Using the PDO MySQL extension

As I mentioned in previous posts, my server is continuously being attacked by hackers attempting to exploit MySQL injection vulnerabilities. I use input validation and mysql_real_escape_string to keep them from getting into the databases. Another way to prevent injection is to use stored procedures. Both PHP and perl allow stored procedures. To use them with PHP you use the PHP Data Objects extension. It should be automatically installed with your PHP and MySQL installation.

To test if PDO is enabled, at the command line type:


php -i|grep PDO

You should get something like this.

PDO
PDO support => enabled
PDO drivers => mysql, sqlite
PDO Driver for MySQL => enabled
PDO Driver for SQLite 3.x => enabled

As I mentioned in a previous post, I like to put the database setup info in a separate directory outside of the document root and then include it in the php file where it is used. The file would look like this:


<?php
$user = 'username';
$pass = 'password';
$host = 'localhost';
$db_name = 'website';

try {
    $dbWG = new PDO("mysql:host=$host;db_name=$dbname", $user, $pass, array(PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_INIT_COMMAND => "SET NAMES utf8") );
    $dbWG->setAttribute( PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION );
    $dbWG->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_DEFAULT_FETCH_MODE, PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
    $dbWG->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_EMULATE_PREPARES, false);
}
catch(PDOException $e) {
    $e->getMessage();
    file_put_contents('/var/log/PDO_WG_errors.log', $e->getMessage(), FILE_APPEND);
}
?>

Don’t forget to use start and end with the php markers or the code will show up on your page. To keep the naming convention consistent with what I have been using, this file would be called wg_db_pdo.inc, since the original PEAR version of the files was called wg.db.inc, and the MySQL versions have been called wg.db.my.inc.

I used try-catch pattern so that I could find out if errors were happening while debugging, but it also is useful in production. Writing the errors to a file also prevents hackers from seeing errors on your site and giving them ideas about how to break in. To see if it was working, I changed the password to an invalid password and got this in the error log, so I know it works.


SQLSTATE[28000] [1045] Access denied for user 'username'@'localhost' (using password: YES)

I was getting this error in my normal php error logs.
Invalid catalog name: 1046 No database selected
until I realized that the full database name is required when accessing a table.


SELECT * FROM `database`.`table`

not

SELECT * FROM `table`

When setting up the database access there are three attributes that I generally want on the database. There are several ways that the data can be returned. I usually want it to be in an associative array so I set the ATTR_DEFAULT_FETCH_MODE to FETCH_ASSOC. The data is in an associative array indexed by column name. As shown in the sample code below, it is straightforward to access the data with this method. Sometimes it is useful to have the data indexed by column number and you can override the default when you make your query. All of the options are listed on php.net.

I’ve been exploring various options and the code might be useful to someone, so I’ve included it below.


<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">

<head>
  <title>PDO Test</title>
</head>
<body>
<?php
echo "Available drivers: ";
print_r(PDO::getAvailableDrivers());

require_once('wg_db_pdo.inc');

    // Don't use this construct. It works but gives an error on the next query
    // 2014 Cannot execute queries while other unbuffered queries are active.
    //$status = $dbWG->exec('SELECT * FROM `database`.`product`');
    //echo "The result of the select statement was $status";

// Check to see if the MySQL driver is available
// http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pdo-mysql.php
if ($dbWG->getAttribute(PDO::ATTR_DRIVER_NAME) == 'mysql') {
    $stmt = $dbWG->prepare('SELECT * FROM `database`.`product` LIMIT 10',
        array(PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_USE_BUFFERED_QUERY => true));
    $stmt->execute();
    echo "<p>Connected to database</p>\n";

} else {
    die("Failed to open database");
}

# using the shortcut ->query() method here since there are no variable
# values in the select statement.
$result = $dbWG->query('SELECT name, id, tagline FROM `database`.`product` LIMIT 10');

echo "<h3>Read from the  result</h3>";
while($row = $result->fetch()) {
    echo $row['id'] . "   ";
    echo $row['name'] . "&mdash;   ";
    echo $row['tagline'] . "<br />";
}

