php-general Digest 27 Oct 2010 08:53:05 -0000 Issue 7008
Topics (messages 309080 through 309102):
Re: Check for existence of mail address
309080 by: TR Shaw
309081 by: Gary
309082 by: TR Shaw
Character encoding hell
309083 by: Marc Guay
309084 by: Nicholas Kell
309085 by: Simcha Younger
309087 by: Marc Guay
309088 by: Nicholas Kell
309089 by: Marc Guay
309090 by: Marc Guay
309091 by: Nicholas Kell
309092 by: Marc Guay
309093 by: a...@ashleysheridan.co.uk
309094 by: Marc Guay
309095 by: Mari Masuda
309096 by: a...@ashleysheridan.co.uk
309097 by: Marc Guay
309098 by: Marc Guay
309099 by: Bastien Koert
309100 by: Steve Staples
309101 by: Marc Guay
Re: Reminder On Mailing List Rules
309086 by: tedd
Documentation
309102 by: Jordan Jovanov
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- Begin Message ---
On Oct 26, 2010, at 8:49 AM, TR Shaw wrote:
> On Oct 25, 2010, at 6:38 PM, web...@blaettner.com wrote:
>
>> Hi, folks,
>>
>> I'm wondering how to checking existence of a given
>> mail address like f...@bar.com .
>>
>> At 1st I tried:
>>
>> if f (filter_var ($maddr, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL) === false) {
>> /* some sort of error handling code here */
>> }
>>
>> where $maddr is the address to be checked.
>> But this checks only syntax.. :-(
>>
>> Is there any other function which checks whether this
>> address really exists?
>>
>> And, of course, I want to avoid sending a test mail just
>> for checking :-)
>>
>> Many THX in advance for suggestions, pointers...
>>
>
> Rolf,
>
> Since most mailservers have disabled VRFY long ago due to spammers and other
> miscreants.
>
> Easiest way is to use class.smtp.php form phpmailer using the following:
>
> $smtp = new SMTP
> if (empty($smtp->Connect())) return false; // Connect failure
> if (empty($smtp->Hello("yourmailerver.com")) return false; //Maybe not a
> mailserve
> if(empty($smtp->Recipient($to))) return false; //No such user
> $smtp->Close(); // Found user so abort transaction.
> return true;
>
> Tom
>
>
PS I didn't cover greylisting in the above.
PPS But why? If you are running a mailing list you need to generate different
mail froms and deal with rejections that way . It is spammy if you try to use
the above to clean a list and will probably cause you to be black listed. I
know I set my server list blacklist too many of these.
Tom
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
Bob McConnell wrote:
> From: TR Shaw
>
>> On Oct 25, 2010, at 6:46 PM, Daniel P. Brown wrote:
>>> On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 18:38, <web...@blaettner.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Is there any other function which checks whether this
>>>> address really exists?
>>>
>>> Of course not! Can you imagine the implications, insecurities,
>>> and privacy concerns that would be associated with that? Some
>>> mailservers will confirm or deny if a local address exists, but not
>>> most --- thankfully.
>
>> Not true or else you would never get mail.
>
> Of course it's true. Most servers will accept any email sent to a valid
> domain name
No, not unless they are specifically so configured. Normally they'll
return a 550 in such cases AFAIK.
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
On Oct 26, 2010, at 9:28 AM, Bob McConnell wrote:
> From: TR Shaw
>
>> On Oct 25, 2010, at 6:46 PM, Daniel P. Brown wrote:
>>> On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 18:38, <web...@blaettner.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Is there any other function which checks whether this
>>>> address really exists?
>>>
>>> Of course not! Can you imagine the implications, insecurities,
>>> and privacy concerns that would be associated with that? Some
>>> mailservers will confirm or deny if a local address exists, but not
>>> most --- thankfully.
>
>> Not true or else you would never get mail.
>
> Of course it's true. Most servers will accept any email sent to a valid
> domain name, then silently discard all messages that don't have valid
> user names, expecting that set to be mostly SPAM. This created a new
> problem where the legitimate senders no longer know when their mail
> didn't get delivered due to a typo in the address.
I don't know about most. If any well respected business did that they wouldn't
stay in business long. Most servers disable VRFY and users who use spam
assassin may trash mail that should have been rejected. Its the owner of the
mailserver's call.
Except on a spam trap domain, I would never accept mail for invalid users as it
is a disservice to my clients and their domain's reputation to their
users/clients. Accepting all and discarding it certainly isn't out of the box
default behavior nor is it in MAAWG's BCP's nor others either.
