[
Note: this is for those not using sophisticated PHP frameworks (ZF, CakePHP, etc.), but using plain old PHP (Smarty is still OK and great!)]
How many times have you wanted to extract selected GET or POST or COOKIE variables into local/global variables to be used easily? Something like:
$submit = (int) $_REQUEST['submit'];
$name = $_REQUEST['name'];
$email = $_REQUEST['email'];
$preference = (int) $_REQUEST['preference'];
if ($submit) {
if (!$name and !$email) {
$error = 'Please fill in your name and email';
} else {
sql("insert into POST values (?, ?, ?)", $name, $email, $preference);
}
}
And then at another page, you need to do the same thing over and over again (and you don't actually care whether it's GET or POST or...)
$start = (int) $_GET['start'];
$length = (int) $_GET['length'];
$locale = $_GET['locale'];
Solution: I have always been using this function to extract request variables to the global scope:
// first example
getVars('submit name email preference');
echo "Your name is $name"; // the variable $name is now available
// second example
getVars('start length locale');
Isn't it convenient?
How does
getVars() function look like?
function getVars($vars) {
if (is_string($vars)) {
$vars = split(' ', $vars);
}
foreach ($vars as $var) {
$GLOBALS[$var] = $_REQUEST[$var];
}
}
The trick is to move the variables from
$_REQUEST to
$GLOBALS.
Now let's enhance it so that it converts the variables to int when needed:
function getVars($vars) {
if (is_string($vars)) {
$vars = split(' ', $vars);
}
foreach ($vars as $var) {
$modifier = '';
if (strpos($var, '/') !== false) {
$tp = split('/', $var);
$var = $tp[0];
$modifier = $tp[1];
}
$value = $_REQUEST[$var];
if ($modifier == 'hex') {
$value = pack("H*", $value);
} elseif ($modifier == 'int') {
$value = (int)$value;
}
$GLOBALS[$var] = $value;
}
}
We go back to the examples, we now have:
// first example
getVars('submit/int name email preference/int');
// second example
getVars('start/int length/int locale');
Such a useful function,
Let us use it!
Tip: you can also write '/hex' to convert "414243" to "ABC"
