While coding a recent project I was looking around for a good way to simplify adding and subtracting dates. I found a function here written by “jm AT trinitywebdev DOT com”. I modified this function slightly (formatting, added support for weeks) and built a class around it. You can download the class here.

Example Usage:

require "c_date.php";
$date = new date();

echo "Yesterday: " 	. $date->yesterday
echo "Today: " 		. $date->today
echo "Tomorrow: " 	. $date->tomorrow

echo "Today minus 1 month: " 	. $date->modify($date->today,'-1m','m/d/Y')
echo "Today plus 5 days: " 		. $date->modify($date->today,'+5d','m/d/Y')
echo "Yesterday plus 6 weeks: " . $date->modify($date->yesterday,'+6w','m/d/Y')

Output:

(created on 4/19/2010)

Yesterday: 04/18/2010
Today: 04/19/2010
Tomorrow: 04/20/2010

Today minus 1 month: 03/19/2010
Today plus 5 days: 04/24/2010
Yesterday plus 6 weeks: 05/30/2010

classes · dates · php

Recently a project called for us to integrate automated shipping quotes from the UPS XML API. Fortunately I was able to find an open source library of classes that handle these transactions written by Sergey Shilko.

I’ve created a mirror of all the classes Sergey wrote.

api · open source · php · Programming · ups

Here’s a quick Javascript I wrote to validate (The 4 major American) credit card numbers, based on this post by Harrell W. Stiles.

Validate a credit card number with Javascript.

View the source on that page to grab the code, here are the two main functions as a quick reference:

function get_cc_type(n){
	var n2 = n.substr(0,2);
	var n4 = n.substr(0,4);
	var n1 = n.substr(0,1);
	var l = n.length

	if(n4 == "6011" && l == 16){
		return "discover";
	} else if(n1 == "4" && l > 12 && l < 17){
		return "visa";
	} else if(n2 == "51" || n2 == "52" || n2 == "53" || n2 == "54" || n2 == "55" && l == 16){
		return "mastercard";
	} else if(n2 == "34" || n2 == "37" && l == 15){
		return "american_express";
	} else {
		return "unknown";
	}
}

function is_valid_cc_number(n){
	var toggle = 0;
	var total = 0;
	n = n.split("").reverse();
	for(i=0;i<n.length;i++){
		if(toggle == 0){
			val = n[i];
			toggle = 1;
		} else {
			val = n[i] * 2;
			if(val > 9){
				tempVal = val.toString().split("");
				val = parseInt(tempVal[0]) + parseInt(tempVal[1]);
			}
			toggle = 0;
		}
		total = parseInt(total) + parseInt(val);
	}

	if(total % 10 === 0){
		return true;
	} else {
		return false;
	}
}

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One particular forum that I administrate recently had a problem with an influx of spam users and posts.  We needed a solution but until I could come up with one we needed a quick way to get rid of the trash they were posting on our public forums, so I wrote this script.  

The script accepts a username as input, and it will remove every trace of that user from the PHPBB database.  It deletes their username, bans their username and IP Address, removes any posts and/or topics created by them, and corrects the ‘last post by’ on each forum by removing them.

Feel free to use this script if you like, but be aware it’s very dangerous as it’s directly editing the PHPBB3 database tables.  The only configuration you need to supply is the database name, hostname, and auth credentials.  The script also assumes you used the default table prefix (phpbb_) when installing.

Code: http://ryanbrotherton.pastebin.com/f2dd5c4a3

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One day I found myself in need of an image carousel, but instead of grabbing a pre-made script I decided to write my own.  Why re-invent the wheel you ask?  Because I like to learn and I love JavaScript, I don’t get to write custom JavaScript nearly enough.  Also, to better understand how this particular wheel works.  I want to re-write this eventually  to remove the dependency on Scriptaculous.

I shouldn’t have to say this but if you want to use it, you’re free to use it for any purpose.

Dependencies: Scriptaculous – For the fading effect.

Code: http://ryanbrotherton.pastebin.com/f1cc2203c

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Standards

Daniel Miessler

The absolute worst browser when it comes to supporting the standards is Internet Explorer.

The Internet works for one simple reason – everything at its core has been built on agreements that bind it together. Whether a computer is connected from California or Sri Lanka, it’s going to speak the same language and obey the same rules – the rules defined by standards. If this weren’t the case there would be no Internet at all.

The designers of Internet Explorer have purposely turned their back on the standards designed to benefit the Internet as a whole. They have done this for years, continue to do it today, and appear to have nothing but their own interests at heart.

http://dmiessler.com/writing/dumpie/

Free the Web

IE6 is the bane of every web developer’s life. Released in 2001, IE6 fails to even properly support the CSS 1.0 standard from 1996.

Internet Explorer 6 is holding back the future.

