PHP & Web Development Blogs

Search Results For: simple
Showing 1 to 5 of 23 blog articles.
70864 views · 5 years ago
Create Simple RESTful APIs using PHP & MySQL

Hi Guys,
I am sharing you the way to create simple resful apis using php and mysql. We are creating 2 apis here
First is to Loggin a existing user and second is to get list of written blogs by logged in user.


Create any database, i am taking
news
as the database name here, After it create following 2 tables inside it.


CREATE TABLE <code>users</code> (
<code>id</code> int(11) UNSIGNED AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
<code>name</code> varchar(100),
<code>email</code> varchar(100),
<code>password</code> varchar(100),
<code>createdAt</code> datetime NOT NULL,
<code>updatedAt</code> timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
);

CREATE TABLE <code>blogs</code> (
<code>id</code> int(11) UNSIGNED AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
<code>user_id</code> int(11),
<code>title</code> varchar(255),
<code>summary</code> Tinytext,
<code>body</code> Text,
<code>createdAt</code> datetime NOT NULL,
<code>updatedAt</code> timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
);


Now putting some dummy data to read via the api



--create 2 entries in users table--
INSERT INTO <code>news</code>.<code>users</code> (<code>id</code>, <code>name</code>, <code>email</code>, <code>password</code>, <code>createdAt</code>, <code>updatedAt</code>) VALUES (1, 'jeetendra singh', '[email protected]', MD5('123456'), '2018-12-28 02:05:12', CURRENT_TIMESTAMP), (2, 'Manvik Singh chaudhary', '[email protected]', MD5('654321'), '2018-12-28 03:08:11', CURRENT_TIMESTAMP);


-- create 2 blogs by userid 1--

INSERT INTO <code>news</code>.<code>blogs</code> (<code>id</code>, <code>user_id</code>, <code>title</code>, <code>summary</code>, <code>body</code>, <code>createdAt</code>, <code>updatedAt</code>) VALUES (1, '1', 'Blog title 1 by jeetendra', 'Blog summary 1 by jeetendra', 'Blog body 1 by jeetendra', '2018-12-28 02:00:00', CURRENT_TIMESTAMP), (2, '1', 'Blog Title 2 by jeetendra ', 'Blog summary 2 by jeetendra ', 'Blog body 2 by jeetendra ', '2018-12-28 05:10:21', CURRENT_TIMESTAMP);

-- create 2 blogs by userid 2
INSERT INTO <code>news</code>.<code>blogs</code> (<code>id</code>, <code>user_id</code>, <code>title</code>, <code>summary</code>, <code>body</code>, <code>createdAt</code>, <code>updatedAt</code>) VALUES (3, '2', 'Blog title 1 by manvik', 'Blog summary 1 by manvik', 'Blog body 1 by manvik', '2018-12-28 02:00:00', CURRENT_TIMESTAMP), (4, '2', 'Blog Title 2 by manvik ', 'Blog summary 2 by manvik ', 'Blog body 2 by manvik ', '2018-12-28 05:10:21', CURRENT_TIMESTAMP);







After creating this create a index.php and put this code for Db connection, login and get all blog method



<?php
header("Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8");

class DBClass {

private $host = "localhost";
private $username = "root";
private $password = ""; private $database = "news";

public $connection;

public function connect(){

$this->connection = null;

try{
$this->connection = new PDO("mysql:host=" . $this->host . ";dbname=" . $this->database, $this->username, $this->password);
$this->connection->exec("set names utf8");
}catch(PDOException $exception){
echo "Error: " . $exception->getMessage();
}

return $this->connection;
}

public function login($email,$password){

if($this->connection==null)
{
$this->connect();
}

$query = "SELECT id,name,email,createdAt,updatedAt from users where email= ? and password= ?";
$stmt = $this->connection->prepare($query);
$stmt->execute(array($email,md5($password)));
$ret= $stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
return $ret;
}

