There are two modes for an FTP transfer, ASCII and binary. The ASCII mode is used for trans-
ferring text files (that is, files that consist solely of ASCII characters), and the binary mode,
used for transferring everything else. PHP’s FTP library comes with two predefined constants,
FTP_ASCII and FTP_BINARY, that represent these two modes. You need to decide which mode
fits your file type, and pass the corresponding constant to ftp_fget() as the fourth parameter.
In this case we are transferring a zip file, and so we have used the FTP_BINARY mode.
The ftp_fget() function returns true if all goes well, or false if an error is encountered. We
store the result in $success, and let the user know how it went.
After the download has been attempted, we close the local file using the fclose() function.
As an alternative to ftp_fget(), we could have used ftp_get(), which has the following
prototype:
int ftp_get (int ftp_connection, string localfile_path,
string remotefile_path, int mode)
This function works in much the same way as ftp_fget(), but does not require the local file
to be open. You pass it the system filename of the local file you would like to write to rather
than a file handle.
Note that there is no equivalent to the FTP command mget, which can be used to download
multiple files at a time. You must instead make multiple calls to ftp_fget() or ftp_get().
Closing the Connection
After we have finished with the FTP connection, you should close it using the ftp_quit()
function:
ftp_quit($conn);
You should pass this function the handle for the FTP connection.
Uploading Files
If you want to go the other way, that is, copy files from your server to a remote machine, you
can use two functions that are basically the opposite of ftp_fget() and ftp_get(). These
functions are called ftp_fput() and ftp_put(). They have the following prototypes:
int ftp_fput (int ftp_connection, string remotefile_path, int fp, int mode)
int ftp_put (int ftp_connection, string remotefile_path,
string localfile_path, int mode)
The parameters are the same as for the _get equivalents.

Using Network and Protocol Functions
C
HAPTER 17
17
USING NETWORK
AND
PROTOCOL
FUNCTIONS
385
22 7842 CH17 3/6/01 3:39 PM Page 385
Avoiding Timeouts
One problem you might face when FTPing files is exceeding the maximum execution time.
You will know whether this happens because PHP will give you an error message. This is
especially likely to occur if your server is running over a slow or congested network, or if you
are downloading a large file, such as a movie clip.
The default value of the maximum execution time for all PHP scripts is defined in the php.ini
file. By default, it’s set to 30 seconds. This is designed to catch scripts that are running out of
control. However, when you are FTPing files, if your link to the rest of the world is slow, or if
the file is large, the file transfer could well take longer than this.
Fortunately, we can modify the maximum execution time for a particular script using the
set_time_limit() function. Calling this function resets the maximum number of seconds the
script is allowed to run, starting from the time the function is called. For example, if you call
set_time_limit(90);
then the script will be able to run for another 90 seconds from the time the function is called.
Using Other FTP Functions
There are a number of other useful FTP functions in PHP.
The function ftp_size() can tell you the size of a file on a remote server. It has the following
prototype:
int ftp_size(int ftp_connection, string remotefile_path)
This function returns the size of the remote file in bytes, or -1 if there is an error. This is not

supported by all FTP servers.
One handy use of ftp_size() is to work out what maximum execution time to set for a partic-
ular transfer. Given the file size and the speed of your connection, you can take a guess as to
how long the transfer ought to take, and use the set_time_limit() function accordingly.
You can get and display a list of files in a directory on a remote FTP server with the following
code:
$listing = ftp_nlist($conn, “$directory_path”);
foreach ($listing as $filename)
echo “$filename <br>”;
This code uses the ftp_nlist() function to get a list of names of files in a particular directory.
Advanced PHP Techniques
P
ART IV
386
22 7842 CH17 3/6/01 3:39 PM Page 386
In terms of other FTP functions, almost anything that you can do from an FTP command line,
you can do with the FTP functions. You can find the specific functions corresponding to each
FTP command in the PHP online manual at
/>The exception is mget (multiple get), but you can use ftp_nlist() to get a list of files and
then fetch them as required.
Generic Network Communications with cURL
PHP (from version 4.0.2 onwards) has a set of functions that acts as an interface to cURL, the
Client URL library functions from libcurl, written by Daniel Stenberg.
Previously in this chapter, we looked at using the fopen() function and the file-reading func-
tions to read from a remote file using HTTP. This is pretty much the limit of what you can do
with fopen(). We’ve also seen how to make FTP connections using the FTP functions.
The cURL functions enable you to make connections using FTP, HTTP, HTTPS, Gopher,
Telnet, DICT, FILE, and LDAP. You can also use certificates for HTTPS, send HTTP POST
and HTTP GET parameters, upload files via FTP upload or HTTP upload, work through prox-
ies, set cookies, and perform simple HTTP user authentication.