// Resetting the cursor position is not supported.
echo "<h3>Reading from the same result yields nothing</h3>";
echo "<p>";
while($row = $result->fetch()) {
    echo $row['id'] . "   ";
    echo $row['name'];
    echo $row['tagline'] . "<br />";
}
echo "</p>";

//If you want to iterate twice over the results, fetch to an array and iterate over this array:
$stmt = $dbWG->prepare('SELECT * FROM `database`.`product` LIMIT 10');
$stmt->execute();

echo "<h3>You can get the row count in MySQL after the statement is executed</h3>";
$row_count = $stmt->rowCount();
echo $row_count.' rows selected';

$results = $stmt->fetchAll();

echo "<h3>First iteration</h3>";
foreach($results as $row) {
    echo $row['name'] . "<br />";
}

echo "<h3>Second iteration</h3>";
foreach($results as $row) {
    echo $row['name'] . "<br />";
}

// If you load the results into an array, you can get the row count by counting on the array.
echo "<h3>Get the number of rows from array</h3>";
$numberOfRows = count($results);
echo "The number of rows is $numberOfRows";

// Alternatively, you need to do two queries. One to count and one for the data
echo "<h3>Get number of rows using count(*)</h3>";
$numRows = $dbWG->query('SELECT count(*) FROM `database`.`product` LIMIT 10')->fetchColumn();
echo $numRows;

echo "<h3>Fetch as number: FETCH_NUM</h3>";
$stmt->execute();
while ($row = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_NUM)) {
  echo "$row[0] $row[1] <br />";
}

echo "<h3>Alternative Fetch as number: FETCH_NUM</h3>";
$stmt->execute();
$result = $stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_NUM);
 foreach($result as $key=>$val) {
    echo $key.' - '.$val[3].'<br />';
}

echo "<h3>Prepared Statement with Parameters</h3>";
$stmt = $dbWG->prepare("SELECT * FROM `database`.`product` WHERE id > :id AND name LIKE :name");

$product_id = 1;
$input_from_user = "Artic";
$name = "%" . $input_from_user . "%";
$stmt->bindParam(':id', $product_id, PDO::PARAM_INT);
$stmt->bindParam(':name', $name, PDO::PARAM_STR);
// Alternatively
$stmt->bindValue(':name', "%{$input_from_user}%", PDO::PARAM_STR);

$stmt->execute();
$results = $stmt->fetchAll();

foreach($results as $row) {
    echo $row['name'] . "<br />";
}

// These examples use question mark placeholders
echo "<h3>Insert</h3>";
$stmt = $dbWG->prepare('INSERT INTO `database`.`product_log` (`product_id`) VALUES (?)');
for ($i = 0; $i < 10; $i++) {
    $product_id = $i + 10;
    $stmt->bindParam(1, $product_id);
    $stmt->execute();
}

// Insert with Array and placeholders
// The product_log has a source field called src
echo "<h3>Insert with Array and Placeholders</h3>";
$values = array('page1.php', 'page2.php', 'page3.php', 'page4.php');
$source = '';
$stmt = $dbWG->prepare('INSERT INTO `database`.`product_log` (`src`) VALUES (:source)');
$stmt->bindParam(':source', $source, PDO::PARAM_STR);
foreach($values as $source) {
    echo "The value to be inserted is $source<br />";
    $stmt->execute();
}

$insertId = $dbWG->lastInsertId();
echo "The ID of the last row is $insertId";

echo "<h3>Delete the last two rows</h3>";
$stmt = $dbWG->prepare('DELETE FROM `database`.`product_log` WHERE id >= ? AND id <= ?');
$min = $insertId - 1;
$max = $insertId;
$stmt->bindParam(1, $min, PDO::PARAM_INT);
$stmt->bindParam(2, $max, PDO::PARAM_INT);

$stmt->execute();
$count = $stmt->rowCount();
echo "The number of rows deleted is $count";

# close the connection
$dbWG = null;
?>
</body>

For further reading I suggest hashPHP to start and the PDO Book at php.net.

PHP include files

When you install PHP, the installation process puts a file, php5.conf, in the mods-available directory of Apache. This file tells Apache to process files ending in php instead of displaying them directly. So the end-user never sees the code that is in these files, they just see the final result of the programming. (Actually, it is more general than this. The default installation also lets you use files ending in php3, php4, php5, pht, and phtml. In practice, I don’t think anyone uses anything but php.)