public function get_all_blogs($Uid){

if($this->connection==null)
{
$this->connect();
}

$query = "SELECT b.*,u.id as Uid,u.email as Uemail,u.name as Uname from blogs b join users u on u.id=b.user_id where b.user_id= ?";
$stmt = $this->connection->prepare($query);
$stmt->execute(array($Uid));
$ret= $stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
return $ret;
}

public function response($array)
{
echo json_encode($array);
exit;
}
}

$return=array();
$obj = new DBClass();
if(isset($_GET['action']) && $_GET['action']!='')
{
if($_GET['action']=="login")
{
if(isset($_POST['email']) && isset($_POST['password']))
{
$UserData=$obj->login($_POST['email'],$_POST['password']);
if(count($UserData)>0)
{
$return['status']=1;
$return['_data_']=$UserData[0];
$return['message']='User Logged in Successfully.';
}
else
{
$return['status']=0;
$return['message']='Error:Invalid Email or Password!';
}
}
else
{
$return['status']=0;
$return['message']='Error:Email or Password not provided!';
}
}
elseif($_GET['action']=="UserBlogs")
{
if(isset($_POST['Uid']))
{
$blogs=$obj->get_all_blogs($_POST['Uid']);
if(count($blogs)>0)
{
$return['status']=1;
$return['_data_']=$blogs;
$return['message']='Success.';
}
else
{
$return['status']=0;
$return['message']='Error:Invalid UserId!';
}
}
else
{
$return['status']=0;
$return['message']='Error:User Id not provided!';
}
}
}
else
{
$return['status']=0;
$return['message']='Error:Action not provided!';
}
$obj->response($return);
$obj->connection=null;
?>



Now api file is set, just make the urls pretty(readable form) using .htaccess file, put following code in it



RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^api/(.*) index.php?action=


Now your Simple Restful Apis are ready to use, Now Let me show you the postman screenshot where i have used these apis.

Login Api Call:
LOGIN API CALL
User Post/Blog Api Call
USER BLOGS
36875 views · 4 years ago
Securing PHP RESTful APIs using Firebase JWT Library

Hello Guys,

In our Last Blog Post, we have created restful apis,But not worked on its security and authentication. Login api can be public but after login apis should be authenticate using any secure token. one of them is JWT, So i am providing the Steps for Create and use JWT Token in our already created API.


Now its time To Implement JWT Authentication IN our Api, So these are the steps to implement it in our already created Apis


Step 1:Install and include Firebase JWT(JSON WEB TOKEN) in our project with following composer command        


 composer require firebase/php-jwt 


include the composer installed packages
require_once('vendor/autoload.php');


use namespace using following:
 use \Firebase\JWT\JWT; 



Step 2: Create a JWT server side using Firebase Jwt Library's encode method in Login action , and return it to Client



Define a private variable named Secret_Key in Class like following:

 private {
$payload = array(
'iss' => $_SERVER['HOST_NAME'],
'exp' => time()+600, 'uId' => $UiD
);
try{
$jwt = JWT::encode($payload, $this->Secret_Key,'HS256'); $res=array("status"=>true,"Token"=>$jwt);
}catch (UnexpectedValueException $e) {
$res=array("status"=>false,"Error"=>$e->getMessage());
}
return $res;
}


In our login action , if the user has been logged in successfully then with the status,_data_ and message just replace the login success code with following code:

$return['status']=1;
$return['_data_']=$UserData[0];
$return['message']='User Logged in Successfully.';

$jwt=$obj->generateToken($UserData[0]['id']);
if($jwt['status']==true)
{
$return['JWT']=$jwt['Token'];
}
else{
unset($return['_data_']);
$return['status']=0;
$return['message']='Error:'.$jwt['Error'];
}





Step 3: Now with every request after login should have the JWT token in its Post(even we can receive it in get or authentication header also but here we are receiving it in post)