In other words, just about any kind of network connection that you’d like to make can be done
using cURL.
To use cURL with PHP, you will need to download libcurl, compile it, and run PHP’s
configure script with the with-curl=[path] option. The directory in path should be the
one that contains the lib and include directories on your system. You can download the library
from
/>Be aware that you will need a version of cURL from 7.0.2-beta onwards to work with PHP.
There are only a few simple functions to master in order to use the power of cURL. The typi-
cal procedure for using it is
1. Set up a cURL session with a call to the curl_init() function.
2. Set any parameters for transfer with calls to the
curl_setopt() function. This is where
you set options such as the URL to connect to, any parameters to send to that URL, or
the destination of the output from the URL.
3. When everything is set up, call curl_exec() to actually make the connection.
4. Close the cURL session by calling
curl_close().
Using Network and Protocol Functions
C
HAPTER 17
17
USING NETWORK
AND
PROTOCOL
FUNCTIONS
387
22 7842 CH17 3/6/01 3:39 PM Page 387
The only things that change with the application are the URL that you connect to and the para-
meters you set with curl_opt(). There are a large number of these that can be set.
Some typical applications of cURL are

• Downloading pages from a server that uses HTTPS (because fopen() can’t be used for
this purpose)
• Connecting to a script that normally expects data from an HTML form using POST
• Writing a script to send multiple sets of test data to your scripts and checking the output
We will consider the first example—it’s a simple application that can’t be done another way.
This example, shown in Listing 17.5, will connect to the Equifax Secure Server via HTTPS,
and write the file it finds there to a file on our Web server.
LISTING 17.5 https-curl.php—Script to Make HTTPS Connections
<?
echo “<h1>HTTPS transfer with cURL</h1>”;
$outputfile = “$DOCUMENT_ROOT/ /writable/equifax.html”;
$fp = fopen($outputfile, “w”);
echo “Initializing cURL session <br>”;
$ch = curl_init();
echo “Setting cURL options <br>”;
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, “”);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
echo “Executing cURL session <br>”;
curl_exec ($ch);
echo “Ending cURL session <br>”;
curl_close ($ch);
fclose($fp);
?>
Let’s go through this script. We begin by opening a local file using fopen(). This is where we
are going to store the page we transfer from the secure connection.
When this is done, we need to create a cURL session using the curl_init() function:
$ch = curl_init();
This function returns a handle for the cURL session. You can call it like this, with no parame-
ters, or optionally you can pass it a string containing the URL to connect to. You can also set
the URL using the curl_setopt() function, which is what we have done in this case:

curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, “”);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
Advanced PHP Techniques
P
ART IV
388
22 7842 CH17 3/6/01 3:39 PM Page 388
The curl_setopt() function takes three parameters. The first is the session handle, the second
is the name of the parameter to set, and the third is the value to which you would like the para-
meter set.
In this case we are setting two options. The first is the URL that we want to connect to. This is
the CURLOPT_URL parameter. The second one is the file where we want the data from the con-
nection to go. If you don’t specify a file, the data from the connection will go to standard
output—usually the browser. In this case we have specified the file handle of the output file we
just opened.
When the options are set, we tell cURL to actually make the connection:
curl_exec ($ch);
Here, this will open a connection to the URL we have specified, download the page, and store
it in the file pointed to by
$fp.
After the connection has been made, we need to close the cURL session, and close the file we
wrote to:
curl_close ($ch);
fclose($fp);
That’s it for this simple example.
You might find it worthwhile to look at the Snoopy class, available from
/>This class provides Web client functionality through cURL.
Further Reading
We’ve covered a lot of ground in this chapter, and as you might expect, there’s a lot of material
out there on these topics.

For information on the individual protocols and how they work, you can consult the RFCs at
/>You might also find some of the protocol information at the World Wide Web Consortium
interesting:
/>You can also try consulting a book on TCP/IP such as Computer Networks by Andrew
Tanenbaum.
Using Network and Protocol Functions
C
HAPTER 17
17
USING NETWORK
AND
PROTOCOL
FUNCTIONS
389
22 7842 CH17 3/6/01 3:39 PM Page 389
The cURL Web site has some tips on how to use the command line versions of the cURL func-
tions, and these are fairly easily translated into the PHP versions:
/>Next
We’ll move on to Chapter 18, “Managing the Date and Time,” and look at PHP’s libraries of
date and calendar functions. You’ll see how to convert from user-entered formats to PHP for-
mats to MySQL formats, and back again.
Advanced PHP Techniques
P
ART IV
390
22 7842 CH17 3/6/01 3:39 PM Page 390
CHAPTER
18
Managing the Date and Time
23 7842 CH18 3/6/01 3:43 PM Page 391

