Shopping Cart development using PHP - The easiest way to code

An effective shopping cart forms the backbone of an online business. It is the software which enables the online customers to gather the items they want to purchase. Its success depends on how well it is integrated with the payment gateways. But in order to build an effective shopping cart what tools do you need? What you need to keep in mind in this regard is that the scripting language forms the backbone of shopping cart solutions. PHP is a programming language that can execute this work effectively. It is considered one of the most versatile and the largest open source scripting language that is used nowadays. As a result, the PHP shopping carts are one of the most commonly used cart solutions for online businesses.

Easy Steps for Building the Cart

To put it simply, usually there are just a few steps that are included in PHP:

• Create a Database: This is the first step where the coders will create a list of items that will be visible to your online customers.
• Displaying or Storing Products: A page is built to display the products and another one to show the shopping cart.
• Cart Page: Finally, a cart page is developed wherein its various functionalities are included.

Beyond this there are certain features that you will find in the PHP shopping cart. There will be an option to ‘add’ or ‘delete’ products to and from the cart. It might include more than one kind of products and these can be easily compiled. The customers can also update the carts manually.

Why is PHP Chosen?

PHP stands for Personal Home Page. In 1994, it was designed for the first time for creating dynamic web pages easily and cost effectively. One of its biggest advantages is that it is easy to learn and use. Whether it is Windows, Linux or Mac, this particular language can operate easily with various operating systems.

Besides being easy to code, it performs exceptionally fast. These are some of the reasons why it is used for online business solutions. When it comes to design the shopping carts, PHP, with its serialization proves actually helpful. Serialization is generally not required in all kinds of databases, but in the earlier versions the value of an item could only be mentioned along with its type. However, the later versions solved this problem completely.

It is relatively easy to find developers for PHP programming language. In comparison, there are very few developers to be found for other languages and their charges are exorbitant. In this regard, this programming language offers a cost effective solution.

Moreover, when you apply this language the carts are more user-friendly. As a result the customers can search the products easily, fast and without any trouble whatsoever. In addition to these, they are quite secure. Security and safety are of prime importance for the eCommerce websites. The money transactions require safe payment gateways. Thus, the solutions offered by the PHP tools ensure that the customer’s data and money transaction are perfectly secure.

This programming language has been created to drive websites. The scripts, thus, are prepared in a way so that integrating them is not troublesome at all. Thus, even a person without any programming language can deal with these shopping carts. The best part is that there are no added financial burdens of hiring specialists to maintain them. This way a business will be able to save a lot of money. In return what you get is a fully integrated ecommerce data mart that is available with relationship management and customer profiling. The decisions about marketing processes will become easier and so will be the updating procedure.

Finally, it is a tough job to balance the features for a shopping cart. Too many features can actually spoil its effectiveness. The idea is to provide exactly what the business wants and nothing more. You can get in touch with a php development company India who can help you build web apps within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide php application development services. If you would like to hire certified php developer for your development needs, Please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.

PHP Functions - List and Their Usage

PHP comes up with a string of internal or built-in functions which are all used in certain situations to fulfill certain conditions, by simply passing certain values against them. To be frank, the scripting language comes up with nearly 3000 embedded functions. Hence, it is quite impossible to discuss all of them. The language comes up with a manual, which includes a comprehensive documentation of each of them along with example code. Besides, the manual also provides a feature containing the user comments that provide valuable tips to the users. It also comes up with discussions of some common problems that are generally faced by users and documented solutions of the same. There is also a short cut to get to the manual page quickly.

PHP editors generally have the expertise of showing the built-in functions and they use a different color so that the users know that they are built-in ones.

Let us, in this article discuss some of the most important PHP functions and their usage in a comprehensive way.

Functions that define Arbitrary number of arguments

One of the most significant features of PHP is that it provides the option of defining the functions with various optional arguments. However, there is yet another option that completely allows an arbitrary number of functional arguments.

There are a number of PHP functions that come with long as well as descriptive names. Therefore, whenever it is needed to call for a particular function, it becomes really hard to name it, unless and until the user is somewhat familiar with the term and its functionality from any other source.

Glob()

This particular function is used for searching out any pre designated file or files from the database. Technically speaking, this function returns an array or a string of filenames as well as directories by matching them in accordance to a pre medicated or specified pattern. It also returns FALSE on failure to do so.

Actually, it is a more advanced or capable edition or the scandir() that also searches files by using a definite pattern.

MIU or Memory Usage Information

memory-get-usage()

PHP comes up with a typical garbage collector along with a memory manager that is pretty complex in structure as well as functionality. Hence, the amount or extent of memory that is used in a particular script can fluctuate when the script in question is being executed. Hence, the function ‘memory-get-usage()’ can be used to collect the extent of current memory usage at any given point in time.

memory-get_usage()

This particular function is used for getting the highest memory value that is used at any point in time.

