = TRUE;
$config['timeout'] = 5;
 
$this->load->library('mailbox', $config);

And this is how you call methods:

1

$messages = $this->mailbox->listMessages(10);

So it works basically as documented here, but you have to pass initial arguments as array. Hope someone will find it useful, here’s the download, just copy Mailbox.php to your “libraries” directory and you should be good to go.

Arnas

Ever wondered what those member ranks in CodeIgniter’s forum were all about and how to get one? Well there’s a little back-story posted by Derek Jones from EllisLab, Inc. (creators of CodeIgniter).

[...] But our forum activity has increased so much in the past 1-2 years that there are now many people with over 1000 posts, and some above 2500, 5000, 10000, etc.  It seemed time to add some new ranks in to accommodate the upper tiers, but the current names bore me.  They should be fun, but not goofy, and should work well for both ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter users, and other communities we might have as EllisLab creates them.  Hence, the lab metaphor.

And here is a full table of member ranks on CodeIgniter’s forums:

Arnas codeigniter

Part of the program I’m writing had to check if given hour falls between two hours, for example, if 1 pm is between 5 am – 5 pm, or 11 pm is between 9 pm – 9 am. I couldn’t find snippet on the net so I wrote my own function:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19

/**
 * Checks if given hour is between two hours (in 24 hour format)
 * if $hour is not specified it defaults to current hour
 * 
 * @return bool 
 * @param integer $start
 * @param integer $end
 * @param integer $hour[optional] 
 */
function is_between_hours($start, $end, $hour = NULL)
{
	$hour = (is_null($hour)) ? date('G') : $hour;
 
	if ($start == $end) return TRUE;
 
	if ($start > $end) return (($hour < $start) && ($hour > $end)) ? FALSE : TRUE;
 
	else return (($hour >= $start) && ($hour <= $end)) ? TRUE : FALSE;
}

If you know better way of doing it or have a question – please leave a comment.

Arnas PHP

Just noticed this morning that my SitePoint Forum posts have rel=”nofollow” attribute added to signature links. Not cool. I always thought SitePoint was dofollow forum. After a little digging I found this post: Fluff posting on the forum. Apparently change was made on Nov 17th 2008 and SitePoint now requires at least 100 posts to have signature links without rel=”nofollow” attribute.

Arnas SEO, SitePoint

Yesterday I had to move Wordpress directory for a client (don’t ask why). After following basic instructions outlined in Codex Moving WordPress page I had only one problem left – missing images in blog posts. In database they are saved using full path and were pointing to the old directory.

I came up with following query to fix the problem:

UPDATE wp_posts 
SET guid = replace(guid, 'http://website.com/dir1/', 'http://website.com/dir2/')
WHERE post_type = 'attachment'

It looks in your wp_posts table and and replaces paths to uploaded files, in this case case – from “http://website.com/dir1/” to “http://website.com/dir2/”.

Use at your own risk!

Arnas mysql, Wordpress