Zend Framework Blog » Zend action helpers

Action helper that converts SQL result to XML

Richard Knop — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 15:43:09 +0000

Here is a simple Zend Framework controller action helper that converts SQL result to XML. The SQL result should be fetched as an object or an array of objects:

class My_Controller_Action_Helper_SqlToXml extends Zend_Controller_Action_Helper_Abstract
{
public function direct($sqlResult, $rootElementName, $childElementName, $singleRow, $encoding = 'UTF-8')
{
// create XML documnt
$doc = new DomDocument('1.0', $encoding);
// insert a root element
$root = $doc->createElement($rootElementName);
$root = $doc->appendChild($root);
// if the SQL result set contains only a singler row
if (true === $singleRow) {
$xmlData .= $this->rowToXml($doc, $root, $sqlResult, $childElementName);
}
// if the SQL result set is an object array
else if (false === $singleRow) {
foreach ($sqlResult as $row) {
$xmlData .= $this->rowToXml($doc, $root, $row, $childElementName);
}
}
// return XML string
return $doc->saveXML();
}
private function rowToXml($doc, $root, $row, $childElementName)
{
// insert a child element
$occ = $doc->createElement($childElementName);
$occ = $root->appendChild($occ);
// iterate through each public object property and insert a shild element
foreach ($row as $property => $value) {
$child = $doc->createElement($property);
$child = $occ->appendChild($child);
$childValue = $doc->createTextNode($value);
$childValue = $child->appendChild($childValue);
}
}
}

Hope some of you will find it useful.

Implode an associative array

Richard Knop — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:34:43 +0000

PHP’s implode() function is commonly used to convert an array to a string. But what if you want to implode an associative array and you want both keys and values to be included in the string? For instance:

// here's a fancy associative array
$arr = array('fruit' => 'apple',
'vegetable' => 'potato',
'pastry' => 'bread',
'liquid' => 'milk');
// and we want to implode it like this
$imploded = 'fruit: apple, vegetable: potato, pastry: bread, liquid: milk';

I wrote a simple Zend action helper for that purpose:

class My_Controller_Action_Helper_ImplodeAssociativeArray extends Zend_Controller_Action_Helper_Abstract
{
public function direct($array, $separator = ': ', $glue = ', ')
{
// separate the associative array into keys and values
$keys = array_keys($array);
$values = array_values($array);
// build a new array with joined kesy and values
$newArray = null;
for ($i = 0; $i < count($keys); $i++) {
$newArray[] = $key . $separator . $value;
}
// implode and return the new array
return implode($glue, $newArray);
}
}

To verify that it works:

echo ($this->_helper->implodeAssociativeArray($arr) == $imploded) ? : 'yes' : 'no';

Strip unwanted tags and attributes from XHTML

Richard Knop — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:46:36 +0000

Have you ever experienced strange tags and attributes in XHTML markup produced by a rich text editor? And were you sure the rich text editor doesn’t produce those tags on its own?

The answer to this mysterious behaviour is: MS Word. Many users will just copy and paste a text from Word documents unaware of a fact that the text comes with garbage XHTML tags and attributes only the Word uses.

I wrote a Zend action helper that strips all unwanted tags and attributes from an XHTML markup. All credit goes to nick’s comment in PHP’s strip_tags() function documentation:

class My_Controller_Action_Helper_StripTagsAttributes extends Zend_Controller_Action_Helper_Abstract
{
public function direct($string, $allowedTags = null, $allowedAttributes = null)
{
if ($allowedAttributes) {
if (!is_array($allowedAttributes)) {
$allowedAttributes = explode(',', $allowedAttributes);
}
if (is_array($allowedAttributes)) {
$allowedAttributes = implode('|', $allowedAttributes);
}
$rep = '/([^>]*) (' . $allowedAttributes . ')(=)(\'.*\'|".*")/i';
$string = preg_replace($rep, '$1 $2_-_-$4', $string);
}
if (preg_match('/([^>]*) (.*)(=\'.*\'|=".*")(.*)/i', $string) > 0) {
$string = preg_replace('/([^>]*) (.*)(=\'.*\'|=".*")(.*)/i', '$1$4', $string);
}
$rep = '/([^>]*) (' . $allowedAttributes . ')(_-_-)(\'.*\'|".*")/i';
if ($allowedAttributes) {
$string = preg_replace($rep, '$1 $2=$4', $string);
}
return strip_tags($string, $allowedTags);
}
}

How to use it:

/*
* this will strip all tags except of
*
, , ,

* and al attributes except

* href, src and alt from the $xhtml variable

*/

$xhtml = $this->_helper->stripTagsAttributes($xhtml,

'

',

'href,src,alt');

Finaly, I strongly recommend using HTML Purifier as a means of protection against cross-site scripting (often referred to as XSS).