No afetr successfully login you will get the JWt Token in your response,Just add that Token with every post request of after login api calls. So we will do it using postman, Find the screenshot 1 for checking the JWT Token is coming in login api response

JWT DEMO LOGIN API RESPONSE


Step 4:After reciving the JWt in every after login api call, we need to check whether the token is fine using JWT decode method in After login Apis like
UserBlogs
is a After login Api, So for verify that we are creating Authencate method in class like following:


 public function Authenticate($JWT,$Curret_User_id)
{
try {
$decoded = JWT::decode($JWT,$this->Secret_Key, array('HS256'));
$payload = json_decode(json_encode($decoded),true);

if($payload['uId'] == $Curret_User_id) {
$res=array("status"=>true);
}else{
$res=array("status"=>false,"Error"=>"Invalid Token or Token Exipred, So Please login Again!");
}
}catch (UnexpectedValueException $e) {
$res=array("status"=>false,"Error"=>$e->getMessage());
}
return $res;

}


Step 5: Cross check the response returned by Authenticate method in
UserBlogs
Action of api , replace the
UserBlogs
Action inner content with following code:


 if(isset($_POST['Uid']))
{

$resp=$obj->Authenticate($_POST['JWT'],$_POST['Uid']);
if($resp['status']==false)
{
$return['status']=0;
$return['message']='Error:'.$resp['Error'];
}
else{
$blogs=$obj->get_all_blogs($_POST['Uid']);
if(count($blogs)>0)
{
$return['status']=1;
$return['_data_']=$blogs;
$return['message']='Success.';
}
else
{
$return['status']=0;
$return['message']='Error:Invalid UserId!';
}
}
}
else
{
$return['status']=0;
$return['message']='Error:User Id not provided!';
}


Ah great its time to check out the UserBlogs Api, please find the screenshoot for that, Remember we need to put the JWt Token in POST Parameter as we have already recived that Value in Login Api call.

JWT DEMO Authentication in userBlogs API Call

Now if you want to verify that token is expiring in given time(10 minutes after generation time/login time), i am just clicking the same api with same token after 10 minutes and you can see there will not return any data and it is returning status false with following message :


JWT DEMO Authentication in userBlogs API Call


Also if you want to eloborate it more then i suggest you to try with modify Uid value with same token , you will another authentication issue and also if you modify the JWT token also then also you will not get the desired result and get authentication Issue

Thanks for reading out if you want the complete code of this file then please find following:
<?php 
header("Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8");
require_once('vendor/autoload.php');
use \Firebase\JWT\JWT;

class DBClass {

private $host = "localhost";
private $username = "root";
private $password = ""; private $database = "news";

public $connection;

private $Secret_Key="*$%43MVKJTKMN$#";
public function connect(){

$this->connection = null;

try{
$this->connection = new PDO("mysql:host=" . $this->host . ";dbname=" . $this->database, $this->username, $this->password);
$this->connection->exec("set names utf8");
}catch(PDOException $exception){
echo "Error: " . $exception->getMessage();
}

return $this->connection;
}

public function login($email,$password){

if($this->connection==null)
{
$this->connect();
}

$query = "SELECT id,name,email,createdAt,updatedAt from users where email= ? and password= ?";
$stmt = $this->connection->prepare($query);
$stmt->execute(array($email,md5($password)));
$ret= $stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
return $ret;
}

public function get_all_blogs($Uid){

if($this->connection==null)
{
$this->connect();
}

$query = "SELECT b.*,u.id as Uid,u.email as Uemail,u.name as Uname from blogs b join users u on u.id=b.user_id where b.user_id= ?";
$stmt = $this->connection->prepare($query);
$stmt->execute(array($Uid));
$ret= $stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
return $ret;
}

