PHP Back to Basics 3: Arrays

In this tutorial we will be looking at arrays, which are extremely widely used in PHP. Data is often returned in the form of an array, for example when you read records from a database, or reading the data entered into an HTML form which has been submitted by the user.

We'll start by looking at what exactly an array is, and then look at the methods which can be used to create or add data to an array. We then look at the various ways you can work with data held in the form of an array, working through each element of the array in turn, and merging the data from two arrays into one.

Finally, we look at sorting data held in an array, so that the data is transformed into alphabetical or numerical order.

PHP: Password Encryption and Retrieval

If you're running a system that password-protects sensitive data, you'll also want to encrypt the passwords themselves in case anyone hacks your server and reads the password database. Allan runs through the various options available in both MySQL and PHP, dealing with one-way encryption and methods of decrypting passwords so that password reminders can be sent to the user, for example.

This tutorial stands alone, but can also be optionally used to extend the registration and confirmation suite that we built previously (part 1, part2, part 3).

Please note that this article forms part of a chapter in the DMXzone e-book PHP Web Applications for Dreamweaver: Juicy Solutions for the Busy Developer.

PHP: Site Registration and Confirmation Completed

Over the last two tutorials, we have been building up a user registration and validation system using as much of Dreamweaver's built in functionality as possible. We have built our database and created a form with validation for capturing the users' details, and then sent the user a confirmation email and written a script that tests for a human user and validates them against the database. We also wrote a small script that lets us test our system without having to send emails all over the place. This week we'll finish off our system by creating a small addition to our users.php script, add some functionality for the user to reset their password if they have forgotten it and then create a set of login pages that works with the database structure that we created in the first tutorial.

All the code for a full PHP log-in and confirmation suite is included with this tutorial!