WhyPad » PHP

OOP PHP: What is the Double Colon in Objects/Classes for?

Byron Bennett — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 21:26:03 +0000

I happen to be the only PHP programmer that I know, so it’s hard to ask your buddy what the heck that :: is used for in some OO PHP programs. I know you could post it on a forum and get the answer, but I never did. And Google wasn’t really forth coming when you put :: in a search. Finally I found it in the PHP documentation: check out Scope Resolution Operator (::). In short, it’s used to access Static or Constant members of a class. Here’s a brief example:

 class DatabaseConnector {
   const CONNECTION_STRING = 'myconnectionstring';
}

//Referece that connection string constant like so...
DatabaseConnector::CONNECTION_STRING;

So there you go, mystery solved

In case you’re wondering what the :: is called, it’s a Paamayim Nekudotayim, which is Hebrew for the cryptic phrase: double colon!

Cheers,
Byron

ASP.Net C# – PHP Equivalents

Byron Bennett — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 21:05:36 +0000

On this post, I will be collecting ASP.NET C# commands that I use frequently in PHP but I have to continually look up in the little bit of ASP.NET that I do. PHP can be frustrating for its inconsistencies in syntax, but what is even more frustrating is when you’re trying to do something in C# and you’re trying to remember whether the common sense syntax is in PHP or C#…This tries to be a cheat sheet for those for me:

PHP	ASP.net
echo ‘string’;	Response.Write(“the_text_goes_here”);
$_REQUEST['parameter_name'];	Request.QueryString["parameter_name"];
urlencode( string );	Server.UrlEncode( string );
Convert unix timestamp:date(“m.d.y”, $timestamp);	public static System.DateTime UnixToDotNet(int unixTimestamp) { System.DateTime date = System.DateTime.Parse(“1/1/1970″); return date.AddSeconds(unixTimestamp); }
Connection string: mysql_connect([string $server [,string $username [, string $password [,bool $new_link [, int $client_flags ]]]]] )	Code for using conn string in Web.config: string dbConn = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["QueryStringName"].ToString();

PHP: Using Switch to test Multiple Conditions

Byron Bennett — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 03:41:10 +0000

Ok, so maybe this is common knowledge, but I still felt a little clever when I figured out this trick. The situation was that I wanted to test a bunch of different conditions to figure out which time category a date falls into. It would be fairly simple to do with a bunch of if…then…else’s, but really ugly. Here’s the trick I came up with…use switch(true), and then set up your cases to evaluate to true or false. Here’s some example code:


$mymd = date('Ymd', $row->date_due);
$tymd = date('Ymd');  //Today

switch (true) {
	case $mymd == $tymd :
		$ind = "today";
		break;
	case $mymd < $tymd :
		$ind = "overdue";
		break;
	case $mymd < ($tymd + (6 - date('w'))) :
		$ind = "restofweek";
		break;
	default :
		$ind = (int) date('Ym',$row['duedate']);
		break;
}