Tom
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
Hi folks,
I've got a problem with character encoding that's threatening to kill
my little brain. Here we go:
I have a directory with a bunch of PDFs in it that my webpage displays
links to. All of the files have the french character  in them. The
operating system is Linux (I did not experience this problem on a
Windows machine). I don't want to type the display name of these files
twice and the website has no database capability so it takes the
filename, rips off the extension, and runs htmlentities() on it before
displaying to the user. So far so good. Now to the anchor's href.
The only encoding method I found which creates a proper link to the
file is rawurlencode(), but the catch is that the filename isn't user
friendly at all. My question then is what is the best solution to
this problem? Ideally I would like the link to function and for the
filename to be readable.
Any hope/help is appreciated.
Marc
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
On Oct 26, 2010, at 10:56 AM, Marc Guay wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> I've got a problem with character encoding that's threatening to kill
> my little brain. Here we go:
>
> I have a directory with a bunch of PDFs in it that my webpage displays
> links to. All of the files have the french character  in them. The
> operating system is Linux (I did not experience this problem on a
> Windows machine). I don't want to type the display name of these files
> twice and the website has no database capability so it takes the
> filename, rips off the extension, and runs htmlentities() on it before
> displaying to the user. So far so good. Now to the anchor's href.
> The only encoding method I found which creates a proper link to the
> file is rawurlencode(), but the catch is that the filename isn't user
> friendly at all. My question then is what is the best solution to
> this problem? Ideally I would like the link to function and for the
> filename to be readable.
>
> Any hope/help is appreciated.
>
> Marc
>
> --
> PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
> To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
>
Are you using UTF-8?
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
On Tue, 26 Oct 2010 11:56:17 -0400
Marc Guay <marc.g...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have a directory with a bunch of PDFs in it that my webpage displays
> links to. All of the files have the french character  in them. The
> operating system is Linux (I did not experience this problem on a
> Windows machine). I don't want to type the display name of these files
> twice and the website has no database capability
If you are not constantly adding/changing the files there, you can use a csv
file in place of a database.
--
Simcha Younger <sim...@syounger.com>
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
> Are you using UTF-8?
Could you be more specific? Do you mean in the browser/php header or
in the filesystem? I created the file on a Windows machine,
transferred them to a Linux machine, and the encoding of the page is
UTF-8.
I just noticed a strange thing which might shed some light. If I just
run htmlentities() on the href, it shows this in the browser URL:
LE CHÂT.pdf
But the browser returns a "not found" error:
LE%20CH%C3%82T.pdf
It seems like the  character is being misunderstood as "Â"
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
On Oct 26, 2010, at 11:38 AM, Marc Guay wrote:
>> Are you using UTF-8?
>
> Could you be more specific? Do you mean in the browser/php header or
> in the filesystem? I created the file on a Windows machine,
> transferred them to a Linux machine, and the encoding of the page is
> UTF-8.
>
> I just noticed a strange thing which might shed some light. If I just
> run htmlentities() on the href, it shows this in the browser URL:
>
> LE CHÂT.pdf
>
> But the browser returns a "not found" error:
>
> LE%20CH%C3%82T.pdf
>
> It seems like the  character is being misunderstood as "Â"
I apologize for the vagueness. I was referring to the browser/php header or a
meta tag.
Something to the effect of this quick copy paste from a site that uses accent
marks and umlauts:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
If I am understanding correctly, you are referring to a HTML specific issue
where the HTML and browser configuration is displaying your characters
improperly?
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
> If I am understanding correctly, you are referring to a HTML specific issue
> where the HTML and browser configuration is displaying your characters
> improperly?
No, the browser is displaying the characters of the filename fine
(using htmlentities converts the ? unknown character into an Â. The
problem is with the link/href to the file with the special character
in it's name. I get a 404 not found unless I rawurlencode the href,
turning it into the rather unreadable "LE%20CH%C2T.pdf".
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
Again, if it helps, a link formatted in the same way to the same file
links correctly on a windows machine.
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
On Oct 26, 2010, at 12:00 PM, Marc Guay wrote:
> Again, if it helps, a link formatted in the same way to the same file
> links correctly on a windows machine.
>
> --
> PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
> To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
>
A windows server, or windows client to the same Linux server? I believe that
this issue is starting to get a bit over my head, with the different operating
systems involved and such.
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
> A windows server, or windows client to the same Linux server? I believe that
> this issue is starting to get a bit over my head, with the different
> operating systems involved and such.
Windows server. This is over my head, too. I'm guessing that Windows
and Linux encode filenames differently and when I transferred the file
from one to the other, some kind of adjustment was made.
