a couple of potentially useful helpers

These two helpers are a couple i use in my projects. Not sure if anyone will find them useful or not, but thought i would share them just in case.

the first one is an alias function for both the php functions is_null() and empty()

path/file name: application/helpers/variable_helper.php

PHP Code:

<?php  if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');


if (! function_exists('is_null_or_empty'))
{
    /**
     * this function combines the is_null() and empty() php functions into one check instead of two
     * 
     * @access public
     * @param var mixed
     * @return boolean
     */
    function is_null_or_empty($var)
    {
        if (is_null($var) OR empty($var))
        {
            return TRUE;
        }
        else
        {
            return FALSE;    
        }
    }
} 


the next one contains two files. a config file and a helper file. It converts html to bbcode and bbcode to html.

config file:

in application/config/autoload.php add the below config file to your autoload config array.
path/file name: application/config/bbcode.php

PHP Code:

<?php  if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');
/*
| -------------------------------------------------------------------
| BBCODE
| -------------------------------------------------------------------
| $config['bbcode'] - an array containing the allowable bbcode tags.
| 
| $config['htmlcode'] - an array containing the bbcode's html equivalent
|
*/
$config['bbcode'] = array(
          '<',
          '>',
          '[list]',
        '[*]',
        '[/list]',
        '[img]',
        '[/img',
        '[b]',
        '[/b]',
        '[u]',
        '[/u]',
        '[i]',
        '[/i]',
        '[color="',
        '[/color]',
        '[size="',
        '[/size]',
        '[url="',
        '[/url]',
        '[mail="',
        '[/mail]',
        '[code]',
        '[/code]',
        '[quote]',
        '[/quote]',
         '"]'
      );

$config['htmlcode'] = array(
        '&lt;',
        '&gt;',
        '<ul>',
        '<li>', 
        '</ul>',
        '<img src="',
        '">',
        '<b>',
        '</b>',
        '<u>',
        '</u>',
        '<i>',
        '</i>',
        '<span style="color:',
        '</span>',
        '<span style="font-size:',
        '</span>',
        '<a href="',
        '</a>',
        '<a href="mailto:',
        '</a>',
        '<code>',
        '</code>',
        '<blockquote>',
        '</blockquote>',
        '">'
      ); 


add the below file to your autoload helpers array.
path/file name: application/helpers/bbcode_helper.php

PHP Code:

<?php   if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');

if (! function_exists('bb2html'))
{
    function bb2html($text)
    {
        $CI =& get_instance();
        $bbcode = $CI->config->item('bbcode');
        $htmlcode = $CI->config->item('htmlcode');
      
        $j = count($bbcode);
          $newtext = $text;
          for ($i = 0; $i < $j; $i++)
          {
              $newtext = str_replace($bbcode[$i], $htmlcode[$i], $newtext);
          }
          $newtext = xss_clean($newtext);
      
          $newtext = nl2br($newtext);//second pass
          return $newtext;
    }
}

if (! function_exists('html2bb'))
{
    function html2bb($text)
    {
        $CI =& get_instance();
        $bbcode = $CI->config->item('bbcode');
        $htmlcode = $CI->config->item('htmlcode');
      
          $j = count($bbcode);
         $newtext = $text;
        for ($i = 0; $i < $j; $i++)
        {
            $newtext = str_replace($htmlcode[$i], $bbcode[$i], $newtext);
        }
          $newtext = xss_clean($newtext);
      
          return $newtext;
    }
} 


well there you go, hopefully someone finds them useful

This helpers is very useful For me. Thanks

glad you could use them.

You don't need is_null_or_empty(), empty() will return TRUE for NULLs.

First helper is kinda pointless.

Website: marcomonteiro.net  | Blog: blog.marcomonteiro.net | Twitter: @marcogmonteiro | TILThings: tilthings.com

i created that helper quite awhile ago when i was getting errors passing nulls into the empty function. It was quite irritating, so basically it was put in as a work around for the problem. Still to this day not sure why i was getting that error with the empty function but yeah, that is why i wrote it.

i created that helper quite awhile ago when i was getting errors passing nulls into the empty function. It was quite irritating, so basically it was put in as a work around for the problem. Still to this day not sure why i was getting that error with the empty function but yeah, that is why i wrote it.

You might've had problems with passing function return values directly to empty():

PHP Code:

// This only works on PHP 5.5+
empty(foo()); 


This has nothing to do with nulls though.

Maybe the problem then (and now) was that what is considered an empty variable is not necessarily a null one. Maybe a better function would be is_empty_and_null($var).

Maybe the problem then (and now) was that what is considered an empty variable is not necessarily a null one. Maybe a better function would be is_empty_and_null($var).

Which is just is_null().

no i do not typically pass a function call to the empty function. just variables.

Plus, for me mainly being a C# and VB.Net developer using is_null_or_empty() is more natural. Even though at this point it is a useless function. lol