Author Archives: Christoffer Wadensten

(PHP) Log Laravel execution time to console

Put this in app/start/global.php to get Laravels execution time to the browser console log.

L4

$start = microtime(true);

App::finish(function() use ($start) {
    echo "<script>console.log('App finish: ".round((microtime(true) - $start) * 1000, 3)." ms')</script>";
});

This works with L5:

This page took {{ (microtime(true) - LARAVEL_START) }} seconds to render

(HTML) Form element arrays

Sometimes you might want to group form elements in arrays.
Here’s a way to do that:

<form>
    <input type="text" name="textboxes[]">
    <input type="text" name="textboxes[]">
    <input type="text" name="textboxes[]">
</form>

The structure of the $_POST array will then be:

Array
(
    [textboxes] => Array
        (
            [0] => value 1
            [1] => value 2
            [2] => value 3
        )

)

(CSS) How to center a div without width

I needed to center a div with dynamic content, so I couldn’t set a fixed width.
Since margin: 0 auto; really won’t do anything if the element doesn’t have a fixed width you can solve it like this:

HTML

<div id="container">
   <div class="centered">My dynamic content, that will be centerd</div>
</div>

CSS

.centered {
   margin: 0 auto;
   display: table;
}

(PHP) Allow any delimiter in CSV file

In a Laravel app I made the users would upload CSV files. The problem was that fgetcsv only allows a single delimiter character, and it needs to be defined.

The problem with that is that when a user exports a CSV from MS Excel – it could end up using a wide array of delimiters depending on the locality settings in windows.  It kind of sucks that MS won’t let the user choose this on export, but that’s how it is.

So I solved it the quick and easy way, by making a function that simply replaces any delimiter character to  my desired delimiter. (Note that the tab character is in double quotes, since it won’t be interpreted as tab otherwise):

    /**
     * Will replace a number of CSV delimiters to one specific character
     * @param $file     CSV file
     */
    private function replaceDelimiters($file)
    {
        // Delimiters to be replaced: pipe, comma, semicolon, caret, tabs
        $delimiters = array('|', ';', '^', "\t");
        $delimiter = ',';

        $str = file_get_contents($file);
        $str = str_replace($delimiters, $delimiter, $str);
        file_put_contents($file, $str);
    }

(PHP) Eloquent doodles for Laravel 

// Get model by primary key
$myModel = MyModel::find($id);

//Where can use short syntax for equal comparison.
$myModels = MyModel::where('someAttribute', '=', 'someValue')->get();
$myModels = MyModel::where('someAttribute', 'someValue')->get();

// Delete models
$affectedRows = MyModel::where('someAttribute', 'someValue')->delete();

// Select distinct
$distincts = MyModel::distinct()->select('someAttribute')->where('someAttribute', 'someValue')->get();

// Select with Limit and offset
$myModels = MyModel::limit(30)->get();
$myModels = MyModel::limit(30)->offset(30)->get();

Different ways of getting a single model and checking if it’s there.


// 1
$model= MyModel::where('someAttribute', $someValue)->get();

if (!$model->isEmpty()) {
    $firstModel= $model->first()
}


// 2
try {
    $model= MyModel::where('someAttribute', $someValue)->firstOrFail();
    // Do stuff with model
} catch (ErrorException $e) {
    // Do stuff if it doesn't exist.
}


// 3
$models = MyModel::where('someAttribute', $someValue)->get(); // Collection of models
$models = MyModel::where('someAttribute', $someValue)->first(); // Single model or null

if (count($models)) {
    //Collection: to get the first item
    $users->first().
    
    //if you used first() just use the $models
}