cakephp radio button (form helper)

Using $form->radio(string $fieldName, array $options, array $attributes)

Creates a radio button input. Use $attributes['value'] to set which value should be selected default.

Use $attributes['separator'] to specify HTML in between radio buttons (e.g. <br />).

Radio elements are wrapped with a label and fieldset by default. Set $attributes['legend'] to false to remove them.

EXAMPLE 1 :

$form->radio('login_type', array('1' => 'Login Name', '2' => 'Email'), null,array())

Using $form->input(string $fieldName, array $options = array())

EXAMPLE 2 :
echo $form->input('Options.selectPlan', array(
     'div' => false,
     'label' => true,
     'type' => 'radio',
     'options' => array(1 => 'Plan 1', 2 => 'Plan 2')
);



--
Regards,

Pavan Kumar P G
Software Engineer
Informedia Technologies (M) Pvt Ltd.
Mysore.

Remove blank or null elements from an array

Blog: Windows, Apache, MySQL and PHP (WAMP Server)
Post: Remove blank or null elements from an array
Link: http://wampserver.blogspot.com/2008/01/remove-blank-or-null-elements-from.html

Getting real IP address in PHP

Are you using $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] to find the the client’s IP address in PHP? Well dude, you might be amazed to know that it may not return the true IP address of the client at all time. If your client is connected to the Internet through Proxy Server then $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] in PHP just returns the the IP address of the proxy server not of the client’s machine. So here is a simple function in PHP to find the real IP address of the client’s machine. There are extra Server variable which might be available to determine the exact IP address of the client’s machine in PHP, they are HTTP_CLIENT_IP and HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR.

Function to find real IP address in PHP

function getRealIpAddr()
{
   if (!empty($_SERVER['HTTP_CLIENT_IP']))   //check ip from share internet
   {
     $ip=$_SERVER['HTTP_CLIENT_IP'];
   }
   elseif (!empty($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR']))   //to check ip is pass from proxy
   {
     $ip=$_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'];
   }
   else
   {
     $ip=$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
   }
   return $ip;
}

In this PHP function, first attempt is to get the direct IP address of client’s machine, if not available then try for forwarded for IP address using HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR. And if this is also not available, then finally get the IP address using REMOTE_ADDR.

CAKEPHP Built-in Validation Rules

CAKEPHP Built-in Validation Rules : CC validation rules

This rule is used to check whether the data is a valid credit card number. It takes three parameters: ‘type’, ‘deep’ and ‘regex’.

The ‘type’ key can be assigned to the values of ‘fast’, ‘all’ or any of the following:

• bankcard
• diners
• disc
• electron
• enroute
• jcb
• maestro
• mc
• solo
• switch
• visa
• voyager

If ‘type’ is set to ‘fast’, it validates the data against the major credit cards’ numbering formats. Setting ‘type’ to ‘all’ will check with all the credit card types. You can also set ‘type’ to an array of the types you wish to match.

The ‘deep’ key should be set to a boolean value. If it is set to true, the validation will check the Luhn algorithm of the credit card (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhn_algorithm). It defaults to false.

The ‘regex’ key allows you to supply your own regular expression that will be used to validate the credit card number.

var $validate = array(
   'ccnumber' => array(
       'rule' => array('cc', array('visa', 'maestro'), false, null),
       'message' => 'The credit card number you supplied was invalid.'
   )
);

Validation in CakePHP 1.2

All About Validation in CakePHP 1.2

First up there are a couple of regular expressions defined, which are the same from CakePHP 1.1 and are pretty self explanatory. These are VALID_NOT_EMPTY, VALID_NUMBER, VALID_EMAIL, and VALID_YEAR (between 1000-2999).

The general format of the following validation methods is

var $validate = array('field' => array('rule' => 'ruleName'));

Where parameters are required, such as between and cc, the format is

var $validate = array('field' =>
       array('rule' => array('ruleName', 'param1', 'param2'));

alphaNumeric
Allows only digits and a-z or A-Z.

between
Checks that a strings length is between a min and max value.

blank
Checks if a field is empty and treats whitespace characters as empty.

cc
Credit Card Number validation, includes luhn check and Card Type to number format. Takes one parameter which can be one of :-

• fast - skips Card Type to number format check
• all - checks the number against all card types until it finds a match
• array of card types - like all but limited to a subset of cards.

e.g.

