Ive got some code that runs html code from a database in order to not have to make a new file for every page that I might want to make, problem with this is that if the page contains php code it wont run, and im pretty sure you can do this with eval however it has security risks so I was trying to find some alternatives. I can paste the code if necessary. Ive got a php script that gets data from table and a main php script that gets the formatting in HTML and PHP for the data however it will just run the PHP code as if it were strings from the database.
Here is an image of the code thats meant to be run from the php script :
Here is the php code in that row
And this is the main script that is meant to run it :
Why not make PHP functions? Like, for example if you wanted to spit out data from your databases using PHP, but not a lot of code, you can do something like... (for user profiles)
Like, you can make a funcs.php
then inside of it do:
function user_page($user_id){
?> [Create user page here] <?php
}
Then inside of any other file just do:
include 'funcs.php';
if(isset($_GET['username']) === true){
user_page($_GET['username']);
} else {
//if not loading user page then do something else
}
EDIT
Okay, I just saw your screenshot.
To do something like that, a function would be good.
Ex:
function print_data($info1,$info2,$info3,$info4){
echo("<center>$info1</center><br>$info2<br>$info3<br>$info4");
}
then just calling the function with the $row[] information you have in your screenshot.
Like so:
print_data($row['email'],$row['name'],$row['username'],$row['ip_addr']);
this question must be added to some "doing it wrong" list, honestly.
but, returning to your question you have 3 options, all of them more or less painful, and only one of them is right.
to do it right: rewrite your engine or take some cms/framework. store text data in database, scripts/template on disk
eval! (which you don't want)
parse. (it will be very hard and slow and totally crazy)
Related
I am using wordpress for a web site. I am using snippets (my own custom php code) to fetch data from a database and echo that data onto my web site.
if($_GET['commentID'] && is_numeric($_GET['commentID'])){
$comment_id=$_GET['commentID'];
$sql="SELECT comments FROM database WHERE commentID=$comment_id";
$result=$database->get_results($sql);
echo "<dl><dt>Comments:</dt>";
foreach($result as $item):
echo "<dd>".$item->comment."</dd>";
endforeach;
echo "</dl>";
}
This specific page reads an ID from the URL and shows all comments related to that ID. In most cases, these comments are texts. But some comments should be able to point to other pages on my web site.
For example, I would like to be able to input into the comment-field in the database:
This is a magnificent comment. You should also check out this other section for more information
where getURLtoSectionPage() is a function I have declared in my functions.php to provide the static URLs to each section of my home page in order to prevent broken links if I change my URL pattern in the future.
I do not want to do this by using eval(), and I have not been able to accomplish this by using output buffers either. I would be grateful for any hints as to how I can get this working as safely and cleanly as possible. I do not wish to execute any custom php code, only make function calls to my already existing functions which validates input parameters.
Update:
Thanks for your replies. I have been thinking of this problem a lot, and spent the evening experimenting, and I have come up with the following solution.
My SQL "shortcode":
This is a magnificent comment. You should also check out this other section for more information
My php snippet in wordpress:
ob_start();
// All my code that echo content to my page comes here
// Retrieve ID from url
// Echo all page contents
// Finished generating page contents
$entire_page=ob_get_clean();
replaceInternalLinks($entire_page);
PHP function in my functions.php in wordpress
if(!function_exists("replaceInternalLinks")){
function replaceInternalLinks($reference){
mb_ereg_search_init($reference,"\[custom_func:([^\]]*):([^\]]*)\]");
if(mb_ereg_search()){
$matches = mb_ereg_search_getregs(); //get first result
do{
if($matches[1]=="getURLtoSectionPage" && is_numeric($matches[2])){
$reference=str_replace($matches[0],getURLtoSectionPage($matches[2]),$reference);
}else{
echo "Help! An unvalid function has been inserted into my tables. Have I been hacked?";
}
$matches = mb_ereg_search_regs();//get next result
}while($matches);
}
echo $reference;
}
}
This way I can decide which functions it is possible to call via the shortcode format and can validate that only integer references can be used.
I am safe now?
Don't store the code in the database, store the ID, then process it when you need to. BTW, I'm assuming you really need it to be dynamic, and you can't just store the final URL.