Marc
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
Have you tried using the utf8 meta tag rather than using the htmlentities()
function? That should solve the first issue, as I reckon the problem lies with
the way your encoding the filename.
Linux filesystems have far less limitations on filenames, so it could be that
windows is doing something odd which coincides with what php is doing. I'm not
at my machine right now to test, but you should be able to pass the filename in
the url with url_encode and on the server convert it back with url_decode to
give you the original filename back.
Lastly, have you made sure your php scripts are saved as utf8, as that can
sometimes solve some odd problems with character encoding.
Thanks,
Ash
http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
----- Reply message -----
From: "Marc Guay" <marc.g...@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Oct 26, 2010 18:00
Subject: [PHP] Character encoding hell
To: "php-general" <php-gene...@lists.php.net>
Again, if it helps, a link formatted in the same way to the same file
links correctly on a windows machine.
--
PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
> Have you tried using the utf8 meta tag rather than using the htmlentities()
> function? That should solve the first issue, as I reckon the problem lies
> with the way your encoding the filename.
The page is being encoded in UTF-8. Without htmlentities() the
special character is displayed as a black triangle with a question
mark in it. Does that indicate that the filename isn't being stored
as UTF-8?
> Lastly, have you made sure your php scripts are saved as utf8, as that can
> sometimes solve some odd problems with character encoding.
This didn't seem to change anything.
Marc
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
On Oct 26, 2010, at 10:10 AM, Marc Guay wrote:
>> A windows server, or windows client to the same Linux server? I believe that
>> this issue is starting to get a bit over my head, with the different
>> operating systems involved and such.
>
> Windows server. This is over my head, too. I'm guessing that Windows
> and Linux encode filenames differently and when I transferred the file
> from one to the other, some kind of adjustment was made.
>
> Marc
I think one way to do this is something like this (untested):
1. Put all of your files in some directory on the server.
2. Change your <a href="http://example.com/encoded-file-name.pdf";>my file</a>
to <a href="http://example.com/download-file.php?fileID=xxx";>my file</a> where
xxx is the urlencoded version of "encoded-file-name.pdf". (xxx could also be a
fileID number if stored in a database.)
3. In download-file.php do something like this:
<?php
$parent_directory = "/path/to/parent/directory/"; // can be in or out of web
root
if (file_exists($parent_directory . "encoded-file-name.pdf")) {
$data = file_get_contents($parent_directory . "encoded-file-name.pdf");
$file_name_with_french_chars = rawurldecode("encoded-file-name.pdf");
header("Content-type: application/octet-stream");
header("Content-disposition: Attachment;
filename=\"$file_name_with_french_chars\""); // this line assigns the "nice"
looking name as the file name
echo $data;
}
?>
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
Where is the filename coming from? Is it hard-coded in the script or is your
script reading it from a directory listing?
Have you checked to see if that filename is what you think it is on the Linux
server?
Was Apache the web server both times, or was iis used on windows? If it was,
look for any errant .htaccess files causing problems.
Lastly, what happens if you directly request that file from with the browser
itself, without php scripts in the equation.
Thanks,
Ash
http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
----- Reply message -----
From: "Marc Guay" <marc.g...@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Oct 26, 2010 18:22
Subject: [PHP] Character encoding hell
To: "a...@ashleysheridan.co.uk" <a...@ashleysheridan.co.uk>
Cc: "php-general" <php-gene...@lists.php.net>
> Have you tried using the utf8 meta tag rather than using the htmlentities()
> function? That should solve the first issue, as I reckon the problem lies
> with the way your encoding the filename.
The page is being encoded in UTF-8. Without htmlentities() the
special character is displayed as a black triangle with a question
mark in it. Does that indicate that the filename isn't being stored
as UTF-8?
> Lastly, have you made sure your php scripts are saved as utf8, as that can
> sometimes solve some odd problems with character encoding.
This didn't seem to change anything.
Marc
--
PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
> I think one way to do this is something like this (untested):
This is a good idea, but I'm stubborn and believe it can be solved
without adding more code. Thanks, though, I'll probably end up using
it once I've ruined every other possibility.
Marc
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
> Where is the filename coming from? Is it hard-coded in the script or is your
> script reading it from a directory listing?
The filename is being read from the file via scandir(). File created
on Windows, transferred to *nix.
> Have you checked to see if that filename is what you think it is on the
> Linux server?
The character is shown as a question mark in putty. I've tried
forcing a UTF-8 font to make sure it's not a rendering issue but it
didn't seem to make a difference. I'm not convinced the encoding
changed, though.
