Tag Archives: Computer programming

Zend_Date::setOptions and format_type in Zend Framework 1.10.3

micro tutorial, PHP, zend framework, , , , , ,

I recently upgraded from the old Zend Framework 1.9.5 to the latest – 1.10.3. Everything just looked to be working quite fine, except the date formatting. Although I had the same date formatting and options in the old version it seems to be not working.

I had the format_type set to PHP and even though I formatted the dates with a Zend Framework specific format: “d MMM yyyy”.

Zend_Date::setOptions(array('format_type' => 'php'));
// ...
$date = new Zend_Date($somedate);
echo $date->get('d MMM yyyy');

Now as it appears format_type php in 1.10.3 is giving completely different result, and the correct format is date() like format in PHP.

Zend_Date::setOptions(array('format_type' => 'php'));
// ...
$date = new Zend_Date($somedate);
echo $date->get('d M yy');

Inline Scripts with Zend_View_Helper_InlineScript

javascript, micro tutorial, PHP, zend framework, , , , , , , ,

Once I’ve posted about Zend Framework and script injections into the view of the app. However back than I didn’t mentioned the way the scripts can be injected on whatever place into the markup. This job’s done by Zend_View_Helper_InlineScript and that’s only an abstraction over the HeadScript.

However thus the PHP code goes quite clean and maintainable.

$scripts = $this->view->inlineScript();
$scripts->appendFile('/scripts/production.js');

This is quite interesting because in the case of multiple scripts you can chain them into this:

$scripts = $this->view->inlineScript();
$scripts->appendFile('/scripts/production.js')
            ->appendFile('/scripts/development.js')

But that’s not everything. Although it looks very pretty and clean, PHP gives you the correct syntax of something like this:

$scripts = $this->view->inlineScript();
$scripts
            ->appendFile('/scripts/production.js')
            ->appendFile('/scripts/development.js')

And that’s particularly good when it comes to fast switching between production and development scripts includes.

$scripts = $this->view->inlineScript();
$scripts
 //        ->appendFile('/scripts/production.js')
            ->appendFile('/scripts/development.js')

You’d ask why I’d to comment my script includes. Because as it appears to be fashionable the JavaScripts are concatenated and compressed. This gives you performance benefits on the client side when downloading and executing the script. So it’s usual to have one compressed/minified and several development scripts. That’s why this commenting strategy is very useful.

Should I do Something Only Because Crockford Says So?

web development, , , , , , ,

Crockford says: “Don’t do that, please stop doing it!?” It may be related to JavaScript, YUI, CSS or whatever. PPK recently posted about browser prefixes with the same intonation. OK, fine, it’s difficult to maintain, it’s ugly but my job is to make the site look as nice as possible.

I agree with Crokford that only with copy/paste now JavaScript has the reputation of badly standardized language with no programmers that understand it at all. It’s true, but however this maybe made JavaScript so popular, now all the libraries come with that abstraction in mind and this gap seems to be smaller.

In addition I’ll say that’s fine if Crockford or PPK say something like that, but the primary goal of every web developer is not to be in good relations with Crockford, but to satisfy clients! I’d like to repeat – clients!

Secure Forms with Zend Framework

micro tutorial, PHP, zend framework, , , , , , , , , , ,

Maybe the correct title is not “with Zend Framework”, but “with PHP”, because the general approach I used is purely PHP and no Zend Framework dependency is used. However let me mention that ZF allows you to build forms with Zend_Form, which gives you an abstraction over the HTML forms with many goodies like validation, filtering and protection.

Zend_Form and Zend_Form_Element_Hash

Although the technique I’m using is doing the same thing, note that in ZF there’s a Zend_Form_Element_Hash which generates and validates the form, thus protecting you from CSRF attacks. The thing is that I didn’t use it because the form I’m protecting is not generated with Zend_Form, and I cannot benefit from everything ZF is giving to me. However you can easily reproduce the basic strategy with every form and every framework till it’s written in PHP.

What’s the solution?

It’s pretty simple and it’s described many many times around the web, simply generate a random hash, a possible solution is to use uniqid in combination with mt_rand and md5, thus you’d get quite strong hash.

Step two is to pass this generated hash, also stored in the session in a hidden value of the form. Of course now the most asked question is: but that’s visible to the source and thus everybody will have a valid hash.

There’s the trick. OK everybody will have a valid hash, but on submit the hash is validated against the SESSION variable, and as you know the session is specified between the browser (client) and the web server. Although the attacker may have a valid hash he must execute the attacking script from the same domain, possibly with the same browser, which makes the task rather difficult.

An Example

Let me show a breve example, it may help make things clearer.

1. First step – start the session

<?php
session_start();
?>

2. Second step – validate the form against the $_SESSION and generate a valid token

<?php
if (isset($_POST['name']) && $_POST['token'] == $_SESSION['token'])
    echo $_POST['name'];
else
    echo 'dont hack';
 
$_SESSION['token'] = md5(uniqid('test', true));
?>

3. Third step – make a form

<form method="POST" action="">
<input type="hidden" value="<?php echo $_SESSION['token'] ?>" name="token" />
<input type="text" name="name" value="stoimen" />
<input type="submit" name="submit" />
</form>

Demo here.

For more to test this you may try to make the same form somewhere else on the web and to point the action to http://www.stoimen.com/projects/php.secure.forms/! Without the session validation it’s absolutely sure you can post on the attacked server.

P.S. Now I’ve to admit that this have nothing to do with Zend Framework, however it’s good practice and thus may be used with every framework.