PHP Functions every PHP Developer Should Know

One thing which I like the most about the PHP is its inbuild/pre-defined functions.

If you are coming from C/C++ background. Then you will start loving the gift of PHP functions.

For Eg. array_sum() . you don’t have to write a logic for iterating through all the array and add their values.
PHP has a pre-defind function which do the same job for you.

1) explode() : it converts a string into array with the supplied character.

Syntax : explode($character,$arrayname,$noofparts)     , here $noofparts is optional

Eg:  suppose in language column we have stored “english,french,japanese”.

And we want to print all these language one by one , here we will use explode , its syntax will be

$langauge=”english,french,japanese”;

$langArray=explode(“,”,$langauge);

Now here  $langArray[0]=english

$langArray[1]=french

$langArray[2]=japanese

we can print these value using foreach array like

foreach($langArray as $l){

echo $l.”<br/>”;

}

above will output all languages in each line

2) implode()

Implode does the reverse of the explode  ie it converts the array into string.

Suppose we have a array called subjects with value

$subject[0]=”English”;

$subject[1]=”Math”;

$subject[2]=”Hindi”;

$subjecttext=implode(“,”,$subject);

now subject text will output

English,Math,Hindi

3) in_array()

This is very useful function when we want to test whether a values exist in array or not.

Syntax:

in_array($valuetosearchfor,$arrayinwhichseraching)

For eg.

If(in_array(“GK”,$subject)){

echo “Is there”;

}

else

echo “Not in the subject array”;

This will out put “Not in the array” since GK is not there in the subject array

Note: It work only for single dimensional array not for the Multi-dimensional array.

For Multi-dimensional array , we can use below code

foreach($subjects as $value)
{
    if(in_array("GK", $value))
    {
        echo "GK is in the array";
    }
}

4) count()

It returns the number of elements in the array.

$user[0]=”ramesh”;

$user[1]=”Gunn”;

echo count($user);

will output 2.  ie the number of elements in the array

5) mt_rand()

This function is used to generate random numbers.This function is very useful when we want to generate a random number.

Syntax

mt_rand() , it will generate value between 0 to mt_getrandmax()

mt_rand($min,$max) , it will genarate value greater then $min and less then equal to $max value

if $max is less then $min it will generate an warning and will return false;

6) substr()

This function is used to extract some part of a string

Syntax

substr($string,$startingindex,$lastindex) .