public function response($array)
{
echo json_encode($array);
exit;
}

public function generateToken($UiD)
{
$payload = array(
'iss' => $_SERVER['HOST_NAME'],
'exp' => time()+600, 'uId' => $UiD
);
try{
$jwt = JWT::encode($payload, $this->Secret_Key,'HS256'); $res=array("status"=>true,"Token"=>$jwt);
}catch (UnexpectedValueException $e) {
$res=array("status"=>false,"Error"=>$e->getMessage());
}
return $res;
}

public function Authenticate($JWT,$Current_User_id)
{
try {
$decoded = JWT::decode($JWT,$this->Secret_Key, array('HS256'));
$payload = json_decode(json_encode($decoded),true);

if($payload['uId'] == $Current_User_id) {
$res=array("status"=>true);
}else{
$res=array("status"=>false,"Error"=>"Invalid Token or Token Exipred, So Please login Again!");
}
}catch (UnexpectedValueException $e) {
$res=array("status"=>false,"Error"=>$e->getMessage());
}
return $res;

}
}

$return=array();
$obj = new DBClass();
if(isset($_GET['action']) && $_GET['action']!='')
{
if($_GET['action']=="login")
{
if(isset($_POST['email']) && isset($_POST['password']))
{
$UserData=$obj->login($_POST['email'],$_POST['password']);
if(count($UserData)>0)
{
$return['status']=1;
$return['_data_']=$UserData[0];
$return['message']='User Logged in Successfully.';

$jwt=$obj->generateToken($UserData[0]['id']);
if($jwt['status']==true)
{
$return['JWT']=$jwt['Token'];
}
else{
unset($return['_data_']);
$return['status']=0;
$return['message']='Error:'.$jwt['Error'];
}

}
else
{
$return['status']=0;
$return['message']='Error:Invalid Email or Password!';
}
}
else
{
$return['status']=0;
$return['message']='Error:Email or Password not provided!';
}
}
elseif($_GET['action']=="UserBlogs")
{
if(isset($_POST['Uid']))
{

$resp=$obj->Authenticate($_POST['JWT'],$_POST['Uid']);
if($resp['status']==false)
{
$return['status']=0;
$return['message']='Error:'.$resp['Error'];
}
else{
$blogs=$obj->get_all_blogs($_POST['Uid']);
if(count($blogs)>0)
{
$return['status']=1;
$return['_data_']=$blogs;
$return['message']='Success.';
}
else
{
$return['status']=0;
$return['message']='Error:Invalid UserId!';
}
}
}
else
{
$return['status']=0;
$return['message']='Error:User Id not provided!';
}
}
}
else
{
$return['status']=0;
$return['message']='Error:Action not provided!';
}
$obj->response($return);
$obj->connection=null;
?>

25290 views · 4 years ago
Introduction to Gitlab CI for PHP developers
As a developer, you've probably at least heard something about CI - Continuous integration. And if you haven't - you better fix it ASAP, because that's something awesome to have on your skill list and can get extremely helpful in your everyday work. This post will focus on CI for PHP devs, and specifically, on CI implementation from Gitlab. I will suppose you know the basics of Git, PHP, PHPUnit, Docker and unix shell. Intended audience - intermediate PHP devs.
Adding something to your workflow must serve a purpose. In this case the goal is to automate routine tasks and achieve better quality control. Even a basic PHP project IMO needs the following:
* linter) checks (cannot merge changes that are invalid on the syntax level)
* Code style checks
* Unit and integration tests
All of those can be just run eventually, of course. But I prefer an automated CI approach even in my personal projects because it leads to a higher level of discipline, you simply can't avoid following a set of rules that you've developed. Also, it reduces a risk of releasing a bug or regression, thus improving quality.
Gitlab is as generous as giving you their CI for free, even for your private repos. At this point it is starting to look as advertising, therefore a quick comparison table for Gitlab, Github, Bitbucket. AFAIK, Github does not have a built-in solution, instead it is easily integrated with third parties, of which Travis CI seems to be the most popular - I will therefore mention Travis here.

