CakePHP bootstrap goodies

A list of some things quite handy for every cake app and therefore best placed in the bootstrap.php as they are not (yet) part of the cake core.

# Useful when putting a string together in PHP
define('LF', PHP_EOL);
define('NL', "\n"); // new line
define('CR', "\r"); // carriage return
define('TB', "\t"); // tabulator
define('BR', '<br />'); // line break

# Make the app and l10n play nice with Windows.
if (substr(PHP_OS, 0, 3) == 'WIN') {
    define('WINDOWS', true);
} else {
    define('WINDOWS', false);
}

define('FORMAT_DB_DATETIME','Y-m-d H:i:s');	// used in date(...)
define('FORMAT_DB_DATE','Y-m-d');
define('FORMAT_DB_TIME','H:i:s');

define('DEFAULT_DATETIME',  '0000-00-00 00:00:00');
define('DEFAULT_DATE',      '0000-00-00');
define('DEFAULT_TIME',      '00:00:00');

/**
 * convenience function to check on "empty()"
 * does also work with methods
 * 2009-06-15 ms
 */
function isEmpty($var = null) {
    if (empty($var)) {
        return true;
    }
    return false;
}

/**
 * of what type is the specific value
 * useful for cake < 2 - since cake2.0 it is integrated in debug()
 * 
 * @return type: NULL, array, bool, float, int, string, unknown
 * 2009-03-03 ms
 */
function returns($value) {
    if ($value === null) {
        return 'NULL';
    } elseif (is_array($value)) {
        return '(array)'.'<pre>'.print_r($value,true).'</pre>';
    } elseif ($value === true) {
        return '(bool)TRUE';
    } elseif ($value === false) {
        return '(bool)FALSE';
    } elseif (is_numeric($value) && is_float($value)) {
        return '(float)'.$value;
    } elseif (is_numeric($value) && is_int($value)) {
        return '(int)'.$value;
    } elseif (is_string($value)) {
        return '(string)'.$value;
    } elseif (is_object($value)) {
        return '(object)'.get_class($value);
    } else {
        return '(unknown)'.$value;
    }
}

/**
 * uses native PHP function to retrieve infos about a filename etc.
 * @param string type (extension/ext, filename/file, basename/base, dirname/dir)
 * @param string filename to check on
 * //TODO: switch parameters!!!
 * 2009-01-22 ms
 */
function extractPathInfo($type = null, $filename) {
    switch ($type) {
        case 'extension':
        case 'ext':
            $infoType = PATHINFO_EXTENSION; break;
        case 'filename':
        case 'file':
            $infoType = PATHINFO_FILENAME; break;
        case 'basename':
        case 'base':
            $infoType = PATHINFO_BASENAME; break;
        case 'dirname':
        case 'dir':
            $infoType = PATHINFO_DIRNAME; break;
        default:
            $infoType = null;
    }
    return pathinfo($filename, $infoType);
}

/**
 * Shows pr() messages, even with debug=0
 *
 * @param mixed $content
 * @param string $class (optional)
 * 2009-04-07 ms
 */
function pre($array, $class = null) {
    $pre_array='';
    $pre_class='';
    if (is_array($array)) {
        if (!empty($class)){ $pre_class=' class="'.$class.'"'; }
        $pre_array='<pre'.$pre_class.'>'.print_r($array,true).'</pre>';
    } else {
        $pre_array = '<pre'.$pre_class.'>'.$array.'</pre>';
    }
    return $pre_array;
}

/**
 * Checks if the string [$haystack] contains [$needle]
 * @param string $haystack  Input string.
 * @param string $needle Needed char or string.
 * @return boolean
 */
function contains($haystack, $needle, $caseSensitive = false) {
  return (!$caseSensitive ? stripos($haystack, $needle) : strpos($haystack, $needle)) !== false;
}

/**
 * Checks if the string [$haystack] starts with [$needle]
 * @param string $haystack  Input string.
 * @param string $needle Needed char or string.
 * @return boolean
 */
function startsWith($haystack, $needle, $caseSensitive = false) {
    if ($caseSensitive) {
        return (mb_strpos($haystack, $needle) === 0);
    }
    return (mb_stripos($haystack, $needle) === 0);
}

/**
 * Checks if the String [$haystack] ends with [$needle]
 * @param string $haystack  Input string.
 * @param string $needle Needed char or string
 * @return boolean
 */
function endsWith($haystack, $needle, $caseSensitive = false) {
    if ($caseSensitive) {
        return mb_strrpos($haystack, $needle) === mb_strlen($haystack)-mb_strlen($needle);
    }
    return mb_strripos($haystack, $needle) === mb_strlen($haystack)-mb_strlen($needle);
}

/*** < PHP5.3 ***/
if (function_exists('lcfirst') === false) {
  	function lcfirst($str) {
  		return (string)(mb_strtolower(mb_substr($str,0,1)).mb_substr($str,1));
    }
}

TB and BR etc really help if you write PHP and don’t want to switch to HTML all the time:

echo $this->foo().BR.$this->foo2();

returns() helped me a lot to figure out the return value of functions. E.g. pr() doesn’t show if NULL or FALSE was returned.

echo returns($this->foo2());
//or
$res = returns($this->foo2();
die(returns($res));