Web Concepts

Identifying Bowser

PHP creates some useful environment variables that can be seen in the phpinfo.php page that was used to setup the PHP environment.

One of the environment variables set by PHP is HTTP_USER_AGENT which identifies the user's browser and operating system.

<html>
   <body>

      <?php
         function getBrowser() { 
            $u_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']; 
            $bname = 'Unknown';
            $platform = 'Unknown';
            $version = "";

            //First get the platform?
            if (preg_match('/linux/i', $u_agent)) {
               $platform = 'linux';
            }elseif (preg_match('/macintosh|mac os x/i', $u_agent)) {
               $platform = 'mac';
            }elseif (preg_match('/windows|win32/i', $u_agent)) {
               $platform = 'windows';
            }

            // Next get the name of the useragent yes seperately and for good reason
            if(preg_match('/MSIE/i',$u_agent) && !preg_match('/Opera/i',$u_agent)) {
               $bname = 'Internet Explorer';
               $ub = "MSIE";
            } elseif(preg_match('/Firefox/i',$u_agent)) {
               $bname = 'Mozilla Firefox';
               $ub = "Firefox";
            } elseif(preg_match('/Chrome/i',$u_agent)) {
               $bname = 'Google Chrome';
               $ub = "Chrome";
            }elseif(preg_match('/Safari/i',$u_agent)) {
               $bname = 'Apple Safari';
               $ub = "Safari";
            }elseif(preg_match('/Opera/i',$u_agent)) {
               $bname = 'Opera';
               $ub = "Opera";
            }elseif(preg_match('/Netscape/i',$u_agent)) {
               $bname = 'Netscape';
               $ub = "Netscape";
            }

            // finally get the correct version number
            $known = array('Version', $ub, 'other');
            $pattern = '#(?<browser>' . join('|', $known) . ')[/ ]+(?<version>[0-9.|a-zA-Z.]*)#';

            if (!preg_match_all($pattern, $u_agent, $matches)) {d
            }

            // see how many we have
            $i = count($matches['browser']);

            if ($i != 1) {
               //we will have two since we are not using 'other' argument yet

               //see if version is before or after the name
               if (strripos($u_agent,"Version") < strripos($u_agent,$ub)){
                  $version= $matches['version'][0];
               }else {
                  $version= $matches['version'][1];
               }
            }else {
               $version= $matches['version'][0];
            }

            // check if we have a number
            if ($version == null || $version == "") {$version = "?";}
            return array(
               'userAgent' => $u_agent,
               'name'      => $bname,
               'version'   => $version,
               'platform'  => $platform,
               'pattern'   => $pattern
            );
         }

         // now try it
         $ua = getBrowser();
         $yourbrowser = "Your browser: " . $ua['name'] . " " . $ua['version'] .
            " on " .$ua['platform'] . " reports: <br >" . $ua['userAgent'];

         print_r($yourbrowser);
      ?>

   </body>
</html>

result:

Your browser: Google Chrome 54.0.2840.99 on windows reports: 
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) 
   Chrome/54.0.2840.99 Safari/537.36

Browser redirection

<?php
   if( $_POST["location"] ) {
      $location = $_POST["location"];
      header( "Location:$location" );

      exit();
   }
?>
<html>
   <body>

      <p>Choose a site to visit :</p>

      <form action = "<?php $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] ?>" method ="POST">
         <select name = "location">.

            <option value = "http://www.tutorialspoint.com">
               Tutorialspoint.com
            </option>

            <option value = "http://www.google.com">
               Google Search Page
            </option>

         </select>
         <input type = "submit" />
      </form>

   </body>
</html>

GET and POST

Use method in the Form to choose GET or POST

<form action="login.php" method="GET">
<form action="login.php" method="POST">

Get

The GET method produces a long string that appears in your server logs, in the browser's Location: URL.

The GET method is restricted to send upto 1024 characters only.
Never use GET method if you have password or other sensitive information to be sent to the server.
GET can't be used to send binary data, like images or word documents, to the server.
The data sent by GET method can be accessed using QUERY_STRING environment variable.

The PHP provides $_GET associative array to access all the sent information using GET method.

<?php
   if( $_GET["name"] || $_GET["age"] ) {
      echo "Welcome ". $_GET['name']. "<br />";
      echo "You are ". $_GET['age']. " years old.";

      exit();
   }
?>
<html>
   <body>
      <form action = "<?php $_PHP_SELF ?>" method = "GET">
         Name: <input type = "text" name = "name" />
         Age: <input type = "text" name = "age" />
         <input type = "submit" />
      </form>
   </body>
</html>

Post

The POST method transfers information via HTTP headers. The information is encoded as described in case of GET method and put into a header called QUERY_STRING.

The POST method does not have any restriction on data size to be sent.
The POST method can be used to send ASCII as well as binary data.
The data sent by POST method goes through HTTP header so security depends on HTTP protocol. By using Secure HTTP you can make sure that your information is secure.

The PHP provides $_POST associative array to access all the sent information using POST method.

<?php
   if( $_POST["name"] || $_POST["age"] ) {
      if (preg_match("/[^A-Za-z'-]/",$_POST['name'] )) {
         die ("invalid name and name should be alpha");
      }
      echo "Welcome ". $_POST['name']. "<br />";
      echo "You are ". $_POST['age']. " years old.";

      exit();
   }
?>
<html>
   <body>

      <form action = "<?php $_PHP_SELF ?>" method = "POST">
         Name: <input type = "text" name = "name" />
         Age: <input type = "text" name = "age" />
         <input type = "submit" />
      </form>

   </body>
</html>

Request

The PHP $_REQUEST variable contains the contents of both $_GET, $_POST, and $_COOKIE. We will discuss $_COOKIE variable when we will explain about cookies.

The PHP $_REQUEST variable can be used to get the result from form data sent with both the GET and POST methods.

<?php
   if( $_REQUEST["name"] || $_REQUEST["age"] ) {
      echo "Welcome ". $_REQUEST['name']. "<br />";
      echo "You are ". $_REQUEST['age']. " years old.";
      exit();
   }
?>
<html>
   <body>

      <form action = "<?php $_PHP_SELF ?>" method = "POST">
         Name: <input type = "text" name = "name" />
         Age: <input type = "text" name = "age" />
         <input type = "submit" />
      </form>

   </body>
</html>

Web Concept