====== php snippets ======

Here's a bunch of php code examples and snippets.

===== MD5 in base64 =====


The standard MD5 function of php provides a hex (base 16) output, but you cant get the base64 version like this:

<code php>echo base64_encode(pack('H*',hash ('md5',$data)));</code>


===== Force gzip encoding =====
Here is a solution to force gzip (compression) of data on a per-page basis. This can be interesting if you don't want to enable gzip compression on your whole server/directory, if you can't use ''.htaccess'' files, or if you webserver does not support gzip compression. The other advantage is that you can add HTTP headers even if you have started sending data to the client.

Put at the beginning of your script:

<code php>if(!ob_start("ob_gzhandler")) ob_start();</code>
If the client does not support gz compression, it will serve non-compressed data. You do not even need to enable mod_gzip on the server. Note that you **don't** have to call explicitely ''ob_end_flush()'': This will be done automatically by php.

gz compression may cause problems in IE6, but IE7/8/9 and other browsers are ok.

You can compress html, plain text, jSon and other (This can be used in webservices called by Ajax code, which is very efficient because they typically return very redundant data). I do not recommend compressing PNG, JPEG or images.