Public repositories (OSS projects). All 3 providers have a free offer for the open-source community!


| Provider | Limits |
|---|---|
| Gitlab | 2,000 CI pipeline minutes per group per month, shared runners |
| Travis | Apparently unlimited |
| Bitbucket| 50 min/month, max 5 users, File storage <= 1Gb/month |

Private repositories


| Provider | Price | Limits |
|---|---|---|
| Gitlab | Free | 2,000 CI pipeline minutes per group per month, shared runners |
| Travis | $69/month | Unlimited builds, 1 job at a time |
| Bitbucket| Free | 50 min/month, max 5 users, File storage <= 1Gb/month |

Getting started

I made a small project based on Laravel framework and called it "ci-showcase". I work in Linux environment, and the commands I use in the examples, are for linux shell. They should be pretty much the same on Mac and nearly the same on Windows though.
composer create-project laravel/laravel ci-showcase

Next, I went to gitlab website and created a new public project: https://gitlab.com/crocodile2u/ci-showcase. Cloned the repo and copied all files and folders from the newly created project - the the new git repo. In the root folder, I placed a .gitignore file:
.idea
vendor
.env

Then the .env file:
APP_ENV=development

Then I generated the application encryption key: php artisan key:generate, and then I wanted to verify that the primary setup works as expected: ./vendor/bin/phpunit, which produced the output OK (2 tests, 2 assertions). Nice, time to commit this: git commit &amp;&amp; git push

At this point, we don't yet have any CI, let's do something about it!

Adding .gitlab-ci.yml

Everyone going to implement CI with Gitlab, is strongly encouraged to bookmark this page: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/README.html. I will simply provide a short introduction course here plus a bit of boilerplate code to get you started easier.
First QA check that we're going to add is PHP syntax check. PHP has a built-in linter, which you can invoke like this: php -l my-file.php. This is what we're going to use. Because the php -l command doesn't support multiple files as arguments, I've written a small wrapper shell script and saved it to ci/linter.sh:
#!/bin/sh
files=<code>sh ci/get-changed-php-files.sh | xargs</code>last_status=0
status=0
# Loop through changed PHP files and run php -l on each
for f in "$files" ; do message=<code>php -l $f</code> last_status="$?" if [ "$last_status" -ne "0" ]; then # Anything fails -> the whole thing fails echo "PHP Linter is not happy about $f: $message" status="$last_status" fi
done
if [ "$status" -ne "0" ]; then echo "PHP syntax validation failed!"
fi
exit $status

Most of the time, you don't actually want to check each and every PHP file that you have. Instead, it's better to check only those files that have been changed. The Gitlab pipeline runs on every push to the repository, and there is a way to know which PHP files have been changed. Here's a simple script, meet ci/get-changed-php-files.sh:
#!/bin/sh
# What's happening here?
#
# 1. We get names and statuses of files that differ in current branch from their state in origin/master.
# These come in form (multiline)
# 2. The output from git diff is filtered by unix grep utility, we only need files with names ending in .php
# 3. One more filter: filter *out* (grep -v) all lines starting with R or D.
# D means "deleted", R means "renamed"
# 4. The filtered status-name list is passed on to awk command, which is instructed to take only the 2nd part
# of every line, thus just the filename
git diff --name-status origin/master | grep '\.php$' | grep -v "^[RD]" | awk '{ print }'

These scripts can easily be tested in your local environment ( at least if you have a Linux machine, that is ;-) ).
Now, as we have our first check, we'll finally create our .gitlab-ci.yml. This is where your pipeline is declared using YAML notation:
# we're using this beautiful tool for our pipeline: https://github.com/jakzal/phpqa
image: jakzal/phpqa:alpine
# For this sample pipeline, we'll only have 1 stage, in real-world you would like to also add at least "deploy"
stages: - QA
linter:
stage: QA
# this is the main part: what is actually executed
script: - sh ci/get-changed-php-files.sh | xargs sh ci/linter.sh