Information for CPU Usage

getrusage()

This is another function that is designed to return an associative array that contains data that is returned from a system call. All the entries associated with this function are accessible with the use of their associated documented field names.

Magic Constants

PHP also features eight ‘magic constants’ that are pretty useful, especially when it comes to fetching the current number of the line, current file path, directory path, current trait, the name of the function called, name of the class, method name and the namespace.

These are actually some predefined constants for any script that it runs. Majority of these 8 constants comes up with various extensions and cane used only when those particular extensions are available, either through the process of dynamic loading or simply because they have been assembled or compiled in the script in question. Hence, from that point of view, these constants can well be termed as functions.

Generation of unique IDs

There are instances that demand generation of a string that is absolutely unique. For this the md5() can be used, though this particular function was not developed for this reason. However, even though the strings are ideally unique, they at times come up with first few characters that are similar to other strings, mainly because these strings are all related to server time. Hence, in order to minimize the chance of duplication, a prefix can be passed or created and the second parameter can be added to increase the entropy.

serialize() and unserialize()

As and when the need of storing a complex variable in a text file or a database arises, there is no requirement of converting the objects or arrays into formatted strings. PHP comes up with a couple of extremely valuable functions – ‘serialize()’ and ‘unserialize()’ that serialize the variables or revert the serialization if and when needed.

String Compression

gzcompress() and gzuncompress()

Generally ‘zip’ option is used for file compression. However, when it comes to compressing or decompressing loose strings in PHP, the two functions - gzcompress() and gzuncompress() can be used respectively.

As mentioned at the start of this article, there are innumerable functions that PHP is equipped with. However, these are some of the most popular, useful as well as widely used functions that make the life of the developers easier.You can get in touch with a php development company in India who can help you build web apps within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide php application development services. If you would like to hire certified php developer for your development needs, Please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.

PHP 5.6.0 - Changes in this PHP version

Frankly speaking, it almost certainly goes without much of saying, that in order to make a particular business website interactive, compelling, safe, and secure, PHP is the best bet. This is one language that comes up with a string of specific characteristics, which makes the website in question, more effective, as well as efficient that makes the difference in attracting new customers and retaining them for a considerable period of time. In fact, here is one language that is the best, the most stable, user-friendly, and cost effective when we speak about creating as well as designing a website.

PHP, the server-side language that is used for scripting is particularly designed to facilitate web development can also be termed as a general language for programming. Over the years, the language has seen a series of changes as well as improvements. One of the latest in the series is PHP 5.6.0 that has come up with a string of value added features along with a number of backward incompatible changes as well as improvements from the earlier versions.

This new PHP version comes up with Constant Scalar expressions along with a series of variadic functions as well as syntaxes for unpacking argument. This version also features Exponentiation operator, which is nothing but a conventional arithmetic operator that returns various float values if the pair of operarands turns out to be integers, or in any case the strings that are transformed into integers and the numbers are divisible evenly. However, in this case it will return an integer value.

Moreover, the modulus operands are transformed into integers before the processing starts, mainly through a process of getting rid of the decimal part. The new version also comes up with the constants and functional imports with the use of proper keywords. Then there is phpdbg, which will act as a customary interactive as well as integrated debugger Speech Application Programming Interface or SAPI.

This interactive PHP debugger on the other hand is implemented as a typical SAPI module. phpdbg is capable of having a comprehensive control over the domain or environment without having any effect whatsoever, on the performance or functionality of the codes. In fact, phpdbg is an extremely lightweight, user-friendly, and a powerful platform for debugging, which is predominantly stepthrough in approach.

In this new version php://input has become reusable, while $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA has now deprecated. php://input basically is a typical read-only stream that is designated to allow the users go through the raw data from a request body. When it comes to POST requests, php://input should be preferably used rather than $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA. This is mainly because it is not dependant on the special directives of php.ini. PHP 5.6.0 also comes up with GMP objects that are equipped to support operator loading mechanism, which in turn helps files that occupy more than 2 GB space to be accepted. Apart from all these, the new PHP edition also has incorporated certain changes that have affected compatibility in a great way.

In the new version, the array keys do not need to be overwritten, when it comes to defining arrays as property of a definite class, through literally any array. In this version, the json_decode() is much stricter when it comes to parsing of JSON syntax. Also, stream wrappers now are capable of verifying by default, the peer certificates, and the host names while using SSL/TLS. Moreover, the GMP resources in the new version can be classified as objects and the Mcrypt functions in the new edition need valid keys as well as IVs.

So these are the changes that the new avatar of PHP comes up with and which provides the added benefit to the users, apart from the customary benefits that the language offers to the programmers and coders. You can get in touch with a php development company who can help you develop web apps that are stable, scalable and secure.

We provide php website development services. If you would like to hire php developerfor your web development needs, please contact Mindfire Solutions.