blocking a specific string from being blocked from submittion

[knight47]

I have a small advertising script that will advertise a link on the main page of my site, what I'm wondering is how I can block a link from being submitted, what I currently have is an if statement that will not allow a specific link, but it is case sensitive. so for example, if I want to block site1.com, the user can submit SITE1.com, or sItE1.com, SiTE1.com, etc.. and they would all go through fine. How can I have it so that it doesn't matter the case, it will block the whole site1.com, no matter what the case is?

 

OR, an alternative I was thinking about is forcing all letters to go lower case, is that a possibility in php?

 

thanks in advance

[skali]

To solve case problem.

You can use

 

$all_small = strtolower('AnY CASE yOu LIKE');

 

then compare it with whatever you like.

[knight47]

To solve case problem.

You can use

 

$all_small = strtolower('AnY CASE yOu LIKE');

 

then compare it with whatever you like.

Hello Skali, thanks for your reply.

 

I tried this, and for some reason it didn't work, would you happen to know why?

 

$url = htmlspecialchars($_POST['url'], ENT_QUOTES); // cleans the submitted url
$clean_url = stripslashes($url);

$replace = array("http://www.", "HTTP://", "http://", "WWW.", "www.");

$displayed_url = str_replace($replace, "", $clean_url); // removes the http:// or the www. from a link

$banned_sites = array("site1.com", "site2.com");

if ($_POST['Submit'] && strtolower("$displayed_url") == $banned_sites)
{
	echo "Sorry, but this URL has been banned from being advertised on our site.";

        }

elseif.... 
{
// code
}

 

The code works fine, but for some reason the blocking of a link will not work.

 

Thanks.

[Guest footballkid4]

Try this:

<?php
$url = parse_url(stripslashes(htmlspecialchars($_POST['url'], ENT_QUOTES)));
$banned_sites = array("site1.com", "site2.com");

// Check if it was even supplied
if ( ! $url['host'] ) {
// Not supplied
}

// Check if it's banned
if ( in_array( strtolower( $url['host'] ), $banned_sites ) ) {
// Banned
} else {
// Not banned, continue
}
?>

[knight47]

thanks footballkid4, havn't tried it yet. but any idea why my code wouldn't work?

[Glyde]

On this line:

if ($_POST['Submit'] && strtolower("$displayed_url") == $banned_sites)

 

One of two things is done somewhat incorrectly.

1) A variable name has no need to be placed in quotes.  While it's strtolower("$displayed_url") is the EXACT SAME as strtolower($displayed_url), the quotes are not needde.

 

2) You are checking a string (strtolower("$displayed_url")) against an array ($banned_sites).  You must use something like in_array to iterate through each element and then check for equality.

[knight47]

hello everyone, thanks for all the help.

 

This is all of my code, nothing too advanced, but for some reason it's still not working, any ideas on why?

 

<?php

$url = htmlspecialchars($_POST['url'], ENT_QUOTES); // cleans the submitted url
$clean_url = stripslashes($url); // removes slashes from the submitted url

$disc = htmlspecialchars($_POST['disc'], ENT_QUOTES); // cleans the submitted disc.
$cleaner_disc = stripslashes($disc); // removes slashes from the submitted disc.


$replace = array("http://www.", "HTTP://WWW.", "http://WWW.", "HTTP://www", "http://", "HTTP://", "www.", "WWW."); // what is going to be replaced form the URL
$displayed_url = str_replace($replace, "", $clean_url); // removes the "http://www." from the URL, this is going to be what is advertised

$code = '<h1 class="style4"><a href="' . $clean_url . '">' . $displayed_url . '</a> </h1>
    <center><table width="94%" border="0" cellspacing=" " cellpadding=" ">
      <tr>
        <td><div align="left"><span class="style15">' . $cleaner_disc . '</span></div></td>
        <td><div align="right"><span class="style15"><a href="advertise.html">Replace with your link... </a></span></div></td>
      </tr>
    </table></center>';
    
$banned_sites = array("boysfood.com", "porn.com"); // porn websites 
    
if ($_POST['Submit'] && in_array($banned_sites, strtolower($displayed_url)))  
    {
        echo "Sorry, but this URL has been banned from being advertised on our site.";
        echo '<meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" content="5; url=index.htm">';
    }
elseif ($_POST['Submit'] && strlen($displayed_url) < 31 && strlen($cleaner_disc) < 63)
    {
           $link = "link.php";
           $create = fopen($link, 'w') or die("The file could not be created, please try again later");
        fwrite($create, $code);
        fclose($create);
        echo '<meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" content="0; url=index.htm">';
    }
    else    
    {
    echo "Sorry, but you broke the internet! No not really, but on a more seriose note, you probably exceeded the max character limit on the URL, or the description field, please note that \"http://www.\" does not count, so please do not exclude this from you're URL. Thank you!";
    }
?> 

 

I'm now getting an error: Warning: in_array() [function.in-array]: Wrong datatype for second argument in /home/sbai/public_html/advertise.php on line 23

 

Line 23 is: if ($_POST['Submit'] && in_array($banned_sites, strtolower($displayed_url)))

 

and it still allows the blocked URL from being submitted.

 

and yes, my coding is probably very very sloppy, i'm fairly new to php, and i'm not really looking for a solution that i can copy/paste, because I won't learn anything from that! I'm looking for a solution that I would understand, I know there are probably different methods to achieve this, but i'm just a beginner

[Glyde]

The in_array parameters are switched around.

 

Instead of:

in_array($banned_sites, strtolower($displayed_url))

 

It should be:

in_array(strtolower($displayed_url), $banned_sites)

 

Tell me how that goes

[knight47]

ok, I made the switch, and now I get:

 

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: () in /home/sbai/public_html/advertise.php on line 23 - no matter what url I submit

 

Line 23 is: if ($_POST['Submit'] && in_array($strtolower($displayed_url), $banned_sites)) 

 

btw, if you would like to test it out

 

???

[knight47]

For now I'm just using this:

 

if ($_POST['Submit'] && strtolower($displayed_url) == "porn.com" || strtolower($displayed_url) == "boysfood.com")

 

which seems to be working fine, but I'm just curios on why the array didn't work...

[knight47]

Sorry for the triple posting, but I seem to have figured it out. I think the problem was I am not supposed to put a function inside of in_array()

 

What I had was in_array(strtolower($url), $banned_sites);

 

that didn't work, so what I did was:

 

$site = strtolower($displayed_url);

if ($_POST['Submit'] && in_array($site, $banned_sites));

 

this seemed to work.

 

so for future references, don't put functions inside of in_array()

[Glyde]

It works fine.  You problem was that you put a $ in front of strtolower, making it $strtolower().  PHP tries to search for the variable $strtolower and then run the function, but it didn't exists.  Say $strtolower = "hey";, with $strtolower(), PHP would call the function hey().