PHP Tutorials (2)

PHP — September 4, 2007 at 11:45

2 PHP tutorials. The first one helped me A LOT, when it came to upgrading a large site, and the client wanted a multilanguage site engine. The second one is a simple flat counter

How to switch languages on a multilingual web site

1. First create a language directory, we will call it languages.

2. Create two language files, let’s say english.php and romanian.php and populate them with variables:

english.php

$txt['headtext'] = 'Welcome to our site';

romanian.php

$txt['headtext'] = 'Bine ati venit in pagina noastra';

3. Create an include directory, we will call it include.

4. Create a configuration file:

config.php

<?php
$languages = array(
'en' => 'english',
'ro' => 'romanian',
);

if (isset($_GET['lang']) AND array_key_exists($_GET['lang'], $languages)) {
include ‘./languages/’ . $languages[$_GET['lang']] . ‘.php’;
}
else {
include ‘./languages/english.php’;
}
?>

5. Create a file called index.php and fill the next lines in:

<?php
// begin includes
include_once('include/config.php') // configuration file
// end includes
?>

<?php
echo $txt['headtext']; // some text
?>

<form action=”<?php echo $PHP_SELF;?>” method=”get”>
<select name=”lang” size=”1″ onchange=”this.form.submit()”>
<option value=”">Select your language</option>
<option value=”ro”>Romana</option>
<option value=”en”>English</option>
</select>
</form>

<a href=”otherfile.php?lang=<?=$lang?>”>otherfile.php</a>

6. That’s all! End of tutorial. It’s really that simple. Just remember to refer to all links site wide as file.php?lang=<?=$lang?>:

<a href="otherfile.php?lang=<?=$lang?>">otherfile.php</a>

And the second one,

How to create a simple flat-file counter

1. First create a counter data file, we will call it counter.txt.

2. Create the counter PHP script, let’s say counter.php, as follows:

counter.php

<div align="center">Visitors:
<?php
$file = 'counter.txt';

if(!file_exists($file))
{
$handle = fopen($file, ‘w’);
fwrite($handle, 0);
fclose($handle);
}

$count = file_get_contents($file);
$count++;

if(is_writable($file))
{
$handle = fopen($file, ‘w+’);
fwrite($handle, $count);
fclose($handle);
}
else
{
echo ‘Unable to increment the counter!<br />’;
}

echo number_format($count).”;
?>
</div>

3. That’s all! Remember to chmod your data file – counter.txt – to 777. You can now include this script in your page with the following line:

<?php include('counter.php'); ?>