A
Anonymous
Guest
Ok, you've asked a few questions, Ill try to address each:
2) Validate input and source. url_decode and then strip_tags on your values, and assume every user input is also an attack on your code, server, and data. Sounds extreme, but it's the only way to avoid the ones that actually are attacks.
Also, don't ever assume. It will bite you as badly in programming as it will in any other portion of your life and can lead to lost hours trying to track down logic errors.
There is a great book published by oreilly, Programming Collective Intelligence by Toby Segaran. It's just a couple of years old, but it's still a great book. The concepts are mostly covered in the python language, but it has sample code, logic and explanations on teaching your computer to understand datasets, and even implementation of machine learning for spam identification etc. I recommend it to anyone trying to adventure into programming.
1) use code tags when posting on forum, just the word 'code' between square braces to start and /code to stop. it will make your code stand out better, and you can even use code=php if you really want it to look fancy.
2) Validate input and source. url_decode and then strip_tags on your values, and assume every user input is also an attack on your code, server, and data. Sounds extreme, but it's the only way to avoid the ones that actually are attacks.
PHP:
// start with an array of fields you want populated:
$required = array('field1','field2','field3');
foreach ($required as $r){
if (empty($_POST) || empty($_POST[$r])){
// code to fail out with error would go here
}
}
// if execution reaches this point then all required fields were passed values
// but those values must still be sanitized and verified
you could presumably use google translate or another web based translation service API with curl, but I think it's a lot more trouble than it's worth, and doesn't account for typos or misspellings, and you'll have plenty of bad matches based on those, or on words that are present in multiple languages.
Also, don't ever assume. It will bite you as badly in programming as it will in any other portion of your life and can lead to lost hours trying to track down logic errors.
There is a great book published by oreilly, Programming Collective Intelligence by Toby Segaran. It's just a couple of years old, but it's still a great book. The concepts are mostly covered in the python language, but it has sample code, logic and explanations on teaching your computer to understand datasets, and even implementation of machine learning for spam identification etc. I recommend it to anyone trying to adventure into programming.