The first line is image: jakzal/phpqa:alpine and it's telling Gitlab that we want to run our pipeline using a PHP-QA utility by jakzal. It is a docker image containing PHP and a huge variety of QA-tools. We declare one stage - QA, and this stage by now has just a single job named linter. Every job can have it's own docker image, but we don't need that for the purpose of this tutorial. Our project reaches Step 2. Once I had pushed these changes, I immediately went to the project's CI/CD page. Aaaand.... the pipeline was already running! I clicked on the linter job and saw the following happy green output:
Running with gitlab-runner 11.9.0-rc2 (227934c0) on docker-auto-scale ed2dce3a
Using Docker executor with image jakzal/phpqa:alpine ...
Pulling docker image jakzal/phpqa:alpine ...
Using docker image sha256:12bab06185e59387a4bf9f6054e0de9e0d5394ef6400718332c272be8956218f for jakzal/phpqa:alpine ...
Running on runner-ed2dce3a-project-11318734-concurrent-0 via runner-ed2dce3a-srm-1552606379-07370f92...
Initialized empty Git repository in /builds/crocodile2u/ci-showcase/.git/
Fetching changes...
Created fresh repository.
From https://gitlab.com/crocodile2u/ci-showcase * [new branch] master -> origin/master * [new branch] step-1 -> origin/step-1 * [new branch] step-2 -> origin/step-2
Checking out 1651a4e3 as step-2...
Skipping Git submodules setup
$ sh ci/get-changed-php-files.sh | xargs sh ci/linter.sh
Job succeeded

It means that our pipeline was successfully created and run!

PHP Code Sniffer.

PHP Code Sniffer is a tool for keeping app of your PHP files in one uniform code style. It has a hell of customizations and settings, but here we will only perform simple check for compatibilty with PSR-2 standard. A good practice is to create a configuration XML file in your project. I will put it in the root folder. Code sniffer can use a few file names, of which I prefer phpcs.xml:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
/resources

I also will append another section to .gitlab-ci.yml:
code-style:	stage: QA	script:	# Variable $files will contain the list of PHP files that have changes	- files=<code>sh ci/get-changed-php-files.sh</code> # If this list is not empty, we execute the phpcs command on all of them - if [ ! -z "$files" ]; then echo $files | xargs phpcs; fi

Again, we check only those PHP files that differ from master branch, and pass their names to phpcs utility. That's it, Step 3 is finished! If you go to see the pipeline now, you will notice that linter and code-style jobs run in parallel.

Adding PHPUnit

Unit and integration tests are essential for a successful and maintaiable modern software project. In PHP world, PHPUnit is de facto standard for these purposes. The PHPQA docker image already has PHPUnit, but that's not enough. Our project is based on Laravel, which means it depends on a bunch of third-party libraries, Laravel itself being one of them. Those are installed into vendor folder with composer. You might have noticed that our .gitignore file has vendor folder as one of it entries, which means that it is not managed by the Version Control System. Some prefer their dependencies to be part of their Git repository, I prefer to have only the composer.json declarations in Git. Makes the repo much much smaller than the other way round, also makes it easy to avoid bloating your production builds with libraries only needed for development.
Composer is also included into PHPQA docker image, and we can enrich our .gitlab-ci.yml:
test:	stage: QA	cache:	key: dependencies-including-dev	paths: - vendor/	script:	- composer install	- ./vendor/bin/phpunit

PHPUnit requires some configuration, but in the very beginning we used composer create-project to create our project boilerplate.laravel/laravel package has a lot of things included in it, and phpunit.xml is also one of them. All I had to do was to add another line to it:
xml

APP_KEY enironment variable is essential for Laravel to run, so I generated a key with php artisan key:generate.
git commit & git push, and we have all three jobs on theQA stage!