Supporting IE6 prevents us from using cool new features, standard with up to date browsers. This erodes user-experience for everyone. Additionally, the hacks and workarounds that web developers are forced to use degrades their code, and this limits progress in other areas. Above all it’s simply a waste of millions of hours of human potential.

http://www.free-the-web.com/

Security

Daniel Miessler

What makes other browsers better than IE at protecting vs. spyware and other attacks? Well, it’s simple really – most other browsers don’t make it so easy to install malicious software on your system without you knowing about it. IE makes it relatively trivial through two features called ActiveX and Active Scripting. These technologies were designed specifically for the purpose of giving Web sites more control over a user’s computer. Unfortunately, as we have seen with exploit after exploit – that’s not always a good thing.

http://dmiessler.com/writing/dumpie/

Bruce Schneier – Security Expert

This study is from August, but I missed it. The researchers tracked three browsers (MSIE, Firefox, Opera) in 2004 and counted which days they were “known unsafe.” Their definition of “known unsafe”: a remotely exploitable security vulnerability had been publicly announced and no patch was yet available.

MSIE was 98% unsafe. There were only 7 days in 2004 without an unpatched publicly disclosed security hole.

Firefox was 15% unsafe. There were 56 days with an unpatched publicly disclosed security hole. 30 of those days were a Mac hole that only affected Mac users. Windows Firefox was 7% unsafe.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/internet_explor.html

PC World

In 2006, citing its lack of security, PC World magazine named Internet Explorer 6 number 8 on their list of the “25 worst tech products of all time”.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/125772-3/the_25_worst_tech_products_of_all_time.html

Current

Just recently, A major flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer that allows hackers to gain the password details of the user was revealed.

This is not a rumor, it was confirmed by Microsoft who in fact announced the discovery themselves admitting a “vulnerability in Internet Explorer” that “could allow remote code execution.” Not Good.

http://thenextweb.com/2008/12/16/dump-internet-explorer-at-least-for-now/

Market Share

These stats are accurate to anyones guess, bost most claim google as a source.  This is an averaging of the best sources I could find.  (w3c puts firefox at 44%, I didn’t use them because that seemed way out of line with all other sources)

• IE7 – 47.32%
• Firefox: 21%
• IE6 – 19.21%
• Safari – 8%
• Chrome/Opera – 2%

• http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=1
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_6#Market_Share

Conclusion

It is becoming more and more clear that, as some of our quoted authors have suggested, IE6 is severely impeding the progress of the web as a whole.  You could say this of any inferior or outdated browser but IE6 is the only one still widely used, and the cause of its continued widespread use is uneducated users.  They remain uneducated because they are unaware of the inherent security risks in IE6 due to a tight integration with the Windows operating system and exploitable access to ActiveX controls.

IE6 is not only an incredible time sink and headache for developers, it is a danger to consumers as well.

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http://www.imgsize.net

I got bored last weekend and started writing this.  I opened the doors as beta so people can easily use it to resize simple images if they’re in a pinch or if they don’t have an image manipulation tool readily available.

It’s also great for people who aren’t really tech savvy.

The primary goals for the project were ease of use, simplicity, and an intuitive interface with as few steps as possible to get a quickly resized image.

Planned Features/Fixes

• Manual Input of dimensions (w/ constrained proportions)
• Allow slider to increment 1% instead of only 2%
• Transparency Support?
• Web Service of some sort?

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There is a little known quirk in the Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers.  Here’s an example link to Google: http://1249710995.  If clicking it doesn’t work for you, copy and paste it into IE6 or 7 or FF3. (I haven’t tested any other browsers except for Opera and Chrome, neither of them work.)

I wrote a quick converter in PHP, you can play with it here and download the source code on the same page.

How to: Convert each octet of an IPv4 address to hex and concatenate the hex values into one giant number. Convert the number back to decimal and you have the 10 digit number.

Quick reference conversion functions:

IP Address to 10 digit:

	function toTen($i){
		$a = explode(".",$i);
		$g1 = $a[0];
		$g2 = $a[1];
		$g3 = $a[2];
		$g4 = $a[3];

		$g1 *= 16777216;
		$g2 *= 65536;
		$g3 *= 256;

		return $g1 + $g2 + $g3 + $g4;
	}

10 digit back to IP:

	function toIP($i){
		$i = dechex($i+0);
		$g1 = hexdec(substr($i,0,2));
		$g2 = hexdec(substr($i,2,2));
		$g3 = hexdec(substr($i,4,2));
		$g4 = hexdec(substr($i,6,2));

		return $g1.".".$g2.".".$g3.".".$g4;
	}

Why: Anonymity.  I can’t think of a use for this that isn’t potentially malicious.  It could be used by malware to trick users into going to an unfriendly url, and bypass blacklisted domain names in spam filters.

I’m sure the feature is put there for a reason, I’m just not sure what it is.  Got any ideas?

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