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9 Useful PHP Functions and

Features You Need to Know Burak Guzel on Feb 28th 2011 with 145 comments

Twice a month, we revisit some of our readers’ favorite posts from throughout the history of Nettuts+.

Even after using PHP for years, we stumble upon functions and features that we did not know about. Some of these can

be quite useful, yet underused. With that in mind, I’ve compiled a list of nine incredibly useful PHP functions and

features that you should be familiar with.

1. Functions with Arbitrary Number of Arguments

You may already know that PHP allows you to define functions with optional arguments. But there is also a method for

allowing completely arbitrary number of function arguments.

First, here is an example with just optional arguments:

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1. // function with 2 optional arguments

2. function foo($arg1 = '', $arg2 = '') {

3.

4. echo "arg1: $arg1\n";

5. echo "arg2: $arg2\n";

6.

7. }

8.

9. foo('hello','world');

10. /* prints:11. arg1: hello

12. arg2: world

13. */

14.

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15. foo();

16. /* prints:

17. arg1:

18. arg2:

19. */

 Now, let’s see how we can build a function that accepts any number of arguments. This time we are going to utilize

func_get_args():

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1. // yes, the argument list can be empty

2. function foo() {

3.

4. // returns an array of all passed arguments

5. $args = func_get_args();

6.

7. foreach ($args as $k => $v) {

8. echo "arg".($k+1).": $v\n";

9. }

10.

11. }

12.

13. foo();

14. /* prints nothing */

15.

16. foo('hello');

17. /* prints

18. arg1: hello

19. */

20.

21. foo('hello', 'world', 'again');

22. /* prints

23. arg1: hello

24. arg2: world

25. arg3: again

26. */

2. Using Glob() to Find Files

Many PHP functions have long and descriptive names. However it may be hard to tell what a function named glob()

does unless you are already familiar with that term from elsewhere.

Think of it like a more capable version of the scandir() function. It can let you search for files by using patterns.

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1. // get all php files

2. $files = glob('*.php');

3.

4. print_r($files);

5. /* output looks like:

6. Array

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7. (

8. [0] => phptest.php

9. [1] => pi.php

10. [2] => post_output.php

11. [3] => test.php

12. )

13. */

You can fetch multiple file types like this:

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1. // get all php files AND txt files

2. $files = glob('*.{php,txt}', GLOB_BRACE);

3.

4. print_r($files);

5. /* output looks like:

6. Array

7. (

8. [0] => phptest.php

9. [1] => pi.php

10. [2] => post_output.php

11. [3] => test.php

12. [4] => log.txt

13. [5] => test.txt

14. )

15. */

 Note that the files can actually be returned with a path, depending on your query:

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1. $files = glob('../images/a*.jpg');

2.

3. print_r($files);

4. /* output looks like:

5. Array

6. (

7. [0] => ../images/apple.jpg

8. [1] => ../images/art.jpg9. )

10. */

If you want to get the full path to each file, you can just call the realpath() function on the returned values:

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1. $files = glob('../images/a*.jpg');

2.

3. // applies the function to each array element

4. $files = array_map('realpath',$files);5.

6. print_r($files);

7. /* output looks like:

8. Array

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9. (

10. [0] => C:\wamp\www\images\apple.jpg

11. [1] => C:\wamp\www\images\art.jpg

12. )

13. */

3. Memory Usage InformationBy observing the memory usage of your scripts, you may be able optimize your code better.

PHP has a garbage collector and a pretty complex memory manager. The amount of memory being used by your script.

can go up and down during the execution of a script. To get the current memory usage, we can use the

memory_get_usage() function, and to get the highest amount of memory used at any point, we can use the

memory_get_peak_usage() function.

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1. echo "Initial: ".memory_get_usage()." bytes \n";

2. /* prints

3. Initial: 361400 bytes

4. */

5.

6. // let's use up some memory

7. for ($i = 0; $i < 100000; $i++) {

8. $array []= md5($i);

9. }

10.

11. // let's remove half of the array12. for ($i = 0; $i < 100000; $i++) {

13. unset($array[$i]);

14. }

15.

