Bull3t's Blog » Code Snippets

Code Snippet: Tag cloud

Bull3t — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 12:50:19 +0000

Here is another post containing a snippet of code that you can use in your own project or just so that you can store it in your "Useless Snippets Folder" on your Desktop. You can view all of the older code snippet articles by browsing the code snippet category list.

This code can be used to make a simple and easy tag cloud for your categories or tags on your own website or blog. It uses a simple mathematical sum to calculate a percentage for the font size of each tag and then returns it in a XHTML-compliant, inline list. The function requires an array of the tags in the format: "$tags['tag_name'] = tag_count;", when tag_name is the name of the tag and tag_count is the amount of instances the tag has.

Anyway, here is the code:

View Code PHP


function tag_cloud($tags) {
	if (!$tags) {
		return false; // Error: no $tag argument was specified.
	}
 
	$max_size = 250;
	$min_size = 100;
 
	$largest = max(array_values($tags));
	$smallest = min(array_values($tags));
 
	$range = $largest - $smallest;
	if ($range == 0) {
		$range = 1;
	}
 
	$step = ($max_size - $min_size) / ($range);
 
	$content = '';
	foreach ($tags as $key => $value) {
 
		$size = $min_size + (($value - $smallest) * $step);
 
		$content .= '. $size . '%" title="'. $key . ' (' . $value . ')">' . $key . '
';
	}
	$content .= '
';
 
	return $content; // Return: return the output content, conating the formatted tags.
}
?>

For example, you could use the function as follows:

View Code PHP


$tags['tag1'] = 21;
$tags['tag2'] = 54;
$tags['tag3'] = 42;
$tags['tag4'] = 12;
$tags['tag5'] = 32;
$tags['tag6'] = 12;
$tags['tag7'] = 54;
$tags['tag8'] = 35;
 
echo tag_cloud($tags);
?>

Which would output the following:

Code Snippet: Simple contact form

Bull3t — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 09:31:01 +0000

This time I will be showing you how to create yourself a very simple contact form for use on your blog or website. It will consist of just two files – one being the PHP script to send the mail and the other being the HTML that can be used to send the mail – and I will explain how to use them and what they do.

View Code PHP


if(isset($_POST['submit'])) {
	$to = "you@yourdomain.com"; // E-mail address to send to.
	$prefix = "[Bull3t's Blog] Simple Contact Form: "; // Subject prefix.
 
	$name = $_POST['name'];
	$email = $_POST['email'];
	$subject = $prefix . $_POST['subject'];
	$message = $_POST['message'];
 
	$body = "From: " . $name . "\nE-Mail: " . $email . "\nMessage:\n" . $message;
 
	if (mail($to, $subject, $body) == true) {
		echo "Thankyou, " . $name . ". Your form was successfully submitted.";
	} else {
		echo "There was an error whilst sending your message, please try again later.";
	}
}
?>

This is the PHP script that will be used to send the mail to you, all you need to do is change the $to variable to your e-mail address and the $prefix variable to whatever you want the prefix of the subject to be. Then save it as send.php and upload it to your website.

The next step is to add the form itself, to do this you need to save a simple HTML file containing a form, which, when submitted, sends the information from the text boxes to the send.php file and in turn, sending the mail.

View Code HTML4STRICT

<html><form method="post" action="send.php">
	Name: <br />
	<input type="text" name="name" size="19"><br /><br />
 
	E-Mail Address: <br />
	<input type="text" name="email" size="19"><br /><br />
 
	Subject: <br />
	<input type="text" name="subject" size="19"><br /><br />
 
	Message: <br />
	<textarea rows="9" name="message" cols="30"></textarea><br />
 
	<input type="submit" value="Submit" name="submit">	
</form></html>

As you can see, all that it consists of is a series of text boxes for your user to type in their details, quite simple really, and there is no need for JavaScript. This file should be saved as index.html and uploaded to your website in the same directory as send.php. Then navigate to the index.html on your website and test the form, if all went well you should get a page telling you it was successfully sent, if you receive an error message, however you may want to check with your host to see whether they allow the PHP mail function.

Code Snippet: Remote filesize function

Bull3t — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 01:21:43 +0000

I am beginning to publish posts containing snippets of code that you can use in your own project or just so that you can store it in your "Useless Snippets Folder" on your Desktop. Nevertheless, I wanted to do something on my blog to liven it up a little. View more code snippets.

For the first one, here is a little script that I found extremely useful, it allows you to retrieve the file size of a file located on a remote server using a HTTP, HTTPS, FTP or FTPS URI, quickly and easily. This is useful because the PHP filesize() function does not always accept HTTP wrappers.

View Code PHP


function remotefilesize($url) {
	$sch = parse_url($url, PHP_URL_SCHEME);
	if (($sch != "http") && ($sch != "https") && ($sch != "ftp") && ($sch != "ftps")) { return false; }  // Error: unrecognized URI scheme.
 
	if (($sch == "http") || ($sch == "https")) {
		$headers = array_change_key_case(get_headers($url, 1), CASE_LOWER);
		if (!array_key_exists("content-length", $headers)) { return false; }  // Error: no 'content-length' header.
 
		return $headers["content-length"];  // Return: $headers["content-length"] value.
	}
 
	if (($sch == "ftp") || ($sch == "ftps")) {
		$server = parse_url($url, PHP_URL_HOST);
		$port = parse_url($url, PHP_URL_PORT);
		$path = parse_url($url, PHP_URL_PATH);
		$user = parse_url($url, PHP_URL_USER);
		$pass = parse_url($url, PHP_URL_PASS);
 
		if ((!$server) || (!$path)) { return false; }  // Error: invalid FTP URI.
		if (!$port) { $port = 21; }
		if (!$user) { $user = "anonymous"; }
		if (!$pass) { $pass = "phpos@"; }
 
		switch ($sch) {
			case "ftp":
				$ftpid = ftp_connect($server, $port);
				break;
			case "ftps":
				$ftpid = ftp_ssl_connect($server, $port);
				break;
		}
 
		if (!$ftpid) { return false; }  // Error: could not connect to the FTP server.
 
		$login = ftp_login($ftpid, $user, $pass);
		if (!$login) { return false; }  // Error: could not login to the FTP server.
 
		$ftpsize = ftp_size($ftpid, $path);
		if ($ftpsize == -1) { return false; }  // Error: could not size the FTP file.
 
		ftp_close($ftpid);
 
		return $ftpsize;  // Return: $ftpsize value.
	}
}
?>

This function takes one argument; $url, which is required and should contain the URL of the file to retrieve the size of. The output will be returned as a string in bytes, or if an error was encountered it will return false.

This code can be used accordingly:

View Code PHP

1	echo remotefilesize("http://www.google.co.uk/images/logo.gif") . " bytes."; ?>

This example would return: "8706 bytes.". As that is the size, in bytes of the Google logo.