var $validate = array('field' =>
       array('rule' => array('cc', array('Visa')));

compare
Allows you to compare two numeric values. Takes two parameters:-

• Operator - one of <, >, <=, >=, == or !=
• Comparison value to compare against

custom
Allows you to use custom regular expressions. Takes the custom regex as the only parameter.

date
Validates a string as a date. Can take one parameter;

• Format - default is ‘ymd’. other options are:
  • dmy
  • mdy
  • ymd
  • dMy - short or long month names
  • Mdy
  • My
  • my

decimal
Checks that a number has a decimal point or is scientific notation. Takes the number of decimal places required after the point as the only parameter. If places is null it will check for scientific notation.

email
Checks for a valid email address. If a parameter of true is passed it will also attempt to verify the host. If the parameter passed is false, or none is passed it behaves the same as VALID_EMAIL.

ip
Checks for IPv4 dot notation. e.g. 192.168.0.1

minLength
Checks a string for a minimum length. Length is passed as the only parameter.

maxLength
Checks a string for a maximum length. Length is passed as the only parameter.

money
Checks that a string is numbers, optionally grouped into blocks of 3 separated by a space, comma or period, with an optional block of 2 at the end. Can take a parameter of ‘right’ if you expect the currency symbol at the end, the default is at the start.

numeric
Simply calls is_numeric()

phone
Checks for a valid phone format. Takes regex and country as parameters. Currently only supports ‘us’ country option.

postal
Checks for a valid post code format. Takes regex and country as parameters. Currently only supports ‘us’, ‘uk’ and ‘ca’ country options.

ssn
Checks for a valid social security number format. Takes regex and country as parameters. Currently only supports ‘us’, ‘dk’ and ‘nl’ country options.

url
Checks for valid URL format. Supports http(s), ftp(s), file, news and gopher protocols

userDefined
Calls a userdefined method of the current model passing along any parameters. , the first of which is the method to call. Personally I think this is redundant as you can simply replace userDefined with your method name and it works the same.

There are also some incomplete methods listed below that will be coming soon.

number - checks that a number is within a given range
multiple - will be used for selects and multiple selects
equalTo - direct comparison to another value
file - checks for a file.

Next, we'll create a controller for our posts. The controller is where all the business logic for post interaction will happen. In a nutshell, it's the place where you play with the models and get post-related work done. We'll place this new controller in a file called posts_controller.php inside the /app/controllers directory. Here's what the basic controller should look like:

class PostsController extends AppController {

 var $name = 'Posts';
}
?>

Now, lets add an action to our controller. Actions often represent a single function or interface in an application. For example, when users request www.example.com/posts/index (which is also the same as www.example.com/posts/), they might expect to see a listing of posts. The code for that action would look something like this:

class PostsController extends AppController {

 var $name = 'Posts';

 function index() {
  $this->set('posts', $this->Post->find('all'));
 }
}
?>

Let me explain the action a bit. By defining function index() in our PostsController, users can now access the logic there by requesting www.example.com/posts/index. Similarly, if we were to define a function called foobar(), users would be able to access that at www.example.com/posts/foobar.

You may be tempted to name your controllers and actions a certain way to obtain a certain URL. Resist that temptation. Follow CakePHP conventions (plural controller names, etc.) and create readable, understandable action names. You can map URLs to your code using "routes" covered later on.

The single instruction in the action uses set() to pass data from the controller to the view (which we'll create next). The line sets the view variable called 'posts' equal to the return value of the find('all') method of the Post model. Our Post model is automatically available at $this->Post because we've followed Cake's naming conventions.

To learn more about Cake's controllers, check out Chapter "Developing with CakePHP" section: "Controllers".

Create a Post Model

The Model class is the bread and butter of CakePHP applications. By creating a CakePHP model that will interact with our database, we'll have the foundation in place needed to do our view, add, edit, and delete operations later.

CakePHP's model class files go in /app/models, and the file we'll be creating will be saved to /app/models/post.php. The completed file should look like this:

class Post extends AppModel {
   var $name = 'Post';
}

?>

Naming convention is very important in CakePHP. By naming our model
Post, CakePHP can automatically infer that this model will be used in

CakePHP will dynamically create a model object for you, if it cannot find a corresponding file in /app/models. This also means, that if you accidentally name your file wrong (i.e. Post.php or posts.php) CakePHP will not recognize any of your settings and will use the defaults instead. 

The $name variable is always a good idea to add, and is used to overcome some class name oddness in PHP4.

For more on models, such as table prefixes, callbacks, and validation, check out the Models chapter of the Manual.

the PostsController, and will be tied to a database table called posts.