16. echo "Final: ".memory_get_usage()." bytes \n";

17. /* prints

18. Final: 885912 bytes

19. */

20.

21. echo "Peak: ".memory_get_peak_usage()." bytes \n";22. /* prints

23. Peak: 13687072 bytes

24. */

4. CPU Usage Information

For this, we are going to utilize the getrusage() function. Keep in mind that this is not available on Windows platforms.

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1. print_r(getrusage());

2. /* prints

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3. Array

4. (

5. [ru_oublock] => 0

6. [ru_inblock] => 0

7. [ru_msgsnd] => 2

8. [ru_msgrcv] => 3

9. [ru_maxrss] => 12692

10. [ru_ixrss] => 764

11. [ru_idrss] => 386412. [ru_minflt] => 94

13. [ru_majflt] => 0

14. [ru_nsignals] => 1

15. [ru_nvcsw] => 67

16. [ru_nivcsw] => 4

17. [ru_nswap] => 0

18. [ru_utime.tv_usec] => 0

19. [ru_utime.tv_sec] => 0

20. [ru_stime.tv_usec] => 6269

21. [ru_stime.tv_sec] => 022. )

23.

24. */

That may look a bit cryptic unless you already have a system administration background. Here is the explanation of each

value (you don't need to memorize these):

ru_oublock: block output operations

ru_inblock: block input operations

ru_msgsnd: messages sent

ru_msgrcv: messages received

ru_maxrss: maximum resident set size

ru_ixrss: integral shared memory size

ru_idrss: integral unshared data size

ru_minflt: page reclaims

ru_majflt: page faults

ru_nsignals: signals received

ru_nvcsw: voluntary context switches

ru_nivcsw: involuntary context switches

ru_nswap: swaps

ru_utime.tv_usec: user time used (microseconds)

ru_utime.tv_sec: user time used (seconds)

ru_stime.tv_usec: system time used (microseconds)

ru_stime.tv_sec: system time used (seconds)

To see how much CPU power the script has consumed, we need to look at the 'user time' and 'system time' values. The

seconds and microseconds portions are provided separately by default. You can divide the microseconds value by 1

million, and add it to the seconds value, to get the total seconds as a decimal number.

Let's see an example:

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1. // sleep for 3 seconds (non-busy)

2. sleep(3);

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3.

4. $data = getrusage();

5. echo "User time: ".

6. ($data['ru_utime.tv_sec'] +

7. $data['ru_utime.tv_usec'] / 1000000);

8. echo "System time: ".

9. ($data['ru_stime.tv_sec'] +

10. $data['ru_stime.tv_usec'] / 1000000);

11.12. /* prints

13. User time: 0.011552

14. System time: 0

15. */

Even though the script took about 3 seconds to run, the CPU usage was very very low. Because during the sleep

operation, the script actually does not consume CPU resources. There are many other tasks that may take real time, but

may not use CPU time, like waiting for disk operations. So as you see, the CPU usage and the actual length of the

runtime are not always the same.

Here is another example:

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1. // loop 10 million times (busy)

2. for($i=0;$i<10000000;$i++) {

3.

4. }

5.

6. $data = getrusage();

7. echo "User time: ".8. ($data['ru_utime.tv_sec'] +

9. $data['ru_utime.tv_usec'] / 1000000);

10. echo "System time: ".

11. ($data['ru_stime.tv_sec'] +

12. $data['ru_stime.tv_usec'] / 1000000);

13.

14. /* prints

15. User time: 1.424592

16. System time: 0.004204

17. */

That took about 1.4 seconds of CPU time, almost all of which was user time, since there were no system calls.

System Time is the amount of time the CPU spends performing system calls for the kernel on the program's behalf. Here

is an example of that:

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1. $start = microtime(true);

2. // keep calling microtime for about 3 seconds

3. while(microtime(true) - $start < 3) {4.

5. }

6.

7. $data = getrusage();

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8. echo "User time: ".

9. ($data['ru_utime.tv_sec'] +

10. $data['ru_utime.tv_usec'] / 1000000);

11. echo "System time: ".

12. ($data['ru_stime.tv_sec'] +

13. $data['ru_stime.tv_usec'] / 1000000);

14.