> Was Apache the web server both times, or was iis used on windows? If it was,
> look for any errant .htaccess files causing problems.
Both are apache.
> Lastly, what happens if you directly request that file from with the browser
> itself, without php scripts in the equation.
If I request the file directly from the Windows server, it opens Adobe
Acrobat. If I request the same file directly from the Linux server, I
get the 404 File Not Found.
Marc
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 1:32 PM, Mari Masuda <mbmas...@stanford.edu> wrote:
>
> On Oct 26, 2010, at 10:10 AM, Marc Guay wrote:
>
>>> A windows server, or windows client to the same Linux server? I believe
>>> that this issue is starting to get a bit over my head, with the different
>>> operating systems involved and such.
>>
>> Windows server. This is over my head, too. I'm guessing that Windows
>> and Linux encode filenames differently and when I transferred the file
>> from one to the other, some kind of adjustment was made.
>>
>> Marc
>
> I think one way to do this is something like this (untested):
>
> 1. Put all of your files in some directory on the server.
>
> 2. Change your <a href="http://example.com/encoded-file-name.pdf";>my
> file</a> to <a href="http://example.com/download-file.php?fileID=xxx";>my
> file</a> where xxx is the urlencoded version of "encoded-file-name.pdf".
> (xxx could also be a fileID number if stored in a database.)
>
> 3. In download-file.php do something like this:
>
> <?php
> $parent_directory = "/path/to/parent/directory/"; // can be in or out of web
> root
> if (file_exists($parent_directory . "encoded-file-name.pdf")) {
> $data = file_get_contents($parent_directory . "encoded-file-name.pdf");
> $file_name_with_french_chars = rawurldecode("encoded-file-name.pdf");
>
> header("Content-type: application/octet-stream");
> header("Content-disposition: Attachment;
> filename=\"$file_name_with_french_chars\""); // this line assigns the "nice"
> looking name as the file name
> echo $data;
> }
> ?>
> --
> PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
> To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
>
>
This approach is what I wanted to suggest as well. You can simulated a
db with an XML file if you wanted to and even assign the IDs as
numerical to make life really easy
--
Bastien
Cat, the other other white meat
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
> > Have you checked to see if that filename is what you think it is on the
> > Linux server?
>
> The character is shown as a question mark in putty. I've tried
> forcing a UTF-8 font to make sure it's not a rendering issue but it
> didn't seem to make a difference. I'm not convinced the encoding
> changed, though.
You say that in putty it is converted to a '?'? so, on linux, the file
name is no longer what you intended it to be, so wouldn't you then need
to call the file EXACTLY as it is on the linux server?
maybe storing a non-utf8 filename is not the way to go? it looks to
me, that if the filename was fileÂ.pdf on windose, and is now file?.pdf
on linux, no matter how much encoding you're going to do, you will never
be able to reference the file on linux with fileÂ.pdf as it is now
file?.pdf
maybe i am just talking out my ass here... i have a tendency to do that
once in a while :)
side note: I had a script that was ported from windose to linux, and
the guy who created it, used capitals in his file names, but referred to
them in all lower case. windose and apache didn't care, it would just
serve the page... ThisPage.php was the same as thispage.php... when we
moved it to linux, non of the damned links worked...so we had to do a
bunch of changes...
Steve
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
> You say that in putty it is converted to a '?'? so, on linux, the file
> name is no longer what you intended it to be, so wouldn't you then need
> to call the file EXACTLY as it is on the linux server?
I thought this too at first, but if I run htmlentites() on the
filename it displays the  character so it must not have been lost
completely, just encoded in a different way? I'm quite sure that the
propblem with putty displaying it as a question mark is related to its
display settings.
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
At 11:23 PM -0400 10/24/10, Paul M Foster wrote:
On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 12:35:43PM -0400, tedd wrote:
At 4:54 PM -0400 10/21/10, Marc Guay wrote:
>Toilet seat. Up or down. Same thing? Sort of.
No, everything down (seat and top) is the rule in my house.
You should see how women often react when I tell them to put the top
down -- it's like my dog hearing a high note.
I used to do that just to aggravate women who hassled me about leaving
the seat up. I've softened a bit in my old age, and no longer insist on
it.
Paul
You sit down now?
Cheers,
tedd
--
-------
http://sperling.com/
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
Hello All,
I finished with coding and now I am on the part when need to write
documentation. But I don't know how to write correct documentation.
Does have some rules or standard for writing documentation for PHP?
Or maybe have some programs for writing documentations?
Best Regards,
Jordan JOVANOV
--- End Message ---