Advanced PHP Techniques
P
ART IV
392
In this chapter, we’ll discuss checking and formatting the date and time and converting
between date formats. This is especially important when converting between MySQL and PHP
date formats, UNIX and PHP date formats, and dates entered by the user in an HTML form.
We’ll cover
• Getting the date and time in PHP
• Converting between PHP and MySQL date formats
• Calculating dates
• Using the calendar functions
Getting the Date and Time from PHP
Way back in Chapter 1, “PHP Crash Course,” we talked about using the date() function to get
and format the date and time from PHP. We’ll talk about it and some of PHP’s other date and
time functions in a little more detail now.
Using the date() Function
As you might recall, the date() function takes two parameters, one of them optional. The first
one is a format string, and the second, optional one is a UNIX time stamp. If you don’t specify
a time stamp, then date() will default to the current date and time. It returns a formatted string
representing the appropriate date.
A typical call to the date function could be
echo date(“jS F Y”);
This will produce a date of the format “27
th
August 2000”.
The format codes accepted by date are listed in Table 18.1.
T
ABLE 18.1 Format Codes for PHP’s date() Function
Code Description

a Morning or afternoon, represented as two lowercase characters, either
“am” or “pm”.
A Morning or afternoon, represented as two uppercase characters, either
“AM” or “PM”.
B Swatch Internet time, a universal time scheme. More information is avail-
able at />d Day of the month as a 2-digit number with a leading zero. Range is from
“01” to “31”.
23 7842 CH18 3/6/01 3:43 PM Page 392
D Day of the week in 3-character abbreviated text format. Range is from
“Mon” to “Sun”.
F Month of the year in full text format. Range is from “January” to
“December”.
g Hour of the day in 12-hour format without leading zeroes. Range is from
“1” to “12”.
G Hour of the day in 24-hour format without leading zeroes. Range is from
“0” to “23”.
h Hour of the day in 12-hour format with leading zeroes. Range is from
“01” to “12”.
H Hour of the day in 24-hour format with leading zeroes. Range is from
“00” to “23”.
i Minutes past the hour with leading zeroes. Range is from “00” to “59”.
I Daylight savings time, represented as a Boolean value. This will return
“1” if the date is in daylight savings and “0” if it is not.
j Day of the month as a number without leading zeroes. Range is from “1”
to “31”.
l Day of the week in full text format. Range is from “Monday” to
“Sunday”.
L Leap year, represented as a Boolean value. This will return “1” if the date
is in a leap year and “0” if it is not.
m Month of the year as a 2-digit number with leading zeroes. Range is from

“01” to “12”.
M Month of the year in 3-character abbreviated text format. Range is from
“Jan” to “Dec”.
n Month of the year as a number without leading zeroes. Range is from “1”
to “12”.
s Seconds past the minute with leading zeroes. Range is from “00” to “59”.
S Ordinal suffix for dates in 2-character format. This can be “st”, “nd”,
“rd”, or “th”, depending on the number it is after.
t Total number of days in the date’s month. Range is from “28” to “31”.
T Timezone setting of the server in 3-character format, for example, “EST”.
U Total number of seconds from 1 January 1970 to this time; a.k.a., a
UNIX time stamp for this date.
Managing the Date and Time
C
HAPTER 18
18
MANAGING THE
DATE AND TIME
393
TABLE 18.1 Continued
Code Description
23 7842 CH18 3/6/01 3:43 PM Page 393
w Day of the week as a single digit. Range is from “0” (Sunday) to “6”
(Saturday).
y Year in 2-digit format, for example, “00”.
Y Year in 4-digit format, for example, “2000”.
z Day of the year as a number. Range is “0” to “365”.
Z Offset for the current timezone in seconds. Range is “-43200” to “43200”.
Dealing with UNIX Time Stamps
The second parameter to the date() function is a UNIX time stamp.

In case you are wondering exactly what this means, most UNIX systems store the current time
and date as a 32-bit integer containing the number of seconds since midnight, January 1, 1970,
GMT, also known as the UNIX Epoch. This can seem a bit esoteric if you are not familiar with
it, but it’s a standard.
UNIX timestamps are a compact way of storing a date and time, but it is worth noting that they
do not suffer from the year 2000 (Y2K) problem that affects some other compact or abbrevi-
ated date formats. If your software is still in use in 2038, there will be similar problems
though. As timestamps do not have a fixed size, but are tied to the size of a C long, which is at
least 32 bits, the most likely solution is that by 2038, your compiler will use a larger type.
Even if you are running PHP on a Windows server, this is still the format that is used by
date() and a number of other PHP functions.
If you want to convert a date and time to a UNIX time stamp, you can use the mktime() func-
tion. This has the following prototype:
int mktime (int hour, int minute, int second, int month,
int day, int year [, int is_dst])
The parameters are fairly self-explanatory, with the exception of the last one, is_dst, which
represents whether the date was in daylight savings time or not. You can set this to 1 if it was,
0 if it wasn’t, or -1 (the default value) if you don’t know. This is optional so you will rarely
use it anyway.
The main trap to avoid with this function is that the parameters are in a fairly unintuitive order.
The ordering doesn’t lend itself to leaving out the time. If you are not worried about the time,
Part Title
P
ART IV
394
TABLE 18.1 Continued
Code Description
23 7842 CH18 3/6/01 3:43 PM Page 394