Yesterday I looked at using mysqldump to save data to CSV files, which by default saves the exported data as tab delimited files. Today we will look at how to restore data from these files into a MySQL database. It’s very simple to do, using the mysqlimport command line tool.
PHP has a really useful date() function for formatting dates from timestamps. When used in conjunction with strtotime() you can do some really quick and easy manipulation and formatting of dates.
The strtotime() function in PHP allows you to convert English text date time strings into UNIX timestamps. It is useful for converting database datetime strings into UNIX timestamps and also creating dates into the future or past based on the current time or relative to a date and time in the future or the past. This post looks at some examples of doing this.
The Unix/Linux shell command "find" is really useful for finding files on your computer. There are also graphical utilities for finding files, but sometimes it is easier to use the command line, or it’s simply not possible, eg if logged in to a remote server using SSH. This post looks at how to use the find utility to locate files based on the modification time eg looking for files that have been modified in the last 24 hours.
The PHP function array_unique() allows you to create a new array which contains only the unique values from the original array. This post looks at some examples of using the array_unique function.
The Personalised Plates website has a big input box on every page for searching for available personalised plates. The page template uses the Javascript form element focus() function to set the focus on this text box when the page loads so the user can start to type in a personalised plate idea without having to click the box with their mouse.