15. /* prints

16. User time: 1.08817117. System time: 1.675315

18. */

 Now we have quite a bit of system time usage. This is because the script calls the microtime() function many times,

which performs a request through the operating system to fetch the time.

 Also you may notice the numbers do not quite add up to 3 seconds. This is because there were probably other processes on the server as well, and the script was not using 100% CPU for the whole duration of the 3 seconds.

5. Magic Constants

PHP provides useful magic constants for fetching the current line number (__LINE__), file path (__FILE__), directory

 path (__DIR__), function name (__FUNCTION__), class name (__CLASS__), method name (__METHOD__) and

namespace (__NAMESPACE__).

We are not going to cover each one of these in this article, but I will show you a few use cases.

When including other scripts, it is a good idea to utilize the __FILE__ constant (or also __DIR__ , as of 

PHP 5.3):

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1. // this is relative to the loaded script's path

2. // it may cause problems when running scripts from different directories

3. require_once('config/database.php');

4.5. // this is always relative to this file's path

6. // no matter where it was included from

7. require_once(dirname(__FILE__) . '/config/database.php');

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Using __LINE__ makes debugging easier. You can track down the line numbers:

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1. // some code

2. // ...

3. my_debug("some debug message", __LINE__);

4. /* prints

5. Line 4: some debug message6. */

7.

8. // some more code

9. // ...

10. my_debug("another debug message", __LINE__);

11. /* prints

12. Line 11: another debug message

13. */

14.

15. function my_debug($msg, $line) {16. echo "Line $line: $msg\n";

17. }

6. Generating Unique ID's

There may be situations where you need to generate a unique string. I have seen many people use the md5() function

for this, even though it's not exactly meant for this purpose:

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1. // generate unique string

2. echo md5(time() . mt_rand(1,1000000));

There is actually a PHP function named uniqid() that is meant to be used for this.

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1. // generate unique string

2. echo uniqid();

3. /* prints4. 4bd67c947233e

5. */

6.

7. // generate another unique string

8. echo uniqid();

9. /* prints

10. 4bd67c9472340

11. */

You may notice that even though the strings are unique, they seem similar for the first several characters. This is becausethe generated string is related to the server time. This actually has a nice side effect, as every new generated id comes

later in alphabetical order, so they can be sorted.

To reduce the chances of getting a duplicate, you can pass a prefix, or the second parameter to increase entropy:

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1. // with prefix

2. echo uniqid('foo_');

3. /* prints

4. foo_4bd67d6cd8b8f 

5. */

6.

7. // with more entropy8. echo uniqid('',true);

9. /* prints

10. 4bd67d6cd8b926.12135106

11. */

12.

13. // both

14. echo uniqid('bar_',true);

15. /* prints

16. bar_4bd67da367b650.43684647

17. */

This function will generate shorter strings than md5(), which will also save you some space.

7. Serialization

Have you ever needed to store a complex variable in a database or a text file? You do not have to come up with a

fancy solution to convert your arrays or objects into formatted strings, as PHP already has functions for this purpose.

There are two popular methods of serializing variables. Here is an example that uses the serialize() and unserialize():

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1. // a complex array

2. $myvar = array(

3. 'hello',

4. 42,

5. array(1,'two'),

6. 'apple'

7. );8.

9. // convert to a string

10. $string = serialize($myvar);

11.

12. echo $string;

13. /* prints

14. a:4:{i:0;s:5:"hello";i:1;i:42;i:2;a:2:{i:0;i:1;i:1;s:3:"two";}i:3;s:5:"apple";}

15. */

16.

17. // you can reproduce the original variable

18. $newvar = unserialize($string);

19.

20. print_r($newvar);

21. /* prints

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22. Array

23. (

24. [0] => hello

25. [1] => 42

26. [2] => Array

27. (

28. [0] => 1

29. [1] => two

30. )31.

32. [3] => apple

33. )

34. */

This was the native PHP serialization method. However, since JSON has become so popular in recent years, they

decided to add support for it in PHP 5.2. Now you can use the json_encode() and json_decode() functions as

well:

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1. // a complex array

2. $myvar = array(

3. 'hello',

4. 42,

5. array(1,'two'),

6. 'apple'

7. );

8.