Checking that our checks work

In this branch I intentionally added changes that should fail all three job in our pipeline, take a look at git diff. And we have this out from the pipeline stages:Linter:
$ ci/linter.sh
PHP Linter is not happy about app/User.php:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected 'syntax' (T_STRING), expecting function (T_FUNCTION) or const (T_CONST) in app/User.php on line 11
Errors parsing app/User.php
PHP syntax validation failed!
ERROR: Job failed: exit code 255

**Code-style**:
$ if [ ! -z "$files" ]; then echo $files | xargs phpcs; fi
FILE: ...ilds/crocodile2u/ci-showcase/app/Http/Controllers/Controller.php
----------------------------------------------------------------------
FOUND 0 ERRORS AND 1 WARNING AFFECTING 1 LINE
---------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 | WARNING | Line exceeds 120 characters; contains 129 characters
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Time: 39ms; Memory: 6MB
ERROR: Job failed: exit code 123

**test**:
$ ./vendor/bin/phpunit
PHPUnit 7.5.6 by Sebastian Bergmann and contributors.
F. 2 / 2 (100%)
Time: 102 ms, Memory: 14.00 MB
There was 1 failure:
1) Tests\Unit\ExampleTest::testBasicTest
This test is now failing
Failed asserting that false is true.
/builds/crocodile2u/ci-showcase/tests/Unit/ExampleTest.php:17
FAILURES!
Tests: 2, Assertions: 2, Failures: 1.
ERROR: Job failed: exit code 1

Congratulations, our pipeline is running, and we now have much less chance of messing up the result of our work.

Conclusion

Now you know how to set up a basic QA pipeline for your PHP project. There's still a lot to learn. Pipeline is a powerful tool. For instance, it can make deployments to different environments for you. Or it can build docker images, store artifacts and more! Sounds cool? Then spend 5 minutes of your time and leave a comment, you can also tell me if there is a pipeline topic you would like to be covered in next posts.
18923 views · 5 years ago
Install Composer for PHP

Composer is a must-have tool for every PHP developer these days. This page is a simple breakdown of quick-install instructions.

How do I install composer?
   

. Use PHP to download the composer installer, place it in the current directory, and name it composer-setup.php


    . Use PHP to check the hash of the file you downloaded and compare it to the known value of the hash. You can always find the current value of the hash for the installer on the Composer Public Keys / Signatures page.
   
. Run the setup program to install composer. This does more than just download the latest copy of composer, it also sets up your local ~/.composer directory. This will install composer into the current directory. You can add the --install-dir=DIR to specify where you want composer installed. You can also specify --filename=composer to change the installed filename. You can use anything you like that doesn’t already exist in your specified directory, you don’t have to use the name composer. This is a great way to get rid of the .phar at the end of the name if you don’t like it.
   
. Use PHP to remove the installer from the current directory.

To install composer for PHP you use PHP to download the installer, set a few options, and then actually perform the install.

php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"

php -r "if (hash_file('SHA384', 'composer-setup.php') === '55d6ead61b29c7bdee5cccfb50076874187bd9f21f65d8991d46ec5cc90518f447387fb9f76ebae1fbbacf329e583e30') { echo 'Installer verified'; } else { echo 'Installer corrupt'; unlink('composer-setup.php'); } echo PHP_EOL;"

php composer-setup.php

php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"


Below is a version you can copy ‘n paste.

Breakdown:

Recommended Setup for Linux and macOS:

php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"

php -r "if (hash_file('SHA384', 'composer-setup.php') === '55d6ead61b29c7bdee5cccfb50076874187bd9f21f65d8991d46ec5cc90518f447387fb9f76ebae1fbbacf329e583e30') { echo 'Installer verified'; } else { echo 'Installer corrupt'; unlink('composer-setup.php'); } echo PHP_EOL;"

php composer-setup.php --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer

php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"

WARNING: Line two IS WHERE IT compares the hasH of the installer you just downloaded to a hard-coded value. The value specified in the script is the value for the current version of the installer as of this writing. If it fails, check the Composer Public Keys / Signatures page and get the latest version. Plug it into the script below and try again.

