Have you ever wanted to secure links on your website (for example hide the real source of a file)? Here is a quick and easy way to do this.
<?php # File created on 11th February 2009 by Mike Rogers (http://www.fullondesign.co.uk/). ## Start defining constants ## define(RUN_ERRORS, TRUE); // Do you want the script to display errors? TRUE = yes you do. define(redirect_or_echo, 'redirect'); // Do you want to redirect the user to another website, or just echo the other other webpages' content. 'rediect' will redirect, 'echo' will return the web pages constents. I recommend redirect. ## End defining constants ## /* Start the link codes. The code is the ?code=123 part of the URL. The array should be fotmatted like: $link['code'] = 'http://URL'; You may find it easier to do this with MySQL or including this as a seperate file. Too many links could lower performance, but for a small website just trying to cloak a few links this is good*/ $link['1'] = 'http://www.site.com/'; // Start the system. function external_url($url){ if($return = @file_get_contents($url)){ return $return; }elseif(function_exists("curl_init")){ $ch = curl_init(); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 10); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); $return = curl_exec($ch); curl_close($ch); return $return; }elseif($return = @implode("", @file($url))){ return $return; } else { return NULL; } } // Checks if the code is a number if(is_numeric($_GET['code']) && is_array($link)){ if(isset($link[$_GET['code']])){ if(redirect_or_echo === 'redirect'){ header('location: '.$link[$_GET['code']]); } elseif(redirect_or_echo === 'echo'){ echo external_url($link[$_GET['code']]); }else{ if(RUN_ERRORS === TRUE){ echo 'Sorry, an internal error has occoured.'; } } } else { if(RUN_ERRORS === TRUE){ echo 'Sorry, the code you have provided is incorrect.'; } } }else{ if(RUN_ERRORS === TRUE){ echo 'Sorry, the code you have provided is incorrect.'; } } /* You are free to share, modify and use this code for commercial uses. Please give a link back (to http://www.fullondesign.co.uk/ ) if you can, but you don't have you. You use this at your own risk. */ ?>
Useful Links
PHP’s Offical Website – It has a fantastic documentation section. Well worth a look.
PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide – The book I learnt PHP from, it’s really good for beginners and reference guide.


