I’m in the process of trying to create a Zend Framework plugin, or helper that will add AJAX file upload capabilities to a Zend Form. It needs to degrade gracefully so that a user can still upload a file in case they have JavaScript (or Flash) disabled in their browser.

Here’s some plugins I’ve found along the way that might help you:

• PHP Letter: AJAX File Upload jQuery Plugin
• Andrew Valums: AJAX Upload
• jQuery Form Plugin (includes AJAX file upload)
• Uploadify: multiple file upload plugin for jQuery
• Fancy Upload: MooTools AJAX file upload
• SWFUpload: JavaScript Flash AJAX file upload (degrades gracefully to normal HTML upload form)

If you have any experience (or success) with this, please share it in the comments.

I’ll post the solution when I am done.

In my search for the best PHP mailing list software, I’ve come across some pretty bad ones, and some pretty good ones.

My criteria for a “good PHP mailing list” is the following:
-easy install
-easy integration
-double opt-in subscription
-sends mail even after browser window has closed (imagine waiting for your PHP script to finish sending an email to thousands of subscribers, one at a time).
-customizable admin interface
-open source (and free!)
-not a hosted solution

That may be a dream, but I just found a new PHP mailing list that may meet the criteria. phplist.com may just do the trick. I will try it out and let you know what I think.

Question: Is there a Zend Form state drop down select menu already created that I could just add to my form?

Answer: No. At least I don’t think so. Zend_Form doesn’t have any Zend_Form_Element_StateSelect or anything like that. The only way I found was to pass in an array of states. Feel free to copy and paste my code.

$states = array('AL'=>'Alabama','AK'=>'Alaska','AZ'=>'Arizona','AR'=>'Arkansas','CA'=>'California','CO'=>'Colorado','CT'=>'Connecticut','DE'=>'Delaware','DC'=>'District Of Columbia','FL'=>'Florida','GA'=>'Georgia','HI'=>'Hawaii','ID'=>'Idaho','IL'=>'Illinois', 'IN'=>'Indiana', 'IA'=>'Iowa',  'KS'=>'Kansas','KY'=>'Kentucky','LA'=>'Louisiana','ME'=>'Maine','MD'=>'Maryland', 'MA'=>'Massachusetts','MI'=>'Michigan','MN'=>'Minnesota','MS'=>'Mississippi','MO'=>'Missouri','MT'=>'Montana','NE'=>'Nebraska','NV'=>'Nevada','NH'=>'New Hampshire','NJ'=>'New Jersey','NM'=>'New Mexico','NY'=>'New York','NC'=>'North Carolina','ND'=>'North Dakota','OH'=>'Ohio','OK'=>'Oklahoma', 'OR'=>'Oregon','PA'=>'Pennsylvania','RI'=>'Rhode Island','SC'=>'South Carolina','SD'=>'South Dakota','TN'=>'Tennessee','TX'=>'Texas','UT'=>'Utah','VT'=>'Vermont','VA'=>'Virginia','WA'=>'Washington','WV'=>'West Virginia','WI'=>'Wisconsin','WY'=>'Wyoming');

$state = new Zend_Form_Element_Select('state');
$state->setLabel('State')
->setMultiOptions($states)
->setRegisterInArrayValidator(false);
$form->addElement($state);

Here’s a link to a helpful blog post with common PHP arrays: http://blog.ninedays.org/2008/01/03/php-state-drop-down-menu-reusable-code/

Question: How do I write a function to compare the differences between two arrays?

Consider the following scenarios:

$alreadyInTheDatabase = array('name' => 'Joe', 'address' => '123 Fake St');
$newFormValuesArray = array('name' => 'Joe', 'address' => 'My address has changed');

$alreadyInTheDatabase = array('name' => 'Joe', 'address' => '123 Fake St');
$newFormValuesArray = array('name' => 'Joe'); //a bad form has address missing from the array

$alreadyInTheDatabase = array('name' => 'Joe'); //address was never in the database to begin with
$newFormValuesArray = array('name' => 'Joe', 'address' => '123 Fake St');

I’m writing a function to check whether or not I need to update a field in a database, so my function will tell me what the differences are between what’s already in the database, and what form fields have changed. If the field is the same as the one that’s in the database, I won’t need to update it. If the values are different, I’ll update. If the form has a field that doesn’t even exist yet in the database (because it hasn’t been created yet), I’ll need to know that too. So I’ll just return an array of the keys that differ.

There are a lot of PHP functions that exist to solve all sorts of scenarios where you would want to compare arrays, but none of them return an array of the differences between both arrays.

array_diff — Computes the difference of arrays
array_udiff — Computes the difference of arrays by using a callback function for data comparison
array_diff_key — Computes the difference of arrays using keys for comparison
array_diff_uassoc — Computes the difference of arrays with additional index check which is performed by a user supplied callback function
array_diff_ukey — Computes the difference of arrays using a callback function on the keys for comparison
array_intersect — Computes the intersection of arrays
array_uintersect — Computes the intersection of arrays, compares data by a callback function
array_intersect_assoc — Computes the intersection of arrays with additional index check
array_intersect_key — Computes the intersection of arrays using keys for comparison
array_intersect_uassoc — Computes the intersection of arrays with additional index check, compares indexes by a callback function
array_intersect_ukey — Computes the intersection of arrays using a callback function on the keys for comparison
array_udiff_assoc — Computes the difference of arrays with additional index check, compares data by a callback function
array_udiff_uassoc — Computes the difference of arrays with additional index check, compares data and indexes by a callback function
array_uintersect_assoc — Computes the intersection of arrays with additional index check, compares data by a callback function
array_uintersect_uassoc — Computes the intersection of arrays with additional index check, compares data and indexes by a callback functions

Quite a lengthy list, isn’t it?? Now you can sense my confusion and frustration. We want to check the values, but return the key of the value that is different. We’ll also check the keys to see if we need to create a field that doesn’t already exist in the database.

Answer: We’ll use array_diff_assoc() to return an associative array of the keys and values that differ in the first array. Then we’ll swap the arrays to check the second array against the first. We’ll merge the two arrays of differences using array_merge() and return just the keys by using array_keys().

function getDifferences($alreadyInTheDatabase, $newFormValuesArray) {

$diff1 = array_diff_assoc($alreadyInTheDatabase, $newFormValuesArray);
$diff2 = array_diff_assoc($newFormValuesArray, $alreadyInTheDatabase);

$merged = array_merge($diff1, $diff2);

$justTheKeys = array_keys($merged);

return $justTheKeys;

}