Category: Programming

I’ll just cut to the chase.

/**
 * create an array of all dates between two specified dates
 * @param datetime $strDateFrom
 * @param datetime $strDateTo
 * @return array
 */
function createDateRangeArray($strDateFrom, $strDateTo) {		
	$aryRange = array();
	$iDateFrom = mktime(1, 0, 0, substr($strDateFrom, 5, 2), substr($strDateFrom, 8, 2), substr($strDateFrom, 0, 4));
	$iDateTo = mktime(1, 0, 0, substr($strDateTo, 5, 2), substr($strDateTo, 8, 2), substr($strDateTo, 0, 4));
	if ($iDateTo >= $iDateFrom) {
		array_push($aryRange, date("Y-m-d", $iDateFrom));			
		while ($iDateFrom < $iDateTo) {
			$iDateFrom = $iDateFrom + 86400;
			array_push($aryRange, date("Y-m-d", $iDateFrom));
		}
	}
	return $aryRange;
}

If your users link to some URL, it’s always nice to check if their input actually represents a valid URL. You can do just that with this function:

/**
 * return true if the passed variable is a valid URL address
 * @param $url
 * @return boolean
 */
function isValidURL($url) {
	$pattern  = '/^(([\w]+:)?\/\/)?(([\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})+(:([\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})+)?@)?([\d\w][-\d\w]{0,253}[\d\w]\.)+[\w]{2,4}(:[\d]+)?(\/([-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})*)*(\?(&?([-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})=?)*)?(#([-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})*)?$/';
	return preg_match($pattern, $url);
}

If this function returns true, you might want to actually open the URL (using file_get_contents() or some other function) to see if it works.

It can be tricky to really understand the value of 7312946 or 983217 at the first glance. Saying 7.3M and 983k seems like a much better option. How to convert numbers into a nicer format? Like this:

/**
 * create a nicely formatted number
 * @param $number a large number
 * @param $shorten default true = append k or M, false = format with commas and dots
 * @return int
 */
function createHumanReadableInteger($number, $shorten = true) {
	if (is_numeric($number)) {
		if ($shorten) {
			if ($number < 100000) {
				$return_int = number_format($number, 0);
			} else {
				$number_proc = $number;
				$units = explode(" ", "B k M G T P");
				for ($i = 0; $number_proc > 1000; $i++) {
					$number_proc = $number_proc / 1000;
				}
				if ($number > 1000000) {
					$return_int = round($number_proc, 2) . " " . $units[$i];
				} else {
					$return_int = round($number_proc, 1) . " " . $units[$i];	
				}
			}
		} else {
			$return_int = number_format($number, 0);
		}
		return $return_int;	
	} else {
		return 0;
	}
}