Windows user, change the --installdir= to a directory in your path.

Recommended Setup for Windows

If you are running Microsoft Windows, the instructions above will work for you as long as you use the proper install paths. You can however download ComposerSetup.exe from the Composer Introduction page. Execute this and it will install composer and set your path so that you can run composer from anywhere. You will have to close your terminal window and open a new one after the install for the path to be updated.

That’s it, you should now have Composer installed.

Composer installation Resources

* Composer Homepage
* Composer Introduction
* Download Composer
* Composer Public Keys / Signatures
17712 views · 5 years ago
Creating a Virus with PHP

In his talk, “Writing Viruses for Fun, Not Profit,”Ben Dechrai (after making the viewer take a pledge to only use this knowledge for good and not evil) walks through how many viruses operate, and just how easy it is to build your own self-replicating virus in PHP.

The danger of many of these viruses according to Ben is that the most dangerous viruses often escape detection by not looking like a virus. Instead they encrypt their code to hide their true intent, while also constantly adapting and evolving.

Perhaps even more dangerously, they act like they’re benign and don’t actually do anything - often times laying dormant until called upon by the malicious actor.

Creating the Virus

What’s scary is just how simple it was for Ben to create such a virus, one that mutated ever so slightly as it infected every other file on the server. Opening up unlimited possibilities from scraping customer data, to DDOS attacks, to simply hijacking your domain.



But those attacks are just the start as Ben demonstrated how easy it is to write new files, delete files, eval() and execute foreign code - which could even be extended to accessing the underlying server itself if shell_exec() is enabled.

To add to the problem, Ben shares how challenging it can be to identify malicious code on your server as many of these attacks are far more sophisticated than the the virus he created in a matter of minutes - hiding themselves and often appearing as if they are part of the original source code.

Deploying the Virus

To drive his point home, Ben demonstrates how even seemingly secure systems can be vulnerable - as all it takes is one tiny misstep within your application.

He highlights this by building what should be a secure photo gallery - one that checks the extension and mime-type of the image - and even stores it outside of the public directory. He goes even farther by adding additional sanity checks with a PHP script that then renders the image.

After walking through the code and it’s security features, he then downloads a simple image from the internet. Opening his editor he quickly injects the virus (written in PHP) into the image and uploads it, passing all of the server checks.

Surely, since it passed these checks the system is secure, right? Ben loads the gallery to proudly show off the image - which is just that… an image, with nothing special or out of the ordinary.
Except that when he opens the image gallery files, each has been infected with the malicious code.

The culprit that allowed for Ben to hijack an entire system and execute foreign code, create new files, and even hijack the entire site? When displaying the image the file was included using PHP’s include() function, instead of pulling in the data using file_get_contents() and echoing it out.

Such a simple mistake provided Ben, if he was a malicious hacker, complete access to all of the files on the system.

Protecting Yourself

Security always exists in layers - and this could have been prevented by including a few more layers, such as using an open source library to rewrite the image, reviewing the image source before pulling it in, or again not giving it executable access by using the PHP include() function.

But what’s terrifying is how simple it is to hijack a site, how easy it is to get access to your system and private data, and how easy it is to overlook security vulnerabilities - especially with open source tooling and those that take plugins.

As Ben explains, sometimes the core code itself is really secure, but then you get two different plugins that when used together accidentally create a security vulnerability. That by itself is one of the most challenging as you can audit each plugin individually, and still not know you’re opening up your system to malicious actors.

This is why it's not just important to stay up to date on the latest security measures and best practices, but to be constantly thinking like a hacker and testing your code for vulnerabilities.

Learn More

You can watch thefull video to learn more how viruses operate, how to quickly build your own PHP virus (but you must promise to use it for good), and what to watch for in order to protect yourself, your customers, and your architecture.

SPONSORS