9. // convert to a string

10. $string = json_encode($myvar);

11.

12. echo $string;

13. /* prints

14. ["hello",42,[1,"two"],"apple"]

15. */

16.

17. // you can reproduce the original variable

18. $newvar = json_decode($string);

19.

20. print_r($newvar);21. /* prints

22. Array

23. (

24. [0] => hello

25. [1] => 42

26. [2] => Array

27. (

28. [0] => 1

29. [1] => two

30. )31.

32. [3] => apple

33. )

34. */

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It is more compact, and best of all, compatible with javascript and many other languages. However, for complex

objects, some information may be lost.

8. Compressing Strings

When talking about compression, we usually think about files, such as ZIP archives. It is possible to compress long

strings in PHP, without involving any archive files.

In the following example we are going to utilize the gzcompress() and gzuncompress() functions:

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1. $string =

2. "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur

3. adipiscing elit. Nunc ut elit id mi ultricies

4. adipiscing. Nulla facilisi. Praesent pulvinar,

5. sapien vel feugiat vestibulum, nulla dui pretium orci,

6. non ultricies elit lacus quis ante. Lorem ipsum dolor

7. sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aliquam

8. pretium ullamcorper urna quis iaculis. Etiam ac massa

9. sed turpis tempor luctus. Curabitur sed nibh eu elit

10. mollis congue. Praesent ipsum diam, consectetur vitae

11. ornare a, aliquam a nunc. In id magna pellentesque

12. tellus posuere adipiscing. Sed non mi metus, at lacinia

13. augue. Sed magna nisi, ornare in mollis in, mollis

14. sed nunc. Etiam at justo in leo congue mollis.

15. Nullam in neque eget metus hendrerit scelerisque

16. eu non enim. Ut malesuada lacus eu nulla bibendum17. id euismod urna sodales. ";

18.

19. $compressed = gzcompress($string);

20.

21. echo "Original size: ". strlen($string)."\n";

22. /* prints

23. Original size: 800

24. */

25.

26. echo "Compressed size: ". strlen($compressed)."\n";27. /* prints

28. Compressed size: 418

29. */

30.

31. // getting it back

32. $original = gzuncompress($compressed);

We were able to achive almost 50% size reduction. Also the functions gzencode() and gzdecode() achive similar results,

by using a different compression algorithm.

9. Register Shutdown Function

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There is a function called register_shutdown_function(), which will let you execute some code right before the script

finishes running.

Imagine that you want to capture some benchmark statistics at the end of your script execution, such as how long it took

to run:

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1. // capture the start time2. $start_time = microtime(true);

3.

4. // do some stuff 

5. // ...

6.

7. // display how long the script took

8. echo "execution took: ".

9. (microtime(true) - $start_time).

10. " seconds.";

 At first this may seem trivial. You just add the code to the very bottom of the script and it runs before it finishes.

However, if you ever call the exit() function, that code will never run. Also, if there is a fatal error, or if the script is

terminated by the user (by pressing the Stop button in the browser), again it may not run.

When you use register_shutdown_function(), your code will execute no matter why the script has stopped running:

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1. $start_time = microtime(true);

2.

3. register_shutdown_function('my_shutdown');

4.

5. // do some stuff 

6. // ...

7.

8. function my_shutdown() {

9. global $start_time;

10.

11. echo "execution took: ".

12. (microtime(true) - $start_time).

13. " seconds.";

14. }

Conclusion

 Are you aware of any other PHP features that are not widely known but can be quite useful? Please share with us in the

comments. And thank you for reading!

Like 347 people like this. Be the first of your friends.

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Burak Guzel is BurakG on Tutsmarketplace

Tags: PHPphp functionsphp tips

By Burak GuzelBurak Guzel is a full time PHP Web Developer living in Arizona, originally from Istanbul, Turkey. He has a bachelors

degree in Computer Science and Engineering from The Ohio State University. He has over 8 years of experience withPHP and MySQL. You can read more of his articles on his website at PHPandStuff.comand follow him on Twitter

here.

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