So, I'd change your example comment-field text to something like:
This is a magnificent comment. You should also check out this other section for more information
Then, when you need to display that text, do something like a regular expression search-replace on 'href="#comment-([0-9]+)"', calling your getURLtoSectionPage() function at that point.
Does that make sense?
I do not want to do this by using eval(), and I have not been able to accomplish this by using output buffers either. I would be grateful for any hints as to how I can get this working as safely and cleanly as possible. I do not wish to execute any custom php code, only make function calls to my already existing functions which validates input parameters.
Eval is a terrible approach, as is allowing people to submit raw PHP at all. It's highly error-prone and the results of an error could be catastrophic (and that's without even considering the possibly that code designed by a malicious attacker gets submitted).
You need to use something custom. Possibly something inspired by BBCode.
To put my question into context, I'm working on an entirely static website where 'post' pages are created by myself manually - there's no CMS behind it. Each page will require a <pre> <code> block to display code as text in a styled block. This could be very few - several which is why I'm trying to do this for ease.
Here's what I've done -
function outputCode($code) {
return "<pre class='preBlock'><code class='codeBlock'>".htmlentities($code)."</code></pre>";
}
The code works as expected and produces an expected outcome when it's able to grab code. My idea is to somehow wrap the code for the code block with this function and echo it out for the effect, fewer lines and better readability.
As I'm literally just creating pages as they're needed, is there even a way to create the needed code blocks with such function to avoid having to manually repeat all the code for each code block? Cheers!
EDIT:
I was previously using this function and it was working great as I was pulling code from .txt documents in a directory and storing the code for code blocks in a variable with file_get_contents(). However, now, I'm trying to get the function to work by manually inputting the code into the function.
Well. Wrapping the function input in ' ' completely slipped my mind! It works just fine now!
If I understand correctly, you want to re-use your outputCode function in several different PHP files, corresponding to posts. If yes, you could put this 1 function in its own file, called outputcode.php for example, and then do
include "outputcode.php";
in every post/PHP file that needs to re-use this function. This will pull in the code, from the one common/shared file, for use in each post/PHP file that needs it. Or maybe I'm misreading your last paragraph :(
I am new to PHP and very likely I am using the incorrect approach because I am not used to think like a PHP programmer.
I have some files that include other files as dependencies, these files need to have global code that will be executed if $_POST contains certain values, something like this
if (isset($_POST["SomeValue"]))
{
/* code goes here */
}
All the files will contain this code section, each one it's own code of course.
The problem is that since the files can be included in another one of these files, then the code section I describe is executed in every included file, even when I post trhough AJAX and explicitly use the URL of the script I want to POST to.
I tried using the $_SERVER array to try and guess which script was used for the post request, and even though it worked because it was the right script, it was the same script for every included file.
Question is:
Is there a way to know if the file was included into another file so I can test for that and skip the code that only execute if $_POST contains the required values?
Note: The files are generated using a python script which itself uses a c library that scans a database for it's tables and constraints, the c library is mine as well as the python script, they work very well and if there is a fix for a single file, obviously it only needs to be performed to the python script.
I tell the reader (potential answerer) about this because I think it makes it clear that I don't need a solution that works over the already existant files, because they can be re-generated.
From the sounds of it you could make some improvements on your code structure to completely avoid this problem. However, with the information given a simple flag variable should do the trick:
if (!isset($postCodeExecuted) && isset($_POST["SomeValue"]))
{
/* code goes here */
$postCodeExecuted = true;
}
This variable will be set in the global namespace and therefore it will be available from everywhere.
I solved the problem by doing this
$caller = str_replace($_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"], "", __FILE__);
if ($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] === "POST" and $caller === $_SERVER["PHP_SELF"])
performThisAction();
Not having any luck with my other thread with specific code so if I can I'd like to ask how people would go about getting this to work.
I have an page where my client edits details of a property displayed on a property list, say they edit text and don't add any images to this property.
HTML form works fine, I'm just looking at the php.
Example:
If files selected then run this script as an include
If no files selected then exit
Something like this...
if($_FILES['files']['name']!="")
{
Do this
}
else
{
exit();
}
I'm going mental trying to figure this out so any help or suggestions would be great. I have tried a few variations and variations on top of those variations and nothing seems to work so far.