One of the nice things about php is that you can create include files for things like headers, footers, and menus. Rather than duplicating the same information in each file on your website, you create one file and every page has the same setup. A common practice is to name these with the suffix inc. However, if you do that, they are viewable by anyone who guesses the name. If you have access to the apache2.conf file, you can add these lines to deny access to the files.


# We don't want people to see .inc files
<Files  ~ "\.inc$">
  Order allow,deny
  Deny from all
</Files>

Alternatively, you can put your include files in a directory and deny access to the directory. In your document root, create a directory called include.php and then add a file called .htaccess that includes the following lines:


Order deny, allow
Deny from all

If the .htaccess method doesn’t work with your configuration, you can always add .php to your include files.

I am a little paranoid about files that contain database passwords. I have several dozen databases and for both organization purposes and security I put them in a directory that is outside of the document root. The default configuration of Apache does not allow access to files outside the document root so no one should be able to see them. The php processor can see them so they are available to your web pages.

To access them, use the full path or add a line to your /php5/apache2/php.ini file to tell Apache where to look for include files. Mine looks something like this:


include_path = ".:/usr/share/php5:/usr/share/php:./include.php:..:../include.php:../../include.php:../../../include.php:/srv/include.php"

The first two paths are the default php paths. Then it looks for files in include.php directories located in the current path and several paths up the chain. The last path is outside the document root and is where I put my sensitive information and things that are common to all sites on the machine e.g sidebar ads, styles, nav menus, etc. You can name these directories anything you want. Mine are called include.php because that’s how they’ve been since they were set up in 1998.

Browser Cookies with PHP and JavaScript

I have a game that I am in the process of updating. Originally it passed scores in with the URL, but I decided to update it so that the scores are not visible. My first thought was to use session variables, but since I want to change the scores in response to calculations that are done in JavaScript, that isn’t feasible. A better way is to use cookies. When I first enter a page, I set or get the cookies with PHP. I want the game levels to persist from visit to visit but the scores are only kept for the session.


// Initialize the cookies with PHP. Keep the group and level around but make the scoring session cookies
// If the cookie is set by the code, it is not available until the next page load
$cookie_name = "VPA_group";
$cookie_value = "MW1";
if( !isset($_COOKIE[$cookie_name]) ) {
    setcookie($cookie_name,$cookie_value,$cookie_time,$cookie_path,$cookie_domain,$cookie_secure,$cookie_httponly);
}
$group  = isset($_COOKIE["VPA_group"])  ? $_COOKIE["VPA_group"]   : $cookie_value;

$cookie_name = "VPA_WFF";
$cookie_value = "Wide";
if( !isset($_COOKIE[$cookie_name]) ) {
    setcookie($cookie_name,$cookie_value,$cookie_time,$cookie_path,$cookie_domain,$cookie_secure,$cookie_httponly);
}
$WFF    = isset($_COOKIE["VPA_WFF"])    ? $_COOKIE["VPA_WFF"]     : $cookie_value;

$cookie_name = "VPA_cor";
$cookie_value = 0;
if( !isset($_COOKIE[$cookie_name]) ) {
    setcookie($cookie_name,$cookie_value);
}
$cor    = isset($_COOKIE["VPA_cor"])    ? $_COOKIE["VPA_cor"]     : $cookie_value;

$cookie_name = "VPA_inc";
$cookie_value = 0;
if( !isset($_COOKIE[$cookie_name]) ) {
    setcookie($cookie_name,$cookie_value);
}
$inc    = isset($_COOKIE["VPA_inc"])    ? $_COOKIE["VPA_inc"]     : $cookie_value;

$cookie_name = "VPA_screen";
$cookie_value = 0;
if( !isset($_COOKIE[$cookie_name]) ) {
 setcookie($cookie_name,$cookie_value);
}
$screen = isset($_COOKIE["VPA_screen"]) ? $_COOKIE["VPA_screen"]  : $cookie_value;

Once I have the values, I need to let JavaScript know what they are.