Cheers
Use isset() orempty() constructs. (For more information read PHP doc)
if(!empty($_FILES['files']['name']))
{
//
}
Hey everybody, this issue has had me stumped for the last week or so, here's the situation:
I've got a site hosted using GoDaddy hosting. The three files used in this issue are index.html , milktruck.js , and xml_http_request.php all hosted in the same directory.
The index.html file makes reference to the milktruck.js file with the following code:
<script type="text/javascript" src="milktruck.js"></script>
The milktruck.js file automatically fires when the site is opened. The xml_http_request.php has not fired at this point.
On line 79 out of 2000 I'm passing the variable "simple" to a function within the milktruck.js file with:
placem('p2','pp2', simple, window['lla0_2'],window['lla1_2'],window['lla2_2']);
"simple" was never initialized within the milktruck.js file. Instead I've included the following line of code in the xml_http_request.php file:
echo "<script> var simple = 'string o text'; </script>";
At this point I have not made any reference whatsoever to the xml_http_request.php file within the milktruck.js file. I don't reference that file until line 661 of the milktruck.js file with the following line of code:
xmlhttp.open('GET',"xml_http_request.php?pid="+pid+"&unLoader=true", false);
Everything compiles (I'm assuming because my game runs) , however the placem function doesn't run properly because the string 'string o text' never shows up.
If I was to comment out the line of code within the php file initializing "simple" and include the following line of code just before I call the function placem, everything works fine and the text shows up:
var simple = 'string o text';
Where do you think the problem is here? Do I need to call the php file before I try using the "simple" variable in the javascript file? How would I do that? Or is there something wrong with my code?
So, we meet again!
Buried in the question comments is the link to the actual Javascript file. It's 2,200 lines, 73kb, and poorly formatted. It's also derived from a demo for the Google Earth API.
As noted in both the comments here and in previous questions, you may be suffering from a fundamental misunderstanding about how PHP works, and how PHP interacts with Javascript.
Let's take a look at lines 62-67 of milktruck.js:
//experiment with php and javascript interaction
//'<?php $simpleString = "i hope this works"; ?>'
//var simple = "<?php echo $simpleString; ?>";
The reason this never worked is because files with the .js extension are not processed by PHP without doing some bizarre configuration changes on your server. Being on shared hosting, you won't be able to do that. Instead, you can rename the file with the .php extension. This will allow PHP to process the file, and allow the commands you entered to actually work.
You will need to make one more change to the file. At the very top, the very very top, before anything else, you will need the following line:
<?php header('Content-Type: text/javascript'); ?>
This command will tell the browser that the file being returned is Javascript. This is needed because PHP normally outputs HTML, not Javascript. Some browsers will not recognize the script if it isn't identified as Javascript.
Now that we've got that out of the way...
Instead I've included the following line of code in the xml_http_request.php file: <a script tag>
This is very unlikely to work. If it does work, it's probably by accident. We're not dealing with a normal ajax library here. We're dealing with some wacky thing created by the Google Earth folks a very, very long time ago.
Except for one or two in that entire monolithic chunk of code, there are no ajax requests that actually process the result. This means that it's unlikely that the script tag could be processed. Further, the one or two that do process the result actually treat it as XML and return a document. It's very unlikely that the script tag is processed there either.
This is going to explain why the variable never shows up reliably in Javascript.
If you need to return executable code from your ajax calls, and do so reliably, you'll want to adopt a mature, well-tested Javascript library like jQuery. Don't worry, you can mix and match the existing code and jQuery if you really wanted to. There's an API call just to load additional scripts. If you just wanted to return data, that's what JSON is for. You can have PHP code emit JSON and have jQuery fetch it. That's a heck of a lot faster, easier, and more convenient than your current unfortunate mess.
Oh, and get Firebug or use Chrome / Safari's dev tools, they will save you a great deal of Javascript pain.
However...
I'm going to be very frank here. This is bad code. This is horrible code. It's poorly formatted, the commenting is a joke, and there are roughly one point seven billion global variables. The code scares me. It scares me deeply. I would be hesitant to touch it with a ten foot pole.
I would not wish maintenance of this code on my worst enemy, and here you are, trying to do something odd with it.
I heartily encourage you to hone your skills on a codebase that is less archaic and obtuse than this one before returning to this project. Save your sanity, get out while you still can!
perhaps init your values like this:
window.simple = 'blah blah blah'
then pass window.simple
You could try the debugger to see what is going on, eg. FireBug