<script>
    <?php
        echo "var cor = $cor;\n";
        echo "var inc = $inc;\n";
        echo "var screen = $screen;\n";

        echo "var group = \"$group\";\n";
        echo "var WFF = \"$WFF\";\n";
        echo "var cookie_days = \"$cookie_days\";\n";
    ?>
</script>

Then I can use JavaScript to change them, as I described in the previous post.


function goNext() {
    setCookie('VPA_cor',cor,'N');
    setCookie('VPA_inc',inc,'N');
    setCookie('VPA_screen',screen,'N');
    window.location="ThisGame.php";
}

function changeLevel(cookieName, cookieValue) {
    cor = 0;
    inc = 0;
    screen = 0;
    setCookie('VPA_cor',cor,'N');
    setCookie('VPA_inc',inc,'N');
    setCookie('VPA_screen',screen,'N');
    setCookie(cookieName, cookieValue, 'Y');
}

function setCookie(cname, cvalue, set_time) {
    var expires = '';
    if ( set_time == 'Y' ) {
        var d = new Date();
        d.setTime(d.getTime() + (cookie_days*24*60*60*1000));
        expires = "expires="+d.toUTCString();
    }
    //alert('cname ' + cname + 'group ' + cvalue + 'time ' + expires);
    document.cookie = cname + "=" + cvalue + "; " + expires;
}
</script>

Browser Cookies with JavaScript

Using JavaScript to set and get cookies is pretty straightforward. I wrote a simple function to set cookies for a game I’m working on. This code initializes/resets the cookies.


var cookie_days = 30;
var cor = 0;
var inc = 0;
var screen = 0;
var level = "MW1";
setCookie('VPA_cor',cor,'N');
setCookie('VPA_inc',inc,'N');
setCookie('VPA_screen',screen,'N');
setCookie('VPA_level',level,'Y');

function setCookie(cname, cvalue, set_time) {
var expires = '';
if ( set_time == 'Y' ) {
    var d = new Date();
    d.setTime(d.getTime() + (cookie_days*24*60*60*1000));
    expires = "expires="+d.toUTCString();
}
//alert('cname ' + cname + 'group ' + cvalue + 'time ' + expires);
document.cookie = cname + "=" + cvalue + "; " + expires;
}

Note that the JavaScript code for setting and resetting a cookie is the same. One caveat is that if the cookie has been set outside of JavaScript, e.g. in PHP, then it is possible that the httponly has been set to TRUE. In that case you cannot modify an existing cookie with JavaScript.

You can get the value of the cookies with this code.


var cookie_name = 'VPA_cor';
var cor = retrieve_cookie(cookie_name);

In my code, I set the cookies with PHP, so the path is already set. If you initialize a cookie with JavaScript, you can set the path by adding a path parameter.


 document.cookie = name + '=' + value + ';' +
                   'expires=' + expires + ';' +
                   'path=' + path + ';';

Browser Cookies with PHP

PHP
Like other headers, cookies must be sent before any output from your script (this is a protocol restriction). This requires that you place calls to this function prior to any output, including and tags as well as any whitespace. PHP.net

Here is an example of a cookie that checks to see how many times a person has visited the site. Note that it expires in 30 days.


$cookie_name = "VPA";
$cookie_days = 30;
$cookie_time = time()+60*60*24*$cookie_days;
$cookie_path = '';
$cookie_domain = '';
$cookie_secure = false;
$cookie_httponly = true;

if( !isset($_COOKIE[$cookie_name]) ) {
    $cookie_value = 0;
} else {
  $cookie_value = $_COOKIE[$cookie_name] + 1;
}
setcookie($cookie_name,$cookie_value,$cookie_time,$cookie_path,$cookie_domain,$cookie_secure,$cookie_httponly);

In your code you can check for the value of the cookie like this:


echo "Cookie VPA is $_COOKIE[VPA]";

The value can be a number or text. Once a cookie is created, you can update the value in the body of your code.


setcookie("VPA","red",$cookie_time);
echo $_COOKIE["VPA"];

Not that I switched from a number to alpha in this example. The cookies don’t care what the value is or if the type changes. Note that you cannot get the cookie expiration time. And if you leave it off in your setcookie, it will be reset to Session.

To get rid of a cookie, set its value to null and time to something in the past—zero works.


setcookie($cookie_name,'',0);
e.g.
set cookie('VPA','',0);